Five Poems by Kushal Poddar

 

Loops

 

A white and glossy thing

sends a signal to my myopic eyes.

The wind sways the sheet

of codes hanging on my 

neighbour's clothesline.

 

The midday waiting for the rain rolls into

late afternoon waiting.

From the first floor boudoir

I see and do not - a pair of shears

hidden in the green,

some shrapnel of bad mood 

spilled through the bad wood 

of an old drawer.

 

I try to decipher, and you smile,

"No. No. No. Not all the codes

convey a meaning." 

 

 

The Dry Spell 

 

It hasn't been raining since it had.

I sound vague? You haven't stared at

the spearhead of a midday road.

You haven't tried to track rain and heard

the summer roar.

 

Everything set for the rain - that cup of tea,

those books and music, social media posts,

bad mood, sudden sex, uprooted sadness

that breathes on and perishes at the same time -

all hold a bowl.

 

No noise, tune, ting - the bowl remains

an arch of aching. It waits.

Nothing is nothingness; even a dry spell

gets wet with our sweating. 

 

 

Halo- rainbow around my sins 

 

(To Robert Frede Kenter)

A halo-rainbow surrounds my sins,

its glow almost motherly callous

and concerned as if she stands in

our longevous balcony and see

us playing soccer in the street

without watching us, and hence we

can be the truants from good behaviour,

moral language.

 

I blink. I cannot remember a rainbow

in my life let alone a halo around the sun.

I murmur, "Forgive me for leading

a monochrome life." Cold breeze 

feels for my pulses, touches my neck.

"Am I alive?" I desire to ask and decides not to.

 

The grass smells of a memory falling

from a great height, from the parapet of Eden.

The air thronged with the particles

reminds me of how the crows circle and scream

when one of them falls. Light has fallen.

It is sundown soon. I can call you Rob

and say, "Slainté Mhaith." or hear 

the sobbing water of a lake nearby. 

 

 

The Obscene Gesture of A Milestone

 

Although the lines these lanes draw

meet at the eternity

We do not see that while parallel-driving.

 

Then, our ignorance holds more truths

than some knowledge and a theory.

 

We pass a few grazing cows, drills,

a mill without a single operating hand

and some trees withered and waiting.

 

As we drive the first rain hits 

our car roofs as if 

clouds have borne 

the long-term wait's weight until

We drive past a certain milestone.

 

Shouldn't it state the distance to eternity?

Instead, one digit almost erased

expresses an obscenity. 

 

 

Where The Nuclear Power Plant Melted Down

 

I hear the footsteps, do not turn, murmur,

"There, they say, roams a wolf, lone,

near the core, in the epicentre."

 

" I know. " Says the wolf.

I steal a peek and lower my eyes.

The beast of this radioactive zone

looks like a deformed reincarnation

of my old man. I close my eyes.

If you gaze at the wolf long enough

the wolf will leave a trace of it inside you.

 

Ashes still fly when wind so desires.

My hazmat suit makes me a traveller

in space sent in a sleep capsule,

and now that I have seen and reported

about the ruin they no longer need my existence.

 

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