Five Poems by Prof. Ram Krishna Singh (R. K. Singh)

 

BODY’S NO PICNIC

 

Not too many issues

yet enough to upset

the mind of men and women

in postlapsarian world:

 

she blames me for changing size

shifting shape and cracking bones

aching joints and sleeplessness

menopausal ups and downs

 

she kicks me out of bed

saying my body’s no picnic

 

I know it’s difficult

to be a woman and wife

working and making home

 

I may be no saint

in your eyes but I never

tried to remake you

in my own or God’s image

 

I can’t give birth like you

nor can I stop the changes in you

I’ve no miracle pill

 

Your  body, your anger

I love you as you are

let’s carry no useless weight

 

 

TOO FAR THE SUN’S SKY

 

Perfumeless my bustan

I couldn’t be a letter of the masters

 

passed years in the soul’s waste

to be what I could never be

 

the few bonuses now burden

like the body’s sickness stick dust

 

the wrinkled skin, the holes in vests

herald sorrows of Venus

 

too far the sun’s sky to borrow

warmth to keep the rose smelling

 

 

A MUTED VOICE

 

I can’t hear my self

their  noises erase my world

choices are denied—

questions of being wound me

courage and strength fade away

 

they mute my voice

distract us from the truth

crowns change with the wind

and they play chess with our lives

 

they feed us dust and potions

in their new temples

arouse their magic deities

make us yell loud

and hang us upside down

POLITICS OF DECEPTION

 

Roaring guns and flying bombs

pronounce total death on earth

 

the world withers away with

the suns of science, challenging

 

the universe and time with

cankerous creations

 

viral revolution

racial elimination

 

structures of deception

media and power traps

 

in the name of faith and past

bullying the masses, seek

 

fresh promises, renewed

enthusiasm wrapped in

 

a dream scroll mythologized

to spotlight a Trump, Modi

 

Putin or Netanyahu

tap national consciousness

 

for divine descent to make

life happen once again

 

 

CHEERS!

 

There they tuck into turkey dinners

here  we talk about free light and water

 

politics of thanksgiving for more

polarization, more separation

 

more violence, more religion, more freedom

in the new temple make more pockmarks

 

to start afresh fiction of wonder

crowning wolves as gods and goddesses

 

 

 

Ram Krishna Singh, also known as R. K. Singh, is an Indian English poet, who has been writing for over four decades . Born (31 December 1950), brought up and educated in Varanasi, he has been professionally concerned with teaching and research in the areas of English language teaching, especially for Science and Technology, and Indian English Poetry practices. 

He has published  25 poetry collections, including You Can’t Scent Me and Other Selected Poems (2016), God Too Awaits Light (2017),  Growing Within/Desăvârşire lăuntrică (2017), There's No Paradise and Other Selected Poems Tanka & Haiku (2019), Tainted With Prayers: Contaminado con Oraciones (2020),   Against the Waves: Selected Poems (2021),  Silencio: Blanca desconfianza/ Silence: White distrust (2021),  Covid-19 And Surge of Silence/Kovid-19 Hem Sessízlík Tolkȋnȋ (2021), 白濁: SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST (2022),  Poems and Micropoems (2023), and Knocking Vistas and Other Poems (2024). He retired in 2015 as Professor at IIT-ISM, Dhanbad. Find him on X (Twitter) @profrksingh  and  on

Facebook  www.facebook.com/profrksingh .  More at https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/R.K._Singh