They don’t know she’s there,
situated – pen in hand
not in despair, but joy
watching syllables,
drawing metaphors with words,
adding flair, to an ordinarily bland sentence
They have no idea, she’s seated –
fingers, waltzing across keys,
performing their dance of love,
to lyrics (with such ease)
No, they don’t know any of this, at all,
nor could they ever, comprehend
More at http://lyrical-discovery.blogspot.com/ and http://wovenstanzas.blogspot.com/.
Fourth grade math, split with fifth graders
The aged eagle swooping over the room
Resting at his nest on occasion, then up again
Back and forth, spreading grey feathers
“Sleep with your math books, class
Practice your fractions, and then practice more”
Last year, the kid won a division contest
Now he is confused, one number over another
A strange display, another language
With about half his mind, the pencil forms walls
Small figures in tights, vigilante emblems
Of course, the paper is snatched by the talon
“Superhero City,” the pedagogue intoned
“Will not solve your math problems.”
I cry inconsolably after reading a poem
I can’t stop myself from crying out
After penning a poem
The poems that I read
Under such pencil of light
It is a boon of a star
That expired a hundred years ago
A hundred years hence
Someone would read a poem in its light
Poetry means
An invisible river
Flowing inside the heart
That reads writes listens in solitude
That understands poetry
O Poet Sun
I can’t make out with my earthly eyes
The essence of poetry
Please bestow on me
The heavenly sight
Translated from Assamese by Bibekananda Choudhury
I am trapped by the wind
memory’s lurking world
all is not quiet
children stomp the field
and the inner wish of writing a poem, publishing it, getting
it read is washed in drowning echoes of the
insipid sun.
Is it worth writing about this?
The football match goes on
only children, happy, shout,
drowning the self in letters
sorrowfully draining the last
cup of the sun.
Soon the day will end,
sitting at home the cup of tea
brewing in newspaper headlines, awaits.
Gather you stray
thoughts yipping along
roadsides like list dogs
no muzzles
Let me leash you all
together and put a thought
into a sentence
let it live in letters
Scratching my chin
squinting my eyes
refusing a smile
looking all kinds of thinking.
Some just hear words
Some hear lyrics
Some hear the melodies
Some hear the voices
Some the meaning,
Yet music is a display of love
That only a few hear,
Those who put their hearts
On display for all to see.
Hiding inside my story line
Under the skin I live in
The bones
That keep it together
An unmade bed
with rumpled sheets
Dreaming in 3 D
The mask of many faces
Can boil your blood
Kiss your heart
Draw you into the breath
Of chaos
Move right in
Ponder these words
On the page
And dress my naked Metaphor
He worked in a sweat shop
way back when
a wordless widowed man
with a quiet hypnotic expression
coming home on a bus one day
fell to the floor
and passed away,
my beloved uncle
I missed his mystical silence
I knew he could
see inside me
They prepared to sell his house
sifting through junk
about to discover a surprise
in his dust,
a wooden chest
hammered brass trim
with magic writing paper
and a thousand poems
His silence bled out
the tip of a pen
drawing out the words
inside him
questions and answers
awakened by his light
curiosity opened a chest
of expressive treasure
I picture him unraveling
the mystery of self discovery
delighting in his invention
did anyone know the poem
in his heart
or did they only see
an assumption
His secret poems
were not folding money
ink on paper
thrown away
dying with him
on the bus that day
Reconnect the word
letter, dash, comma
and tie them up
in hyphenated strings
of word gathering
silence.
By the curious arrangement of particles,
what was disconnected is now A chair,
A washboard, An old house, A mattress
Some flowers, A cityscape, A figure in a boat,
A Lion, Thomas Edison, Expired insect.
Each portrait the configuration of tinier plates,
each illustration made of multiplicity.