Sun rays erect a wall
behind us,
and on that canvas
I and my daughter
paint an orchard.
The bonsai town
sprawls around.
Our garden is the giant.
I have seeds on my palm.
Our voices explaining
soil and sun sink the traffic
of the toy cars left beyond
for this moment.
By The Pricking Of Our Thumbs
The peril, as miniscule as nothing,
came home, this one, the red brickwork,
and you carried it in
your intestine.
Grandfather, I know what it means
to know not to know, why the leaves
crack to dust at the slightest rubbing of fingers,
and ageing stops, dark darkens,
the howling wind shepherds the clouds away.
One shakes his head at those failing premonitions,
and at the success of the prickings of our thumbs.
In one phrase, I too, not know.
We live through the history, naive.
Our deaths mark pandemics.
Or war. "Choose your perils." No supreme being offers.
Bio -
An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, works as a journalist. He authored eight books and has been translated into eleven languages across the globe.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Never been a people reader
and today, I am no better.
The cloud, now a face,
and now a short shower
to mud, blinks with the rays.
I open the sketchbook
and try to replicate the drawing
of a spade that made
a ten years old me proud,
and all my lines wriggle like
the worms beneath a flower bed.
The Profile Photo Has Expired
"You look so depressed."
They say.
The med
must have died
in my cabinet.
If I smile
a hoary feline will lift its face.
A mouse's intestine still hangs
from the corner of its mouth.
Bio -
An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, works as a journalist. He authored eight books and has been translated into eleven languages across the globe.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Bare Bones Writings is an extension of http://www.Feversofthemind.com . Themes we are Looking for Poetry/prose/articles/other styles of writing are for Adhd Awareness, Mental Health, Anxiety, Culture, History, Social Justice, LGBTQ Matters/Pride, Love, Poem series, sonnets, physical health, pandemic themes, Trauma, Retro/pop culture, inspired by music/songwriters, inspired by classic & current writers, frustrations. Artwork. Music, Poetry, Book reviews.
Issue 1 includes tributes to poets/writers that contributed to Fevers of the Mind in the past including Kari Ann Flickinger, Scott Christopher Beebe & Dai Fry.
A Fevers of the Mind Musician Spotlight on the albums of Marissa Nadler.
Short Interviews from the Quick-9 interview series with Khalisa Rae, Ron Sexsmith, & Shaindel Beers.
Poetry/Writings from Kari Ann Flickinger, Dai Fry, Scott Christopher Beebe, Paul Brookes, Bill Abney, Ankh Spice, David L O’Nan, Robert Frede Kenter (with poems about Lou Reed), Glenn Barker, Rc deWinter, K Weber, Robin McNamara, Elizabeth Cusack, an art/poetry collaboration between Lia Brooks & Phil Wood, the first 5 poems from Hiraeth Series by Kushal Poddar, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Spriha Kant, Jennifer Patino (with a poem inspired by Audrey Hepburn) and artwork by Maggs Vibo, Matthew M C Smith, HilLesha O’Nan, Lily Maureen O’Nan, Ken Benes, Jessica Weyer Bentley, R.D. Johnson, Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo, Norb Aikin, Andrew Darlington, Liam Flanagan, Christina Strigas, Lorraine Caputo, Conny Borgelioen, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Colin Dardis, Petar Penda, Helen Openshaw, Matthew Freeman, Christian Garduno, Eileen Carney Hulme, Colin James, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Marisa Silva-Dunbar, Kate Garrett, A.R. Salandy, John Chinaka Onyeche, Doryn Herbst
A crow needles together
the shadows and the reflections.
The railings stir in the puddle.
The portico crumbles on the water
and reconstructs itself.
All blur a little. All come alive.
The rain-torn clothesline
wires a knotted s.o.s
from a shirt, forgotten, left behind,
towards the kin to the dead.
"Will you be not-lonely again?"
Caws the crow.
I thumb through the literary precedent,
"Nevermore."
Bio -
An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, works as a journalist. He authored eight books and has been translated into eleven languages across the globe.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
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/
Fevers of the Mind 