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/
The coffee, born cold, takes its sweet time.
I wait, my eyes - half and half. My patience
moonwalks through the shrapnel of wee hours' dreams.
The invasion of reality assesses the assets
intact and the assets lost.
You say out of context, "After a certain age
men need only one candle on top of their cakes."
I am more concerned about the line of control.
A wish-breath remains loaded in my lungs' silo.
The Noir Heart
"Examine your desire."
The priest says.
They become two last leaves
on the dying tree,
and the moon and its
siamese shadow on the rain water.
Tim speaks first on behalf of his
desire, his heart,
"To kill the husband of my liver."
An owl slashes through.
The priest nods, "Now that you
have said so, he is dead and reborn
in his next breath."
Wolfpack Contributor: Kushal PoddarPoetry from Kushal Poddar : The Little Voyeur Incident, War & Peace2 new poems by Kushal Poddar : Drinking with a Priest & Rabbit, Dance
The staircase swirls down deep
right into the id,
and I realise I am red
from this vertigo prone voyeurism,
this watching my brother down there
kissing the new house-help.
I cannot help it. I stare. I stare.
My brother's daughter has
emptied out our dwelling
to his ex for the weekend.
Summer and noontime,
heat wears frills, and has an Alice-fall.
I try to reach out, fail.
War & Peace
The way I can draw a Christmas tree
with three arrowheads and a straight spine,
or draw blood by removing two sharp angles
from the top, I offer you peace;
our lovemaking can be altered
by annulling Good from the flesh of Intention.
The household, a planet self-contained,
exists and ceases to with the rise and fall
of our curtains. I wonder at the manner
night hides other worlds, and their screaming
passion and hatred in the arsenals.
The solitaire of the noise our leaking faucet makes
cuts the silence into thin slices.
I can relate to the bonding of the wind
and the leaves. Now it is a dance. Now, the fall.
Wolfpack Contributor: Kushal Poddar2 new poems by Kushal Poddar : Drinking with a Priest & Rabbit, DanceA Poetry Series by Kushal Poddar “Hiraeth Series”
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.
Fevers of the Mind 