NEVER

You dragged me in, you dragged me in,

Into the vacuum of a hollow tin,

You embraced me, you doused me,

With warm, squashy paraffin,  

Soothing my desires, nay! Me.

The flicker of joy mingled with

The flicker of ecstatic pain,

Like droplets of dust dispersed in rain

Upon the turbid street side water

After the evening shower

Inside you, you let me loose

My turbulence of hope, despair

The nerves of my inner self

My heart, my blood, my every cell

Inside you lay bare.

Ah! You, the fragrant you

The rosy you, the tulip you

The scented you, the unscented you,

That encircled me like incense smoke

Intoxicating me although.

Oh! The short lived, elusive joy

Short-lived? No! No! No!

Elusive? I spat upon the word,

I struck it off from the dictionary

I differed to differ with you.

I tried to defer the hemlock

That was to burn my throat

And burn my heart or block my brain

With pathos; nay! With pain

Ah! You leave me not.

But that was not to be

It was your time to haul out

Into the greenish infinite sea,

And you hove your anchor

From my battered, isolated, harbour.

My love dissolved into the horizon,

And hours after the waves returned

Kissing my beloved’s soul

It brought some words untold

“Adieu! My love, forever”.... “Never!”!

 ( From my book "So I Used Gray And Other Poems ". The poem was written in 2009)

The Murky Matinee show

The flood lit lush green evening matinee show

Un-lid a plethora of previous pulsating fun

In drawing rooms they scattered the lustrous glow

Oh! What tipsy barons and lusty-leaders undone.

The old withered willow tree of yore

Has lost its aura to murky corporate deals,

Where stinky funds extorted from the poor

Are spent on players as show-horses in fields.

We, the cannon fodder of the advertisement gun,

Are assailed ball by ball and fed with dreams

And bleed day to day in ad-picked inflation

It pushes the precious aam admi to brim.

The twits, the consortia had made a rendezvous-

In dark lanes, with cash and women to woo.

This poem reflected the popular perception of IPL-cricket tournament of 2010.

It is from my book " So I Used Gray & Other Poems"

PARIVARTAN (The Change)

courtesy : http://saikatmandal.blogspot.in

See what fate has come to this land                                          

The land that yielded gold

Is now the ‘killing field’- a brand

Embossed and it firmly holds.

The rice- bowl district had seen in past

Indiscriminate killings,

Where mother fed rice with son’s blood

And today the culprits prowl.

The hapless, hopeless middle class

Was ruled by silent terror,

Where every tongue of resistance-

Came under the chopper.

The humid fertile land still accepts

Thousands from its west or east,

Who spits, litters and vitiates

And cares for the land the least.

The troop of torment has now broken

And diffused silently to other camp

But their thirst for blood has risen

Oh! “The Change” was just a sham.

( http://www.indocanadaoutlook.com/index.php/archives/2013/january-2013/468-poetry-parivartan-the-change)

Question

                                                     

How long you have to walk
To call your friend your own?
The question is easy to ask
The answer- unknown..

Home remedies

Men who sought the drive pills, with  sin

Written allover, their lips had an impish grin,

Have now stopped coming back

To the chemist, to fix the slack

Now they queue to get a pack of Chowmin.

`The Sigh of an ignored Twin

Five hundred years the river flowed, her pallor

Washed away by the muddy flow,

Five hundred fading springs shed her colour

Each century scrapped her lustrous glow.

The Saraswati River, now dead and seized by man,

Was once her artery of trade,

Through which the saudagars with their fleet

Explored islands in Malacca straits.

Down from Triveni, they sailed to port Betor,

Where the mortal mouth of Saraswati

Sacrificed herself to her would be killer

The River Hugli or Bhagirathi.

They prayed to “Bettro-Chandi” in bet-van

Where the darkness overpowered flambeau

Where vipers crawled and looters prowled

And to the goddess they bade Adieu!

With time and ephemeral flow of luck, the river

Flowed through Bhagirathi, killing her stream

And port Betor lay dead and with awe

She saw her opposite bank draping as a queen.

A port was born in the east, a new sun rose

And in the west sank the other,

Ever since the town’s downfall began-

Like a concubine of a step brother.

Slowly her luxuriant green yielded to mills

of cotton, flour and ropes, where labours

thronged her lanes laden with screeching units

Where carbon bred from metallic clamours.

For years men of lesser occupation and wits

Toiled, littered and committed suicide

In the dingy lanes, and the vendors of politics

licked out life from their worn out bodies.

So up came apartments, builders ruled the roost

Where lakes were filled and outlets chocked,

Where coffers filled and the toxicity spewed

Where freedom felt free in a reddish coat.

Now her distant twin on the opposite bank rejoice

She’d don a dress of western grace,

Her feet would frolic in the river called Thames

Her strands transformed by an enchantress.

And says the worn out city within herself

“To relish the other bank come to me,

Sink your boots in this bog of indifference

And stare at the pseudo prosperity.”

The poem was published in the Festival number of The Statesman-2011

Black Diamond

                                            Never thought that coal was as gold

                                            A glittery gate of treasures untold

                                            Our all white netas

                                            Ensured their betas

                                            “Bada Maal” from the Black Diamond