Three Poems by Prithvijeet Sinha

 

RINGLETS

His broken lines in a sentence

are filled with sediments

and the quaint powder

from igneous rocks,

the kind you don't find

near water under the bridge.

 

He hails me with crumpled papers

all glued with the saliva

from masticating them

for a greater part of two years.

The third, he feels,

will be when he will

speak more than ten words.

On these papers are the graves

of dead red ants

and leaves from another season.

 

When I ask him

to show what remains of his

austere body,

he disrobes me first.

Starved of touch

and scrutiny as I am,

I accept the prosaic

hands,

his lanky fingers

that press my upper body

with their tubular ends.

It's the way he feels

my flesh and bones.

Then he takes his turn.

I see a veteran skeleton

that has lived out its days

for far too long

without pity or appreciable

charity.

 

Bodies, bodies.

We don't vary here.

The sky covers us

without smudges.

 

He tells me

to touch my injured parts with

spry leaves

and gives me ringlets

cut from a banyan tree.

 

"Bodies

Faces

These are passengers

pacified

and agitated

by

an unknown

initiative"

 

Together,

we plunge

into the shallowest part of the river

for a swim.

I emerge alone

back on earth.

To find that the ringlets have now

spread their network across the water

from this end to the other.

A voice echoing with the disappearing

stranger's tenor saying,

"the deed is done.

the broken lines

in your sentences

are full.

The ringlets are now spread

among your wishes

and your words are no

more mere mumblings

under the bridge"

 

MT. LUNA

Sister,

look at the moon

fret with you

above Mt. Luna.

 

He knows the fiefdom of

dissenting clans

is upon you,

somewhere

in a countryside

where poetry

never

had a chance.

 

The fire in the mountains

is a torrid

metaphor

you have to live with

till December.

 

If manifest destiny is what

I can put my faith in

then

that hill

visible from your window

at midnights

is a sieve

for all that you feel,

often

even your darkest hours

are there,

thick and immanent,

like the trees on its broadened chest

and the stars

that you count

are

lanterns

according you

the share of light

you need.

 

You know

sister,

this part of the world

has not forgotten

that you fret

and rain your quiet tugs

on your pillows.

Your brother,

he is unable to walk two miles

with a straight back.

He frets too

because that's how far

it goes

to sense your smoke signals

beyond hills and fogs.

 

We have only till December.

Trust in the good God of grace.

This month too will pass.

 

This separation too shall pass.

 

 

PART ONE

 

Lift up your veils.

You are someone else

below.

Your eyes are stored

in the most voluptuous

swell of the carafe.

 

You are a Trojan horse

whose body is the

farthest from corporeal

realisation.

You are made of wood

and sawdust from

the workshop has

dried out your last stand.

 

You are a forgotten sculpture.

He has brought you

to an auction

from a garage sale

and seated you

on a stool

in the deep-end of suburbia

and nostalgia,

on a Friday night.

 

They don't

think much of you.

Your only artfulness

is that you are

from overseas

and have been held

like a golden statuette

around February to March

by some of the

proprietors

then living in la-la land.

 

You know

your last place

is not here

but in the back-seat

of a rundown Ford

tumbling down

a highway

without cheap hotels

or almost any policeman.

 

Eventually,

you will be rusted and bronzed

and thrown out

till some others

hold you in their image

and in their slippery hands.

 

Your veil has been lifted.

Your time has been crunched.

 

Your sheen has been polished

but you are pawned.

 

Your eyes have now dissolved

in the thinning end of

the carafe.

You are now the smell of

sawdust alone

and the golden fritters

of your value

is void in the marketplace.

You are now another discard

off the shelf.

 

 

All the above poems were self-published by the author on his WordPress blog 'An Awadh Boy's Panorama' in October- November, 2022.

Prithvijeet Sinha is from Lucknow, India. He is a post graduate in MPhil from the University of Lucknow, having launched his prolific writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy's Panorama(https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/) 

Besides that, his works have been published in several varied publications as Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Inklette Magazine, Piker Press Online, anthology Pixie Dust and All Things Magical published by Authors Press( January, 2022), Cafe Dissensus, The Medley, Screen Queens, Confluence- South Asian Perspectives, Reader's Digest, Borderless Journal, Lothlorien Poetry, Live Wire, Rhetorica Quarterly, Ekphrastic Review, The Kolkata Arts, Aze Journal, Dreich Magazine, Visual Verse, In Plainspeak and in the children's anthology Nursery Rhymes and Children's Poems From Around The World ( AuthorsPress, February 2021), among others.

His life force resides in writing.