Monday, 2 December 2024

Six Poems and Art by Kushal Poddar

 



Art by Kushal Poddar


The Hobbyists 


My father used to collect cigars 

and pipes and tobacco, my mother 

spices and laundry detergents. 

I collect coins and notes, and it 

seems apparent that we are 

a bad-collectors' race, gather less, 

hoard nothing, and spend it all.


I call, "Can you send me a special issue. 

This month has been a trouble." 

They used to say, "No trouble, at all."

These days silence needs a catalogue;

I don't have the references, comprehension 

of hush, of the backdrop noises to be a connoisseur.



Middle Journey


My co-passenger talks all hears.

She pours her concerns over a niece 

and what she thinks as not a nice life

about over the free flowing men

in her one bedroom apartment.

She talks on her ancient smart phone.

Her ears and profile hide behind it.

We ride the corpse of the silence.

a grey bus in black, and we see

circles and squares of the fields 

and patterns in the crops. The vehicle 

halts in the midst of nowhere.

Her niece comes on board and 

behind her the bevy of men made of words.



Save That Shyness 


Do you recall the first time 

your class teacher noticed you?

The good, bad and the coy feelings?

If you have felt shyness, save it,

keep it alive, that flame, eternal, 

a wound too to give life its meaning.

Do you remember me? I have been 

thinking of you and that classroom

lately. I think of the flame, winter

how some survive. I think of a boar

cross a marsh, of a gossamer alight

by a will-o'-the-wisp.



To The Dock


(to Pat)


The dock, an infinity bottle 

of the path, empties and hurls 

the end of the way into the water  


thick and full of shattered-glass light. 

The violence of the act makes us all laugh. 

The egrets and one black swan 

leaves the spot for their meditation 

for food and for digestion, 

to the quiet heart of the water.


When we settle everything 

becomes wooden, inside - our hearts 

and other organs and outside - 

where we sit, spread some mild and 

spicy snacks, and the wooden 

becomes our skin in-between.


We chug some honest down to earth

shines, and for one moment a friend

screams, "Eyes. I cannot see!" just for fun,

and because noon has hit the water,

because of the fish,  siren of a wind,


and because our eyes have  become wooden,

good, solid, monochrome, perfumed

with water and sweating, cool to touch, 

sit and write the history of fishing not war.



The House Isn't In My Father


He left the house, town, station, world 

a long short time ago  or perchance

the span feels short albeit more years

have passed than I have lived. He left.

My father isn't in the house. The planet spins.

The highways on its skin bears the skid marks

as if not his departure but we all are accidental.

We ride a train, and no station belongs

to our destination. We halt at some random one,

walk towards a frame of woods, bricks and glass.

We step behind it and smile every time 

a stranger passes it.




A Memory of Voice


His voice, a memory, I found him

wordless, scribbling

with a Wing Wung fountain pen 

about the emergency steps.

His hands, varicose, showed the blue

footprints of the night time 

deep vein thrombosis.

He scribbled, 'CALL'. Call his doctor,

call his brother, call the sky

and say 'Wait'. Wait. My uncle

stared at the fly on the floor.

I saw the reflections 

of a sudden speech impaired man

through my buzzing eyes.

When I began calling I had 

a stranger's voice; my throat 

had a note of blood clotted dark.







Kushal Poddar - the author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has nine books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a four-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe. 


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