Wordweavers : poetry 2015 Shortlist

Showing posts with label poetry 2015 Shortlist. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Poetry 2015, Shortlist Anuradha Sowmyanarayan

Weavers

                                                        Shakespeare’s Bottom is a weaver,
                                                        Spider is a weaver,
                                                        Weaver bird is a weaver
                                                        Nature and God are interwoven for ever.

Threads are woven into sarees,
Wool is knitted as sweaters,
Bamboo is braided as baskets,
Marvels of creators.

Each strand gets life by a weaver,

Ornate twine blooms from beaver,
Artefacts add more colour in the life,
Outfits get glove fit in the life.

Weavers are bearers; weavers are savers;
Weavers are like busy bees
Hands and fingers toil to give us honey.

God is a weaver with a string
Puppets sing/dance and plait
As the weavers hand do might
Move off, if the string do stop
God can make us hop, drop and stop.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Surabhi Chatterjee

Caged

You are caged,
In the facade that you created
With those plastic smiles, the vanity bags
And the faces so diligently painted
In the frenzy to win the never ending rat races
The need to be validated, the need to be accepted
You smile when you want to laugh and you hide when you want to cry.
You talk things, things about politics, may be fashion or sports or whatever
But, never your heart, Never!
You wake up every morning to make a living but never to make a life.
You strive and strive harder by every passing day to create a life which is approved by them.
Yes them, the neighbours, the aunts, the boss, the friend, that cousin...
you don't know them.
You log in and logout just to be present,
And not to really "connect"
You marry, you bear kids, earn money and that’s all you do,
Because they say that's all you are supposed to.
You pray but you don't believe.
You point those fingers at the demons outside, but don't ever dare to look inside.
You put up a brave face, when you are actually scared.
You achieve glory at the pretence, of being radical.
While you don't look beyond what has been shown,
You chicken out at the thought of doing beyond what has been done.
What if I tell you, there is no one looking?
No one cares how you look, talk, what you do, don't do.
No one is looking, listening, judging
It doesn't matters really...
Will you still wear that plastic smile?
Carry on with relations u suffer, stick to that job you despise
Will you still hide when you want to cry?
Will you still put up that brave face when you are scared deep inside?
Will you restrain or jump and dance out of joy.
You know what? It doesn't matter really it doesn't.
You are just another minuscule particle
Of this vast, very vast universe.
No one cares
And one day you will disappear
Just like smoke as if you were never there.
So breathe, at least breathe
Fill up your lungs with life.
It's not time yet.
You can't be dead...
Not now...
You have to live once at least once before you are really dead.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Vandana Kumari Jena

Wanting

No one can accuse you
of a display of love
You remain as forbidding
as ever
And yet when you walk
into my house
the flame of the forest
bursts into bloom
The wind chime flutters
and the cymbals clang
Fireflies dance around the trees
Butterflies cavort
amidst the flowers
Crickets chirp in welcome
and ladybirds somersault
I drop the cloak
of languor
shaken by an adrenalin rush
as though you are
a magical pill
that can
invigorate
energize
enthuse
and breathe life
into my somnolent desires
Put brush strokes
on the canvases
I left unpainted
Embellish the poems
I left unfinished
Complete the songs
I left unsung
Chisel the sculptures
that remained half done
I yearn for you with
a physical ache
debilitating in its intensity
and yet
do not want
this yearning
to end
For the pain of wanting
gives me pleasure
and this endless waiting

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Shubhada Pujare

Untitled

I am not dead.
I am decomposing like
so many corpses and carcasses.
But I feel good.
They taught me in school,
different types of soil,

peat, clay, sandy, silt
and so on...
I do not know which one I am.
The farmers, they put me
into some potion and worms today.
The worms are good.
I am not grossed out by their sticky skin
as I used to be when I was a human.
Another girl came and took a handful of me.
She planted a sapling.
I sway to the winds as a pretty rose,
blooming with fragile petals on a sole branch.
She may give me to her boyfriend
when they meet over brunch.
I hope I make him smile.
And then parts of me are in the farm
down some flourishing region in north.
It rained and they ploughed into me today.
It felt more better and comforting than it had felt
when he entered into me on that fifth date.
Harvest is near and I will soon be reaped.
One grain makes no difference,
in the tons of output that spreads out.
I may fall out when they transport me to cities
or I may end up in someone's hearty meal.
And there are so many million possibilities
that I could tell you.
For all I will tell now is,
I am yet to live so many lives,
and unlike humans I am not going
to figure them out ever.
All it matters is,
I am alive.
And I will live.
Something which I forgot to do,
when I was a human.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Shakya Bose

History

The history of the world is written in sex.
Walk on the old earth, and
We see intense copulation-
That kept their naked bodies warm,
And their races alive.

Walk with the prophets and mad men,
Born of divine libido,
And archaic chastity-

Lost somewhere in the dictionary of time,
Spilling blood and white on rocks, gardens, and chessboard rooms of grey shadows.
Walk in battlefields,
And we see spies traipsing through dead bodies,
And seducing men of wounds and hurt,
Lonely and drunk, and eager to spill;
Kissing generations with the blessing of death.
Walk in brothels of the ages,
In filthy whores and barren paintings;
We see broken men of tears and flatulence,
Of pity and shame;
Prostituting happiness and children.

Walk in adultery,
Young love in cold and hot barns.
Fear, and love, and soiled shirts.
Eloped villages and immaturity.
Who lived to tell?
Walk in marriage,
Carnal duties, and bad poetry.
Taunting mockery and sanctioned ties.
Songs, and shocks, and muffled shrieks.
Dimpled embarrassment on blood-white sheets.

Walk in the speculation of Alois Hitler’s sex life,
Walk in Picasso’s will, dedicated to his million muses,
Walk in Neruda’s affair with clean houses,
Walk in the history of men-
And we see that we carry each other around in our pockets.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Satyavathi Vadlamani

Voyage Began

Travelled and travelled till we were tired,
but we couldn’t find our journeys end
like a nomad we did go
found a curve, we would slow
Day, night we can’t care
Cos’ once when we

hit the road,
we only
Rove

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Saptarshi Dutt

dear destroyer

i wanted to write a poem,
remind you

that there was once

a young girl
whose whole world sat
in the nicotine-stained
palms of your hands,

that i was the one
that placed my world
into your grasp-

it’s not your fault,
i did not ask

tell you that it’s okay,

that gods are sometimes
destroyers too
and even lords
have jobs to do

but even words are fickle
in my fingers;
clumsy meanings
can only get mixed up

feelings linger
in a place
that time and i
can’t seem to touch

there’s so much
i cannot say
and even if you were
the type to read poetry

you wouldn’t read mine
anyway

and maybe i should ask
why i’m persistently pretending
i can write a poem about you
with a happy ending

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Sanhita Baruah

After Death

You're all words,
When it is your death.
For people by then
Would have forgotten
How to love you, again.
They would remember
You not, for your deeds
Were forgotten too soon.
You lived on the smell
Of ephemeral cigarettes,
On the taste of bitter beer
And the whiskey that burns
Your guts as it vanishes.

What is it that you'll leave behind?
Your beauty was forgotten
When you succumbed
To the wrinkles of aging.
Your smile is no longer charming
When you hide the gum
That misses a tooth.
So what is that you'll leave behind?
Probably, those words,
Never spoken,
Only written down,
On the bark of a tree
To be read by strangers
Who know nothing about your struggle.

And when the tree dies,
And the soil embraces your words,
Probably it is then
That your soul will rest
As your words will finally leave love
For the soil,
That you couldn't.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Sana Tamreen Mohammed

Discreet Bubbles

Absurdly, midst the crowd,
My mouth opened for
A microsecond perhaps.
Fish gape quite often.
What thoughts they yield, I wonder.
A multitude of thoughts
Refuge in bubbles, escape,
Only to lose the identity
In the seamless sea.
Less confident ones
Die at their birthplaces.
Fat, arrogant bubbles
Surface with pride, ignorant
Of the caustic truth

That all bubbles face

Same inescapable fate.

My restless mind wanders off
To the day mother braided
My hair, both un-identical.
How I snapped at dear mother
In a voice spoken only
With the closest ones,
Unafraid of it’s
Quality being judged.
Later that day my teacher
Displayed flashcards of fish.
I noticed my reflection
On the pane of the window.
Strangely, I eyed discreet
Bubbles mutedly spurting,
Ceasing, disappearing.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Reeta Gandhi

Shackles

She is a wild flower unhindered in her ways.
Giving her directions,
I feel I'm turning a banyan tree with all its potentials into a bonsai.
It drains me with guilt but I'm with my own shackles,
The shackles of parenting a child.

Poetry 2015 Shortlist, Neelamani Sutar

Tale of a Peasant

He lives there, where people love
Land as mother, worship agriculture

People of his nation, after independence
brought green, white, yellow, blue revolutions
to meet with the crisis of food
to wipe out hunger
to up root poverty.

He tills his mother earth
carries plough on his shoulder
sheds his sweats
turns himself into soil.

After a year of severe flood,
several children of his homeland
are at risk of death
due to lack of proper nutrition.
He returns from his polluted land
carrying a basket on his shoulder
full of golden harvest.

Flood stricken cornfields
Harvests destroyed, paddy fields washed
yet he carries food grains on his shoulder
The cattle Kraals are empty
The goats gaunt
No protein food for children
but he is carrying a basket
full of golden harvest.

In his motherland

where people worship food as god
Through away it and feel proud for it
where some people also search dustbins
madly hoping a handful of stale rice
to do away with their hunger.

The experts do research on cropping
Those with power keep their power.
Only he, the nominal farmer
trusts himself with earth’s treasure
is carrying a basket full of golden harvest
on his shoulder.

The sun does not dissuade him,
nor the water logging
that blows against him
as he ploughs barren land,
grows golden harvests
on the other hand,

drowns into the deep sea of loans
beaten by poverty.

He feeds the nation,
cannot feed his family.
He trusts his hand for his countrymen
what they used now,
but cannot do his family and himself.
Between life and death,
he is carrying a basket on his one shoulder
full of golden harvest
carries fear of suicide on his other shoulder.