Poetry Showcase: Kushal Poddar (March 2023)

photo from pixabay

The Complex Quantum of the Magnetic Fields

Some salesmen smokes in the market. The chickens are still alive. The shops
release the stretching cats from their shrouds.
Rigor mortis has set in some mice, some writhing.
Megaphones slur. Words travel in paddle-carts.
Work has been cancelled by the union demanding
more works. Our favourite mad man turns, yawns, farts.
The flight of the pigeons thunderclaps
the complex quantum of the magnetic fields into the sky.

An Address Bleeds On The Door

Once more I've come to the door,
scored a photo, asked the mystery behind-
"What is it that keeps pulling me in?"

The numbers on the woodwork, hand-painted,
bleed a lot, and I wait 
as if its wound would heal, the address would
instill a jiffy etched in the air like a capricious feather.

Knock on the skull; if I have ever here
as a resident, as the one behind,
that I had been unlocked into infinity.
My father, all gone, whispers 
to my mother, all gone, that I have grown to be
nothing they imagine, but it matters no longer.


Apparition

A single see-through crow in the morning meadow,
I feel the sugar drainage, sway a bit, hallucinate.
One crow multiply; the crow inside the crow comes out.

The town uncrates its memory boxes around us.
This is the oldest part, made of superego. 
My teacher walks towards the river. His suicide note
floats like a duck feather in the mote. 
I can eat a candy and stable my vision, but why!

Thousands thoughts fly and unfold summer.
Sky is only beginning to gather itself.

Almost

Sometimes, for example: while
letting my eyes bleed over the sunshine
the roof and railing of our house sketch,
I fall in love with Almost.

Otherwise, at night, I rush to awakening
and visit the room I have sent Almost to sleep.
I stare at the window-framed nighttime meadow.
Wind neighs near the bedpost. It becomes
aware of my presence and shatters into
a million racing towards the darker end.
Almost sleeps. It looks like a letter crumpled
and cast inside the waste basket of the dreams. 


The White Fish In the Ceramic Pond

Some say that the fin 
is the only thing that breaches
the worlds' semipermeable membrane,
and that the fish is a ghost.

I train my daughter to balance on her toes 
and to throw a fistful of fish-food. 
I say, "Here none fishes. We feed 
the echoes of the land." We see 
the white shadow ricochets midst 
the ceramic pond. Almost winter
plays our chords. Here comes the fish.
There it disappears.

We utter the words we designed to send 
to my mother. The alphabet swirls and sinks.
A few bubbles break near the bank of reality.


The Climate

A handcart collects empty egg cartons
from the shops in the serpentine lanes.
The summer sun lies on the zigzag of the boxes.
The tracks look chalked as if it has snowed.
Nothing, not even the tropical trees cast any shadow.
Perhaps we all died as one, 
and our apparition has no reflection.

The unnecessity of Setting Any Ideal

Shadows on the margins, 
reading the book on your life
has hit a bar of lull in
this afternoon. 

I don't mark the books as if I 
am a holder of the volume in 
a circle of 'Pass me the pages'. 
If I had to scriven a footnote
I would have written the clouds 
and the panes perfecting 
those flipped reflections of the lone reed 
surviving your vermin's garden. 

I would add, "I often think, 
if we worship Meaninglessness as God, 
as necessity, and as the Sundays in our lives 
our rituals might be similar to 
tending a zen garden. 
The perfection of our method 
has the aim no greater than to perfect 
ourselves during this brief and random stay 
on earth. 

Imagine what you would have said to that!
I lower my eyes; the book has hit the floor;
my fingers still on it, inside its bosom 
are callous about the detachment. 


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

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe