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/

Finitude

I closed the door

with the finality

of closing a read-book

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

10^th April 2015 


 https://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com©                                                          

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©

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.

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.

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.