Keeping Score

My cluttered words now flap

As truce-flags in dry wind.

Crawling towards hope that

Dare might mean

They stutter and falter

And cringe into a blank

That leaves my page unimproved.

Scalding in unremitting heatwave at noon

I stagger with soles now pasted in pitch

With a tongue that is parched to the root.

Born and bred amidst rubbish and grime

These my droplets of void that’ll keep

Scores of loss of disposable hopes. 

Unanswered

Too long a service of patience and pain

Breeds new cacti in gardens of heart

That wear their winters all year.

Tired with the crumblings of leaves through my valves,

I puzzle for the breezes of spring that’ll blow

Never now even for a week.

Should I still beg more patience and strength

To last my hours still oozing with blood,

Or elixir of perfection, well beyond reach

That’ll mould me a god out of clay?

Blistered and bled, I stagger through the sand

And scatter as twigs in nor’wester land. 

Behind the Market

Beady little eyes,

Now jostle in the den

And wait for the morsels

Or gills that’ll drop

For moments of insatiate claws.

Furry little limbs, now poised with rage

In primordial struggles in republic of hate.

Running along napkins of Mcdelicious sauce,

They scatter through the packs of Subways in trash

And gobble our leftover of Domino’s in haste.

Sipping through my can of diet-loving fizz,

I pause and then rush to my Prada in sale.

Roving Eyes

There's something to be said
For clear waxed legs
That sweep off your mind
To Rebecca or Venus of marbles in shape
That glitter with the whiteness of  milk.

Lapped with the full-flavoured
Sweetness in thought
Buds now are islands of dream.

Thrust within vortex of splinters and mud
These now are aides to a supplicating mind
That rush me to my hermitage of night.

Clamour from a Clown

I'll make this world worth living for a child
This my pledge to the babe.
                                          - Sukanto Bhattacharya (translation mine)

Soot-lined faces that slither into slime
Are strewn over streets full of moss.

Jasmines and lilies are blackened in mud,
In these, our slush-loving lanes.

So how should one strive,
With broom full of words
To sweep up these piles that'll peak?

Dragged by the nettles in quicksand, we clutch
Straws that'll crumble and vanish in a trice.

Splattered into fragments of unbecoming mess
We struggle with an illusion of roots beyond route
That dashes our hopes for shores within reach
And leaden our eyes that had seen.

Left without GPS of destiny untold
We stutter and watch our farces unfold.

Abinash C. Halder's Sunday Picnic

Laughter and song now spill into the air;
Crowds full of pre-scheduled joy.

Hung within network of brown barren branch
I flutter as a kite without flight.

Welled and walled by preoccupying thoughts,
I still do my time, as solitary in cells
And scribble my dislocated verbs.

Lost in the illusion of unfounded fame,
I shuttle between isolated hubris of self
And promise for a collective of hope.

Tears too are Pebbles

Murals on walls are torn with claws,
That are splattered with webbings of red.

Hidden among advertised alleys of filth
Tears too are pebbles on sand.
So how should I pray with burst-open veins
To clouds of uncremated bones?

Pinned through my heart by pincers of loss,
My streets now are seasoned with hate.

Light so now thickens with shadows of dead
That bristle with shame and gobble our days
With filigree of ashes and smoke.

Chequered and charred with ensanguined mist
We search for a surge that is must.