Two Poems by Jayanta Bhaumik

 

For a love-poem with beeps and pauses 
 
when it is nothing           things beyond objectives
                    come in my mind
ink on the surface            used to sketch a river and
we are on          a proverbial boat        we love water
because it is fixed           inside our minds –
                                          yours & mine –
                                          we two continue
with the same name        of the deeper         we are
lovelier than the stars          uttered at the same time
of love –      we have everything        because we feel
like bodies          we feel       the illusory prose-pieces
read to us        by our own shadows         lacquered in
grotesqueness           we use touches        and hands
to let understand         everything      written by a pen
on paper is not made         up of inks            when it is
both something & nothing         I understand better
                       I understand mind
                       when rain reaches deep inside me       
                       and pigeons flap their wings
                       and grasses so much easy-peasy
                       and quivering in airy alleys
                       and clouds all slow-moving creatures                                                       
a waiting at times           becomes too much waiting
and all life everything         
                                                 all around everything
seems like a rainfall               seems only a rainfall
without waterdrops               falling anywhere  
 

For a pith-chemistry bracketed in me 
 
If I tighten the sunlight, an ilk of my liking
golden brown, my world view morphed through
a tinted window-glass. If I feel like mocking the roses,
their bounds turn thorny. Perhaps astray, I then
decide bringing the rain to my city so I can
smile bit like dull cherubs, ensuring the sky with
some hotchpotch of wonders, the sky then
fractured to clueless clouds.
 
Then, if remembrance too much, I can enlarge
my mother in an old frame drooping.
And the ponds their waters jump into ebullience
as if happily nervous they can elope, – the curious
neighbours suddenly heard silent, their loud
patio door a colossal vanish.
 
While humming with my shower, water flows on
my body and disobeys my demands, perhaps
reminding me I still am a fool. Am still not proffered
a wishful voice by the one I want to be hidden in.
 
All that matters in a change is what I try to think
a light-shaded light, ready to stand in
a lonesome corridor, almost like an evanescent girl
with a coffee. Momentary glints of her crepuscular lips
blurred in her cigarette smokes, as if dropping
the idea of a smile for someone to some other day.

Jayanta Bhaumik is from Kolkata, India, basically from the field of metaphysics and esoteric studies. He works in India and abroad, mainly in Singapore, and a few other south-east Asian countries. His works can be found in past issues of Poetry Superhighway, Juked, Scarlet Leaf Review, Poppy Road Review, Vita Brevis Press, Madswirl (their contributing poet), Blue Lake Review, Pif Magazine, Streetcake Magazine, Hot Pot Magazine, and elsewhere, forthcoming in Acropolis Journal.