3 poems from Kushal Poddar

On Climate Change

The bourgeoisie king paints 
his citadel, and the rain begins. 
The clouds blitzes in 
from wherever all sudden things stay.

The puddles smell of rainbow and gasoline.
The bourgeoisie king sleeps waiting
for the rain's end, dreams a school of echoes
swim towards his pane, his home drowned
beneath the water bunched in a pothole,
the climate changed to a permanent monsoon.

Sometimes I wonder what is point of building
here and now, availing concrete, paint and soul.
Sometimes. And yet we dip our brush in hope,
repent our sins of killing the bees, and repeat the offence.


The Old Murders

The houses turn into coal,
smoulder a little.
Odd sun rays still the juggedness.
Some old bones tell, the doors
shut them inside at the ignition.

The trace DNA of politics, 
on the black, in the ashes,
with the wind, adds a quick footnote -
'Evolution can go both ways
at the same time. 
We can be better outside and
bitter inside; we can grow and shrink.'

The flies bring in the buzz, fly away.
The news cool down in my cup and
its spill highlights the circle of the saucer.

More Old Murders

The river, I breathe in,
eddies through my lungs,
and I exhale, say -
"The air is quite salubrious."

The tribal guide says,
"It has been so since
the other caste burnt down the vill."

When we reach the bank
its rocks and stones already show
our footprints, as if we have been
here, and as if this is a newsreel
moving backwards
in front of a kissing couple.
Their passion wipes out the details.




Bio: An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, editor of ‘Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being ‘Postmarked Quarantine’. His works have been translated in eleven languages.

Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet

Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/