Logbooks of Loss

My dried old walls, now deafened with screams
Lose their plasters and grimace into cracks
That shape into maps that'll wither and fold
And never speak a word of gardens in bloom
where we would walk and share our songs
In days that have left no traces in RAM
In these, our logbooks of loss.

Trudging without end of sores among thorns
Ours are gestures of refugees in camps
Who are told their rations are gone.

What names or faces or streets now are us?
Miles upon miles of disposable waste
And still not a plant for light from our trash.

Sands of Time

Polished on the whetstone of monsoon withheld,

The air now stabs at bones along spine

And drills little deserts in ribs.

Listen with intent and perhaps you’ll hear

Sand that oozes on banks of my veins

And heaps little dunes along shore.

Reared in gardens of apple-blossom days,

I am no Bedouin on steed.

Hence I am tired of dredging my veins

To search for miniscule moments of peace

Which still are drowned in barrels of sand,

Bare and barren to the core.

Resigned at last to my mummified state

These are my bricks for pyramids on page. 

Arundel Tomb in Waterloo by Thames

They entered and stood, stony and staid;

Nothing that’ll stir your heart as you moved

Punctual and fast in well-mannered calm,

Straight along tracks of Bakerloo line.

All with the newspapers flung open wide

Or tapped into headphones of exile of sorts:

Clusters of islands on move.

But there they had sat, her fingers in his

Even as he covered his eyes and sighed

As she looked on and pressed his hand tight;

Veins full of reciprocal tears.

Perhaps she had whispered, ‘Are you alright?

Perhaps a more consoling commonplace it was.

A long look followed their words and nods

And sighs that entwined their fingers more close,

Knotted into unflappable strength.

Stations and colours and people had passed,

There they had stayed unmoved.

Locked in my heart, I left them as such:

Arundel tomb in Waterloo by Thames.

[The poem is inspired by a real life event framed by a poem and an image: the following are the links to the poem by Larkin and the  image of the actual Arundel Tomb

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177058

http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/rdover/larkin/Photograph%202.htm]

The Husband's Prayer

Resist not my hands that'll move
Over and under with pulsating veins
And scatter all the knots and seams in the way
As pebbles on the path of streams among hills
That roar into unstoppable falls.

The surge that'll move
Through soft-soothing hands
Over our babe in the cradle asleep,
Now through my lips and finger will flow
In these our honeysuckle days.

Hours are lost amidst unceasing zest
That blossoms amidst sheets of sweet unrest.

Instead

I've pleaded for smiles for hours on her door
And all that I got were barbs instead.


Left without soles, on high-noon of hate
I 'd hoped for life-giving shade in her strands
But tied to a stump was withered instead.


I've confessed my sins and mended my ways
But even as I pined for redemption of faith
Smitten with wrath was damned instead.

Pleaders are fools, they better be now dead,
Reborn I would rather be a robot instead.

The Epitaph of Abinash C. Halder

My decorated files

Full of records and prize

Are burnt into fistful of ashes tonight.

Pinpricks of shame

Have shrivelled into dust

Inflated statues in the museum of self

Where regrets cry out ‘No Vacancy’ tonight.

Fired from the palace of hope, therefore,

I wander as a beggar

And knock on all the graves

To interview empanelled skeletons tonight.

Farces all done, I’ll get me a new boat:

Charon will drop in for his coins tonight.

Note: Charon is supposed to ferry souls to Hades, according to the Greek mythology.

Returning at Night…

Flicker from the exhausted eyes

Still through my veins now rush

Murmurs of unforeseen hope.

Clichés of depth cannot catch

Pin code of pupils now lost.

Far beyond catalogues and volumes of calls

These my beacons of aquamarine light

That’ll shore my being to the end of my stop

And blanket my cheap-rented sleep.

Distilled in brief little glimmers of sense

I long for a reciprocal glance that’ll shape

Prospects of words beyond items and price.