Camera Obscura
They are not the worst of the creatures;
they are not the best.
They are there and nothing else.
When the world was rewritten
we began to live under.
We cohabit with them
because we must, live with
those shadows and the pyknic past.
Sometimes they emerge in our fear,
provoke us to run,
albeit my brood, not good with her
feet smiles at the blur
that they look like most of the time.
"Are you my grandfather?" She asks.
They know not in sooth. Every rain
droplets dissolve them,
and when they thicken
they are someone else.
Floating The Flesh
The body afloat in the river
looks bigger
than you ever were.
The stars won't guide you now.
In a way the moon will
wheeling the ebb and tide.
The cities and the villages
are reverse writings
of a mad scholar.
We cannot read blood
on your flesh or
in the water, not until
the sun rises, and the birds
join the fish. They will
free the evidence of memories.
People used to float corpses
back then, believed
that it would be the fast-track
for reincarnation.
What do we know now?
Not much better than them.
Silence lights up a lantern now.
Fish rush towards their death.
The Everywhere-moss
You turn and see
that in the window frame
the room thickens its grey,
and your child waving at you
turns into a cloud,
in this middle monsoon,
will follow you to work,
to the dock, fish, blood,
and chains. The brothers
you lost in sea showers on you
and only on you today.
You grow green on your skin.
The everywhere-moss lines
the walls, horizon, even my innards.
You shit dunkelgrün, a word
you learnt from a sailor friend.
You change your password
from Hashtag At The Rate Blue
to Zero Zero Zero Exclamation Green.
The First Fish
We repeat an earlier misadventure,
catch the first one, a sliver, silver,
and cast it back into its free life cycle.
Almost post-haste a large fish devours it.
We don't know that for certain, we cannot.
My father lets go his first prey for luck.
We catch nothing, never do, no superstition
is proved. Some good memories
are unhappy. Oh, please! I dislike
those platitudes. I tell this to the big man,
big and burnt, broken and feral man.
The Fall leaves fallen on the path of rustling
leads us to the car. The death of noise
as we tread far is not mourned by the lake.
The rage and sorrow of a failed day
generate no distress, disquiet. We are just spent.
Moss
My skin, sad today, bare,
owing to the personal
history of this date, stays in
the vicinity of the velvet green,
Hook moss, Pincushion; my
shoulders and my bottom
surrender my weight to the bricks
forever corroding, but never
really crumbling away.
The moss sends a micro toe,
translucent, soft, as if I
should touch it and swim up
to the surface, the one that
really matters. This sorrow
is under-earth. I should.
This afternoon the sky rains
the serum of sun and moon.
The green will darken, and I
shall sail a feverish canoe,
navigate across the memories
toward the dream of zero.
Your Selfie During The Revolution
The selfie you snap when
the regime tilts, quivers and falls
show it all - the men
blurred into one, bullets sizzling mid-air,
except your face. Your head is
not in the frame, and so you cannot see
the skin coloured stones shattered,
scattered on the ground near your feet.
They are parts of the revolt.
You don't have the mouth to scream
and exclaim surprise, fright or the slogan.
In My Neighbourhood
One young man climbs
on the summit, on
the slippery arc of the sweat beads,
on others, holds the flag, feels its heft,
and that waving a flag takes
more than, lets say, a million muscles,
bodies' strength.
He wasn't selected for this job.
The process was natural.
Rain meets the fire; we hear the hiss.
They are not mortal enemies,
mere a coexistence, clashing
because it falls within
their job descriptions.
They both live, meet again, again.
Machete
I writhe to tell the belle
who holds a machete
that why one harkens
to a rumour sometimes
and why sometimes he decides
to turn deaf, ride ahead,
burn a barn house he stands in
and ink the starry sky
with the smoke remains
a higher equation unsolved
down deep, albeit saying that
does not shift the fate;
neither does my silence.
She holds the sharp object,
and I a dumn goat.
We cross a river, and she shoves
me as a nod to move forward,
turns and chops the head
of the bridge over
a rain enforced stream.
Hiroshima Light
On that swing set she could
sway all day, and all day she
could pretend to forget what they said
about her mother, the lone floret.
All day under the August Sun
she swung. A yellow bud and its two
green leaves rose to meet her feet
and fell down farther, and those clouds
fell to approach, tease and rose
to be tiny, farther and farther.
Quite the opposite! Whose jet
was it? She looked at the light that burst;
then it wiped the geometry of distance.
Your Selfie During The Revolution
The selfie you snap when
the regime tilts, quivers and falls
show it all - the men
blurred into one, bullets sizzling mid-air,
except your face. Your head is
not in the frame, and so you cannot see
the skin coloured stones shattered,
scattered on the ground near your feet.
They are parts of the revolt.
You don't have the mouth to scream
and exclaim surprise, fright or the slogan.
Kushal Poddar - Although Kushal Poddar has authored ten books, the latest being 'A White Can For The Blind Lane', and his works have been translated into twelve languages, and he has been a sub-editor of Outlook magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing, and he does some illustrations and sketches for various magazines if you ask him, he will say that he gardens a growing up daughter.
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