Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1. May 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
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| Image courtesy: youtube.com |
1.
The Rabble
We
wade through this sea of flesh and blood
Where
the souls breathe barm.
All eyes mark the one vision, the only pass
Where rivers of waste wash the paths
With dust mapping the journey door to
door,
Shoulder to shoulder, step to step.
This storm of mankind sweeps all,
This tornado of lust swallowing the earth
and its desires.
And yet desperate, dissolute and depraved,
it sires.
Our feet don’t fit in the shoes that smother
us foot by foot;
We scramble for covers but find us buried by
knolls.
We go about naked, undressed, wearing not
even shame,
To face the cold mountain of our own bones.
We, the rocks, the stones, the clods,
The shingles, the imbalanced loose
boulders;
We, the micro granules of sand,
In the deserts, the depths of oceans;
We, the omnipresent, we the viral, the
bacterial,
The fungal infections diseasing the earth;
We, the coupled, uncoupled of a singular gene,
Seeking gold, silver, sheen of the diamonds,
The
lands from the other Moons,
Jupiters,
Saturns, Suns, Marses;
We, the spores of greed, sloth, envy,
Lynching like mad the Universe;
We, the soi-disant swarm space,
Encroach interiors, exteriors,
Extremities, eternities searching the dark
Like our own selves, to applaud us,
The aliens to acknowledge us,
The anonymous to validate us,
Perhaps to annihilate us.
Once in a while,
we trekked the foothills, twice maybe, a stroll through the snow-filled grounds
of a hill-station, though we never actually made it to the banks of a real
river, but a wiry dark stream of ammonia and foam under-bridge.
And what did we care—we
danced barefoot on polished stone, the mountains our servile floors, the ice
handy in stem-glass bars and the river flowed through steely showers, crystal
and pure.
Back then, we
even had a pond about a quarter of a century before, but that filled fine like a
childhood scar, guilt smashed harder than the tadpoles, crushed under zesty
soles.
Even the snakes
crawled up to die impaled, our lances tipped by swarming
piaffes, while the cats we lost, to the poacher’s blast and
many a species cast to the past.
But we never
cared, we came up strong and we went on fast, our human creed, our human caste.
Now, we think of
catching up the seas, but the sails never do take off free—we are hoisted mid-air
like flailing flags, where the wind blows rough, and we cough only smog.
Still,
what do we care, the floods are not ours, and the snow will melt but the
glaciers we never saw, and what do we care if the birds do not nest or the
fishes slip the nets, for shores—blessed are we, for we have no sea, seeping
through our mighty towers.
3.
When A Lake Lived with Us
When a lake lived with us
The air smelt of rain and the sparrows
Soiled the clothesline, then picked the
trays
Clean of vermicelli before the sun could
roast
Them dry, and flittered overhead like
swarms
Of mosquitoes we have now, but then had
none
With the frogs croaking and the bats
bolting darts
In the sultry evenings brown and soft,
Delicious like chocolate bars.
In the mornings, the milk-man idled
Under a fig whilst the buffaloes wallowed
in water
Like dusky maidens taking a community
bath.
Once in a while, a yellow snake
Slithered by like a sun’s ray come-alive
Upon touching the muddy bank to merge
With the marsh.
And every now and then
The blue kingfishers dipped,
And the white cranes cruised the sparkling
water,
Nicking diamonds off its skin.
In the nights, the lake spewed silver
That no one could catch but only the moon,
until,
Our neighbors caught the mood, and the
lake shrunk
Like a virgin hiding from view.
And now,
It is only the size of a grave with an
epitaph
That reads ‘Drinking water in the name of God’ over
A crooked steel tap trapping its soul.
4.
Plastic-Genie
I am your wish, from the deep
Dark hells of petro-pits where lonely
And sad I lay, with forests fossilized,
Silenced to incubate, by millions of Mays.
Now fulfilled,
I cover, stretch, mold, un-break
To spread, and the earth loses its breath
The asthmatic spore; I clog her lungs in embrace.
You, now wish me ‘decay’?
Burn me, I say,
And you will lose the sun, the hole
In your air, your vacuous ozone layer.
Bury me, and I will outlive
Not just your past but your future’s last
And yet not perish under the mounds
Of roasted sands.
I dare not drown, but swoon,
Inside bellies, of bloated whales, as they die
Burst and boom a curse, from depths
Of bubbling blue balloons.
You could not foresee—that
I will swamp all, my squishy, jelly
Choking your insides, smothering from
outsides,
Swarming frantic than the fire you tamed
That zooms you to the frigid Moon
Or the virgin Mars that you intend to rape.
Do you know by now –
I am suffused in you, your ova,
Sperm and your embryos, I have raided too?
Be scared that I will fuse you
With my plastic-clones.
And so now,
Pray for a plastic-nirvana for the soul
Of your sinning species – that murdered
All others, below you.
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