Quietus
"Hush." My father says.
"What are we listening to?"
"Nothing."
A rare power cut shapes
our shadows into formless Rorschach.
I cannot tell if mine
licks my toes or begins from those.
I cannot hear nothing.
The breeze bears the busy roads,
railway, piers, wharfs,
children, books, gossips, crickets,
cemeteries and death
where all begins or ends.
The Golden Beryl Ink
You find a bottle of shine,
thickened by time,
almost gold, metal-solid,
begs to be in use again.
Love strikes with short texts
these days, with acronyms and
contracted phrases.
The vial vies for your heart,
and so you dip your father's nib in
whatever left of the shimmering
and write a letter to your mother;
it begins and ends with 'Dear'.
If you free a tiger
you can never predict
what midst your collective unconscious
may fall prey to the claws unleashed.
Dragonfly
The app device a translation
of what's scrivened on the stone.
The black and green steps drown
in the hyacinths. One dragonfly
writes on a lotus leaf.
Bubbles and ripples hold the hush.
If you write truths using water
they become myths. I tell the insect.
And there is no right translation of the myths.
The Forest In The Windowverse
"A forest, there!" My daughter says
often when we open a pane.
We have been to a forest, albeit this
is long after the after.
We cease to ask where and what,
open windows when she needs
the constant rain, cloud coloured beasts
and invisible microbes recycling summer,
again, again, an easy cure for everything.
She hears about a shooting.
Today we open the pane. She screams
"An wildfire! Save them!"
I hold her, say, "We can save your forest
but we must uncover the root of the blaze."
Look Up Syndrome
Someplace else belongs to the rain.
I look up at the sky and it says,
"Face the wall."
I have been thinking about the moment of end.
"Don't wander near the river, blaze, subway tracks
or a bottle of pills prescribed for a cure."
I hear my mother, rest-in-peace.
"There is a cure" I murmur, look up again
until the Sun blinds me, binds my sight in
some bubbles. This Spring I have been
thinking about the wall, firing squad,
holes, not just the rivers, inferno, rails or pills.
I look up again, try hard to imagine a cloud
that will be my childhood pet at first and then
take a piss on me.
Bio: Kushal Poddar, the author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Buy a copy of Kushal's book with IceFloe Press below!
The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages.
An Ode to Nothing
On the road the morning besoms
hum Horatian odes to the leaves and blossoms
fallen. The night passed belonged to a storm.
An ant leads and follows, the marching of one.
I know what these remind and I cannot recall.
A car stalls at the red; no other vehicle
rolls from that side or from this,
but the signal stays static.
The First Blood
You will not realise
the first born, a river
with two blind ends,
spreads like a lake unless
you fly high and see
the body of truth with the drone-eyes.
He opens the door for the house.
Others have so many chores.
He grins, welcomes the folks visiting
and drips his shoulders when
winter ebbs, and the gadabouts
become only the feathers they leave.
He is all our mistakes while fishing
for truths. Beneath his rippling skin
lies desires died and secrets jettisoned.
At night he gurgles, "In me
my father sleeps with a stone chained
to his neck." You shiver.
A swirl of fireflies ribbons
the gift of darkness.
You Know These Are Questionable Truths
I told my friend Amit,
I forget what I write.
Once a reader queried
why I wrote some line
and I vivisected like a critic, 0.
P
That night we strolled into a fort
for a drink with a stranger
who would declare
a no-man's land between us,
shoot-at-sight later.
Did we? Perhaps I fake my life,
live the lies, forget
the creation and believe tales as truths.
Downslope
The odd couple jogging
disappears beyond the bend.
Now is a stir in the air.
Here is a giggle lost
amidst the rain washed grass
on its thin white wings.
A drunkard unzips his stupor,
throws the emptiness just to watch
morning reflection in a thousand shards.
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
The jazz hand of the signal
mesmerizes the railway road.
Here desires to be There.
A blue becomes my face.
My tired car punctures the time.
A hiss bleeds out in the air.
I am tired everyday. I am the everyday.
The last roll of the toilet paper
holds the tale of my life, and
the anecdotes of a pandemic sleep syndrome.
I call my friend died last month's first Sunday.
He whispers, "Hear the local train pass.
It plays the wind like God.
The music is God."
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
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
Fevers of the Mind 