Poetry 2012 Featured Writer, Vineet Kaul

How I Harvested You from the Fields of Time

Dear Samara,
When eyes ferment monsoon’s nostalgia,
                       tears curdle into the sweat of old deeds.
You licked them like gumdrops 
                       dotted with powdered karma
and renamed your dreams to Oliver Twist.

Introduced to the scent of inheritance
the rusting-iron hiss of the scarlet babble brook
                                                  was your blood, wailing;
penitent for its contagion of sins.

Tranquility deflated
by splinters of deconstructed words;
                                                           monosyllables
were your conduit of disenchantment;
your stillness;
                      a conduit of stone.
Yours was half-body sans soul
    twitching
in the astral conduit of light
                                     irate at your assemblage of planets
sieved into a diorama of sleepless night.

You nailed the atrophy of your dreams
to your lips, called the rashes reality
and burrowed
                       into an ingrown recluse
between your folds of skin;
                                            mocked by time.

Pores were your tavern that winter.
Cradled in their residue of dirt and salt,
                                 I watered warmth
to irrigate you from within.

Genuinely Yours,

      - troubadour

Poetry 2012 Featured Writer, Sudhanshu Bhandary

River Sutra

As black clouds swoop upon the grey waters of the river Ganges;
Pouring libations upon the body of the river Divine;
I tip-toe my way to its sprawling floodplains wide;
For one last sojourn along the ribbons of sand I loved so much.
The miles of sparkling sand--white as pearls;
Effusing radiance under a moonlit night;
The ribbed contours of the midstream isles as if the contours of river-horses wallowing by;
The endless yellow of the ripe mustard fields broken in between by shades of green;
with a blue-ribbon ox-bow lake as  a background sight.
The endless butterflies fluttering their wings as they dart across the blooming yellows;
The fading footprints of river buffaloes just gone by;
The half-buried bones of what might have been a kine, canine, equine or a fellow sapien;
The endless stretch of tiny shells and rotting garlands floating by.
Here and there a few fishermen’s boats with their spread-out nets
                               strung between poles like a harp’s chords;
With an endless wait for a dwindling haul to feed an increasing set of hungry mouths;
Their habituated patience and contemplative silence reminded me of a Yogi in meditation wrought;
Standing in knee-deep waters like the storks and cranes who gave them companionship nearby;
An undesired sharing of destiny of-- living off the river and dying by its shores;
The only difference that their winged friends being better anglers
                                and devoid of a feeling heart and a thinking mind.
The setting sun throws a pillar of orange fire on a shimmering surface;
A flock of cackling geese storm past by;
A throng of mourning relatives return after the last journey with their loved one;
A posse of vultures swoop upon the half-burn body left lying by.
The river flows majestically just as it has been doing for a million years;
Another day comes closing by, another night follows suit;
Civilisations rise and fall but this shimmering blue stays its course;
Unchanging, Timeless--its concourse always towards the Ocean Deep.
It Nourishes and Destroys—expansive, magnanimous, yet unstoppable when in anger, like Shiva’s Cosmic dance;
Our own existence inter-twined with its cycle;
Heraclitus had one remarked, “One cannot step into the same stream twice”;
Truly Time once gone never returns;
What remain are the mere bits of memory like the infinite grains of sand left along the river’s shore haphazardly piled.
We pick the disjointed strands to recreate Time Past in Time Present;
Yet the muddied Past gets washed away by the Tides of Time.
I slowly retrace my steps homeward bound;
The River of Life also flows by unstoppable, ever-changing;
Both great equalizers; what they erode from one shore they deposit on another shore.
Life too is a zero-sum game; we win some, lose some;
Like a river we all return to the elements from which we came;
The End is Nothingness, Void, Sunyata;
In my Beginning is my End.

Poetry 2012 Featured Writer, Saptarshi Dutt

Immortal Touch

Loves skin
paper-thin
like porcelain
deep rising eyes
draped in sadness

An immortal touch
a caress through
a dream
insisting upon
my love

Drawing in near
conceived of dust
illusions of the unreal
a blur in the
vacant night

Poetry 2012 Featured Writer, Priyanka Surve

Nocturnal Relics

I stand still with eyes wide open
To see her dressed in black
Pointing at me, she moves towards me
Slowly and steadily
One step at a time
Little droplets of sweat
Shine around my forehead
Heart trembles
And knees wobble
Now she stands close to me
Very close to me
So close that I can feel her heavy breath
And her cold eyes piercing right through mine
Like a venom coated iron spade
I open my mouth to ask her
Why is she there
What does she wants
But before I utter a word
My eyes get closed and mouth sealed
With icy cold lips of hers
I feel like I kissed a lizard
A dead lizard
She inserts her blue toxic tongue in to my mouth
And everything around me evaporates in a trice
I open my eyes and see her nowhere
Only a blackish blue mark on my lips
A bruise for the lifetime...

Poetry 2012 Featured Writer, Priscilla Rai

Sun Tea

The morning sun
Is always tender
It makes my potted fern
Golden green
The cares of yesterday
Melt in the momentous bliss
As the golden threads
Play on my finger tips
The inviting sight
Its charming light
Seems like a beautiful reverie
The concrete walls
Surrounding me,
Loses some of its atrocity
An empty jar
In a forgotten corner
Stands in my kitchen space
Now I long for a little bit
Of that sunshine taste
The tap fills up the waiting jar
The sun falls on my knee
The tea tin waits
With leaves within
To brew me some Sun tea
I know it will taste
Of summers to come
Dragonflies, ants
And wafting memories
There will be a smidgen
Of times gone by
In my jar of sun tea

Poetry 2012 Featured Writer, Faraz Ali

La Mort de Dieu... (The Death of God)

Let us retire in our caves,
Kiss the cold wood of a banyan,
And dark petals of a sunflower,
Black fire lit around us,
Illuminating the theater,
A shiny casket, damp walls,
Devours the sounds of sanity,
All have assembled to celebrate,

La mort de Dieu,
La mort de Dieu...

All the angels are revealed,
Now, true nature erupts,
Pestilence eating the silence and god,
We perform the ceremony adieu.

La mort de Dieu,
La mort de Dieu..

Golden goblets, pungent wines, aroma of demise,
Beelzebub watches over,
Annihilation of creed, the abyss is a festival,
Children, languages, light and you,
Baptized with fire,
The velvet veils, surprise in fetus,
Unveiled!! Denizens of heavenly hell,
Me, you and these coward delirious angels,
God is dead, heaven or hell, whose decision,
Bedlam of ecstasy, sanctuary in holocaust...

 La mort de Dieu,
 La mort de Dieu,