A Trilogy of Descort Poems by Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia

 

A Trilogy of Descort Poems



STAY PUT

Stay put.

Will you make me twenty steel boxes, please?
Let’s cook cluster beans and milk pudding.
You are twenty-eight today- what’s going on in your head, I wonder.
What a blue sky behind the fall colours of the foliage!

Her shock of grey hair and dark glasses shocked me.
Another house is waiting.
There is a garden in a garden city.

Their son is named Song: I thought it was a girl’s name, but they are deeply in love, so I give credit for craziness across states.
There is a quarrel between two parts of my mind, making me schizophrenic.
Stop.
He used to run a school in her language.

Some are jealous, others admire, some hate, are ready to die and kill, money is involved.
What happened to the street children’s library could be a matter of interest.
Please go away- leave me alone- I can’t bear anything- terminal gradual heart failure.
Golden birch cones.



PALE HANDS

Pale hands from poetry became for some a Victorian painting reference.
Think of Tess, and Angel Clare - but she was hanged.
O Sole Mio!

I’m sorry.
You will see the thinking is conflicted.
The Horse Painter was exiled but to some he was another Picasso though barefoot.
How different do you think you are from me?

Some words are better in Urdu.

The split personality, the attention deficient disorder, could be the heritage of a green - eyed girl named after mint.
I saw them getting married years ago.

Six deliveries later………
I must learn to give up things, one at a time.

DILEMMA

The idea was to depict an inner conflict in an appropriate form.
Damn.
All I write is dried grass ready to be set fire to. Say pass.
You irritate me by being reasonable.
Do you not understand?
I’m pulling my hair out from the roots in big handfuls in utter frustration.
It’s a matter of life and death for me — a short leftover life, a painful lonely death, most likely.
You expect me to smile!
Everybody can see through me and my frivolous excuses: who am I trying to fool, anyway?
I’m too strong
For anyone to make me do something inspite of myself -
I do not believe in love, either, so that’s out, anyway.
Spoiling for a fight, he says. I’m not falling for that one, he says.
The solution of my problem lies
Not in words but in action.
Inaction.
I’m addicted to inaction.
such are the horns of my dilemma good intentions lie impaled hurry up please it’s time missed train catch another next stop cuttack neither here nor there e e cummings type don’t go seeing things

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia is the pen name of Amita Paul, a retired civil servant who is at heart a poet and teacher. She writes , mostly poetry, in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. She was awarded the NISSIM International Poetry Award 2019 and the Reuel international Award 2020 for Non- Fiction Prose, while Destiny International Community of Poets UK, declared her Poet of the Year 2020 as well as Critic of the Year 2020, and again in 2021. Her work has been published in several international anthologies and also in many journals and online magazines such as Das Literarisch, Doaba, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Yugen Quest Review, Setu Bilingual Magazine, GloMag, Fasihi Magazine, and Spillwords.