April Foolery 2017

This April, there's lot of foolery. With words. With images. With rhythm. With sounds.

Here, one attempts to document the passage of words in time in the form of poems.

Keratosis pilaris

red. brown. white.
they appear at the higher end
making you question
the blithe Keatsian word
pranksters on beauty and
doom. 

sweet poison sweet
red brown white beautiful.

upper end.
no one has a voice reaching there.
either it is beyond the network signal
or it is below the social plague.

red and white makes pink and brown
in some shades of night

where
sleeveless selves shy away
because of the voice that will not speak

where
layers of skin are added
for the voices that don't speak

where
laser lights of plagiarism
makes beauty out of the business.

lines and lines of crooked moments
silent
waiting
crouching beneath the keratinin
to become the voice that doesn't have a voice

because there are no lungs in the business of beauty.

The poem is inspired by a curious child's innocent question that translates into a social illness in the adult world - beauty propaganda.

Copyleft@Susmita Paul 2014

New post at Kindering k-os

Too much rain kills a sapling. Too much sun dries the soil.  The new blog post at Kindering k-os reveals the actual reason she became a teacher. And a two scoops of her growing up years as well.

To read the post, click here .

flight. flee.

Forgetting

bemused it stands:
at the pedestal, in the story, out in the song

seeking wings, to crawl out of the hole,
to fill soil in the pipelines of history and
to breathe again
 
identities splashed across fences scream
to be torn down;
new plantations seeks slaves today.

yet

forgetting, in the dawn, wilderness stands
breathing heavily of agendas and porn



'Flight' and 'flee' are siblings born from the word 'fly' and yet, their plumages are very different. The act of flight (from the Old English fleogan) got confused with the act of running away (Old English fleon) in Middle English and 'flight' took on the onus of 'flee'. In Modern English, 'flight' exists in both normative forms, while the preterite marks the difference between an act of freedom and an emotion of freedom. 1 

"Carry your binoculars at all times"

and you may see the ten headed beast who is wiser than the wise and is still in the dark
about multiplying tables that lie to you in the moments when time is slipping out of your unopened palms

fingers letting go of that which made fingers out of claws

a little humanity that breached the corridors of beasts and gave me their sinews and the souls of the plants.

If you could carry binoculars all the times, may be the eyes will know truth from the frail
pain from the hurt and life from the beast.

An encounter at an airport was the transit point of the heart.

Note: The title of the poem is originally a subject line of an email message as part of a subscription to Orion

Of fear and a little purple flower

Writing is a frightening activity. In that phase, my emotions are unfurnished and blunt. In that phase, I feel the most vulnerable. The deadening fear of what will come out in words paralyses me. I cap up the words, often waiting for them to mellow down. As a result, often, there are no words that are eager to pop out. On rare occasions, when I can bear the courage to walk through the fear, I smell a feather blown by the wind, touching different surfaces, resting in some, fleeting over others. It is a much coveted feeling. And, it is this sense of the feather, that prods me to travel through the fear of creating.

It is no new notion that the umbilical cord that connects fear and creativity is not snapped once and for all. The cord between these two elements can not possibly be cut at one go. The cord wears out as one plunges more and more into the creative sphere. The most difficult task is to take that plunge. This is not a new revelation either. But, I guess, revelations are temporal and hence always have the possibility to be new and fresh.
***
There's this little purple flower that I picked from the streets yesterday. It was uprooted by someone and there it was - the flower, the stem, the little earth-covered roots. It was raining. And it knew that, it had, maybe another day at the most. Yet, it was so beautiful, sparkling with raindrops, drenched and almost dead and yet celebrating its bloom. Today, it has shrunk to this little purple mole. But, I see the little purple flower still.
***
Another day and another revelation had come.

A very good friend of mine suggested a life philosophy that I kind-of have taken to. The friend said, "Live life as an orgasm." And I had smiled. It is what writing is to me. The pain, and then, the pleasure; the pleasure that makes me believe that this is joy, and that, there's nothing beyond this moment, nothing beyond this word.

Writing is, truly orgasmic - emotionally, physically and spiritually.

The words that have been in the body when spilled on to the blank paper makes me feel exhausted. At the same time, once the words are out there, I feel less restless, more calm, more at peace and more energised.

I guess, all I have to do is to keep enjoying. And having orgasms.


 

Dear dear ones,

 

life has amplified all senses. laughter's hitting harder the cries

more pensive dreams

vaguer desires stronger

and at its eye, there have been 

 

1. thoughts

2. nightmares

and 3. soft clam shells. It will always fall short. 

the fear of dreams. 

like it hit rock bottom,the

eye. 

noises no longer fade into the distance. no muffled attempts at this turn. 

"turn the rod, the way it will", or, the way ...

 

it's never desire that lets down. it's the blood in its veins that betray the dog

wagging its tail to every bone under the ground. nourishing a bone then

can't be a priority. 

tell it now. horns, dancing shoes and crap et.al.

begetting dreams is an onus that i deny. ears, eyes, tongue, skin and blood. 

i deny it the priority that can make a scratch on the wall 

'coz i believe that it will be white-washed soon. i believe it more than my pregnant soul.

there was an artist who painted walls from the west

and one who scratched his skin every morning to whisper into it, "you're alive now"

and one who dug a grave spitting lies to her feet

and one who wouldn't dream 'coz she was afraid to wake up 

brittle wisdoms of soul-seeker bees douse in flames tonight

no less a dream it is, thinks the dead star, a few trinitised galaxies apart.