Poems
by Kushal Poddar
Missed The Train
Missed the train,
My friend,
by three minutes
if you imagine! I
bought some tea,
missed the sleep
while journeying
the whole night,
whole life in a bachelor bus.
The driver turned off the lights,
flipped the bus inside out,
and I sometimes
stand alone in a town, in
the fields browned with the heat,
villages and I stand, standing I move
through the terrains between me and you.
This Is Not A War Poem
The leftover pigeon, a gift,
irritating, a grain
in my eyes, a sweep of memories
of my aunt’s last sweater
and of her greeting cards,
remains on the doorway.
I call the cat by its given name.
Two pigeons fly away as I
step outside. The morning
newspaper’s arrived with
rainmarks on the front page.
I unroll, see blood all over it.
I call the cat and read.
The pigeons, alive and dead,
cat and human, exist in a box
unopened by my neighbours
still asleep and dreaming.
Attention, Death Has Arrived
I stroll between the curtains’ chiffon,
and you see me, and you imagine
seeing me there and say, “Remember
your vertigo.” as if forgetting can be a cloud seed
sowed by the wish of an industry.
At a funeral, the curtains made from sighs,
your kin and mine present, and the past is
just pixie dust that makes me laugh, makes me
sparkling, and that makes cough, where else
can I go, but roaring against my vertigo?
I don’t desire to leave gently except I do.
The curtains absorb me and lead me into
the world of the balcony. Behind every whispering
click a photograph. “You know”, I say without turning,
“The frames are for the outsiders; we,
the attendees, know the subjects in the bokeh,
the residues in the filter.”
