Saturday, July 2, 2016

Acche Din: Four Poems

Dystopia or Acche Din
A meat for a meat
That is the new law
A meat for a meat
A slaughter for a slaughter
That is the new law
Ram’s rajya is dystopia
Sita’s blood is the colour of earth
Ram’s rajya is dystopia
Mohammad’s blood is the colour of meat
Ram conjures up the menu
Ravan weeps: all ten heads
wishes he guarded Sita better
Averted her ignominy
Now, not even Gujarat’s vegetarian earth
Swallows her whole
Come to Lanka, Sita
Ravan will ask the ocean
to
Swallow you whole
Have your death of the ocean
It is your ancestral fault
Your collective ancestral fault
to have chosen such a king
March towards the ocean
Part the waters
if you can
or walk into it
Ram’s rajya is dystopia
What consummates his appetite?
Meat cooked by torching of houses?
Ravan, the ten headed demon king
weeps with all ten heads
Nowadays
Everything gets called a revolution
But never it was before
That a king’s deed
was called a revolution
Untitled
Hear Hear
Election is near
Call to arms
Armed one
Armed all
The enemy is here
Quench your blood thirst
Nothing is a mystery
For those who see
This is not a prophecy
From the Indus on
The enemy should recede
It is easy you see
Burn a train, plant a bomb
Call it development
And we will be blinded
By dreams of blood drenched gold
But it is only a dream, the gold
But it is only an excuse, the blood
Plant a rumour
Let it sprout
The enemy is beloved of your daughter
Love jihad
Jihad the jihadi then
The republic drowns
in riots
Summer is freezing
In silences of history
In the sky
One band of the rainbow is blood
One is shards
One is tears
One is saffron
The rest is silence
Common Objects of Our Times
You are common
Your body is common
You are as common as a corpse
We will turn
your body into a corpse
Money is paper
crisp but common
One common object
can be exchanged for another
Your nakedness is common
can be exchanged for another
We will parade you
one common naked body
followed by another
Naked bodies with orifices
We will put common objects
into common orifices
A stone, A twig
A stick, A baton
A muzzle
Common objects
of our times

http://indianculturalforum.in/2016/06/08/achhe-din-four-poems/

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Finitude





I closed the door
with the finality
of closing a read-book

Friday, April 17, 2015

I am a living God

I am a living God
I drink the night
                  down my throat
The pale moon I shatter into stars
Stars I crumple into star dust
                                   
Mortals burn other mortals
but only in an effigy
I extract the hearts of men
                    put it in a blue ceramic

With your soul incarnate, you stumble in darkness
Your life is a mere glimmer, between void and void
I taught you in parables, but you do not heed
Now I write you a tragedy and called it an oracle

10th April 2015 


 https://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com©                                                          

Monday, January 26, 2015

Not yet

The lover contradicts
the beloved’s wishes
Don’t wish
Not Yet

Prescribe me
A wish-able wish
Inevitable
the incommensurability of wishes
Don’t wish
Not Yet

He wishes
of us drowning
What would he do
when he hears about me drowning
The news of drowning
will drown itself
What weeping?
Not Yet
Tears drown
In the waters I drown in


PS.
You didn’t break my heart
Not yet
I broke mine over you
Wishes perish? 
Perhaps


https://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com©

Monday, October 13, 2014

Separation, a love poem

What could I do
to shield myself
from the words
you choose to strike me with.
I am at loss for words;
you have no dearth of it
razor-sharp as the edge of night.
Yet what I recall
of conversations
is abrupt laughter
intense wants
and love,
newly sprung
after anger subsides

I’ve been waiting,
I’ve been waiting
thus, handcuffed
by your disdain
for affection

What words do I choose
to speak to you about my loss?
About your loss,
you choose not
words in times of calm,
but unleash them,
as if untamed monsters
in moments of your choosing,
while I yearn the soothing balm
of a lover or a friend.

You fear imprisonment
by rituals of love,
perhaps
you fear
remnant souvenirs of love
as lovers disappear

I could promise you
I put my heart
in the things I do
and when I say
I love you deeply,
I do.
When I say so,
through the distance,
it is not a chain
to tug you
as you strain against it.
When I say
I love you deeply,
I do.
When you strain against it
or I do,
there will be nothing
to break
or shred.
Our lives
separate again.
We would shed
each other,
a pool of clothes at our feet
and wear another attire,
another self.
It will be
just a separation
a just separation.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Rage, a pyrrhic victory



The secret defeat
of a pyrrhic victory
the reward itself
a silent solemn object
Perplexed, the victor
He, a naked light bulb
illuminated and alone in his victorious terror

Thinking,
what good was his rage
against the maladies that afflicted her
what good was his rage
against his own grieving heart

Could he subtract from the pale floor
the dark stain
she, coughing up
the bile of his rage

In his fist he held
history’s sorrow
yet grudging tears
his eyes remain dry.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Abandoned Chapters

I visited the abandoned chapters;
they had grown sullen and strange. 
The scribbled notes
as if a morose,
neglected lover 
wait for me 
to decipher his bitterness. 
I coax the words 
to enlarge their meanings. 
I cajole the mundane 
for a missing clue.
‘Persistence’ 
says the law of writing, 
yet, 
another hour
or, 
perhaps two
lie folded 
amongst escapade tea breaks, 
In the loneliness 
of losing words 
and thoughts,
I pour over words 
and words. 
A leap years' pact hung above 
-Damocles’ sword.