The Drug Decides
The night has no darkness,
nothing to hide tonight.
Bare giant shadows
blow curly locks,
all grey.
Unquenched chimneys pant
beneath a fire white that
runs riot with each puff.
“My shona*, my darling,
you loved me not as I did,
and do still.”
This, while the coughing
mother in the kitchen
sinks night and day
for a weekend hug.
A giant tree groans to see
dozy, dishevelled children
waiting in bundles,
babbling near the park,
lying in dark dreams,
licking powdered pavement.
Mother, still, with windows open,
counts falling stars
and not her blurring tears.
She knows the fate of tears
as uncountable nouns.
*a Hindi term of endearment used by lovers, often ridiculed as being cheesy
Severance
Distancing is an art.
You knew it well
and planted
suitable seeds,
watered so
that I varied from you
and vanished.
Weakening winds
blew away butterflies
late to lectures.
But points were proven—
the rigid truth;
and ruined
were the long treasured
you and I.
Softened ways now bleed
and steps stagger.
Don’t know how long
will you play.
Hung Assembly
Hang me halfway
across the wall.
I will wait year after year
for you to come in haste
lest the exotic evening
tempts for a nostalgic stay.
Memories paralyse; hence
the dusting of the glass
that obscures my shadowy self.
You got me close,
setting your specs higher.
Not an inch have I hindered
your way; stayed as I loved,
stayed as you have lived.
Greying hairs grow
uncountable with the years.
This year too you have plans.
Vigil
Riddles abound
in polite society.
We eat books
like worms do,
yet they don’t fail exams.
Idiots fly like kites—
rooted yet free;
we bind ourselves to air.
It is late night
and the city lies
awake
to decipher
codes and cries.
Ruined rustics
turn dead
with evening.
L’art pour l’art
Chaotic frame of an unframed life,
chariotest on free will and wings
unbound, like fuelled flames unchained.
I voice on obscure planes
linking the past hyphenated
or left aside on rambling parentheses,
the legacy in my veins so prone
to articulate the bejewelled raw pain
and annoying pleasures of coughing goats.
Late in stirring nights,
I do read discord in divine love
like none in your sprung eyes,
and dare to plunge deep,
yoking myself
and desperate many-selves.
I adore extended interiors,
cryptic
beneath chiselled brows.
I have learnt to laugh at rejections.
Love’s heterogeneity:
I call it art.
Longing
Unsettling thoughts kill us
ere it’s destined.
The wish to smile in visible darkness
fades like the feeble morning moon.
Love that stays with uncommon desires
breathes beaches sprinkled with bent pines.
Dusky exotic eyes whisper sparkling delight
to ease the stony way.
It doesn’t happen so often that the smell
of your hair, your soothing voice,
the unheard melodies of parting lips
burn the hopeless void.
Augury
How long will you wait?
Is it till breath be frozen,
air be solid fog,
or choked voices utter
secrets through bulging eyes?
Sometimes we get sick,
longing gloomy corners
unawares.
Why is it that we open windows
to embrace icy killing creepers
sans blossoms?
Nay, it’s time to thaw the ice,
look for birds fluttering
with cherished colours.
It is time to break the frozen mirror
and reassure lackadaisical eyes,
for the summer warm knocks,
kissing your door
for a lavish breath.
Façade
Scars and scratches
scare not stones.
Rough artless edges
speak simple and loud.
Rustic ruffled waters
in expanding gyres unleash
their anger
merely to go green and
placid with subsiding waves.
Unmasked elements
know no schooling
nor fake philosophy
that shapes false notions,
inflates ego,
erects an I to isolate,
concretises castles
of vanity,
and misleads
those dear.
Plea
Cracks, creaks and chasms
whisper the death of a rock inside.
Hostile winds kiss
to erode lush patches.
Rains melt stone to sand.
Let the shrubs be greener
than our wounds green.
Dawn
There are times you know not
for whom you peep through windows
(indifferent inanimates who
make you feel now a saint
and a sinner no sooner).
The biting wind is sharper,
keener tonight.
Fluctuating lights blur vision.
Things don’t fall apart;
they crumble in heaps of chaos.
Still I trust
(I don’t know why)
the fogs will roll by.
Uday Shankar Ojha is a professor at the Department of English, Jai Prakash University, Chapra, Bihar, India. He has written and edited a number of books on British and Indian English poetry. His poems are published and forthcoming in print and online venues across six countries. Uday can be reached at [email protected].
