Departure

Starving
On a blank blackboard
I wrote
Without words
I wrote
With the duster
Wiping
In swift motions
Before the army of words
Siege my bare fortress
From where
I barred words,
sentences

Ravenous
I fight the urge
to devour words
And surrender
In its green and graceful
motion
like wriggles
of a woolly caterpillar
lost among the green leaves
taking its miniature mouthfuls

Voracious
After my forty days exile
I set out
To binge
on words
I found none
I found instead
The silence of departure

http://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com ©

15th August

The city of the day was peeled off
The city of the night emerged
At around midnight outstretched on the pavements
The long winding endless tarmac
Bringing memories of
A brook that flowed
Someplace called home
The breeze
Emanating the days’ heat
Along with stench of urine
Amongst
Betel nut stained pavement
With slabs of stubborn mucous
Forced from unwilling throats
I make my bed

And then the grand day arrived
15th August
Where we
An eyesore to be
Concealed from view
Horded together
We of innumerable feet
-all feet and walking ceaselessly
We of innumerable hands
-all hands tirelessly toiling
In utter silence of centuries
Disappear with the receding shadows

http://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com ©

My Name

You who visit me
In the dead of the night
Away from prying eyes

To close the day
And open tender folds of moonlight

To remember another
In a faraway land

To close hurt
By inflicting me with fresh stabs

You who visit me
With numerous feet
Disappear at dawn
Leave footprints and money
to be blown away soon
By October's wind
I, whom you visit
Called by numerous names
And you of numerous feet
Have no name

http://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com ©

Island

I implore:
Wash me
with the salt of the ocean
wash my wound
of eroded peripheries

I implore:
Drench me
with sweet rain
to contain within
in little puddles
a vision of nectar

I implore:
Hoist flags of torn rags
at my shore
and escape
the horror of listening
to the expanse of your soul

I implore:
Leave
and I will cleanse my shore
of your footsteps
with the salt of the ocean

http://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com ©

Nostalgia

The room
In its sad aura
Looked smaller
Outside the window
the trees didn’t touch the sky
the pukri didn’t overwhelm with its depth

the green tulsi
like an ancestral
taboo
demand attention
of morning and evening scent
and I with my habitual reverence
muttered an ancient chant

the moon appeared still the same
the hunchback moon
the stars still the same
stuck in time
stuck in the expanse
of nothingness

Only the wind whispered
a different tune

http://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com ©

Sky

http://soibamharipriya.blogspot.com ©

Earth