New Poems, Photographs & Art by Kushal Poddar

News From The Grey Valley 

 

His children try to solve 

the jigsaw puzzle of a body cremated. 

Kin stand around as if the young ones are 

an old valley and they are tall buildings, 

windows all shut. They form 

a sacred circle for them.

 

Far from here the chamber sizzles,

busy, delivering.

Sanity

 

My daughter dances on the bed.

The music is older than me. I heard

it before. I lift her, settle her 

on the floor. Our grey cat trades 

the places. I ask my father

if he likes it here now. He never liked 

his own house when he lived. 

Please let me talk aloud, Sanity.

Dead ones talk little. I have to

talk for two. My daughter begins giggling.

I join her. The cat jumps off the bed

and leaves, the corpse of Reason

dangling from its maws.

Dusk's Cube

 

A sudden crow, 

my shadow on its beak,

hauls the room away 

from me.

 

Now I 

stand in the year's back alley.

I say, 'I don't smoke," 

to a junkie, and then

we, together with silence,

saunter to the stream, pink and grey 

in this Sun.

Ensue

 

On the highway of the wind

an avalanche of halcyon void

stalls the traffic of the leaves.

 

They wait for the news from the sea,

hundreds of miles away. They wait

for the sky to begin an operation.

The clouds hold back the cold.

The trees shadow the valley's hem.

 

A monk chimes the bells of a monastery.

The ripples reverberate in the dark.

The lights can be seen from the summit.

One of the leaves turns, "Did you read 

the leaflet? A new year began today."

Return

 

One of the leaves turns, "Didn't 

a year begin today?" Thus it institutes;

I jog midst the fog of a sweeper's

handwork. The sweeper gathers 

all the beer bottles and cans he can.

The recycle man gives him enough for one.

One down, his evening becomes

one long call in loop. His girl adjusts

her clothes in the end, "When will 

you return? The village has changed."

His silence whistles; the sea of the leaves

rustles; the ships of the buildings sail far.

                                                    (click on photos & artwork to enlarge)

Kushan Poddar the author of  'A White Cane For The Blind Lane' and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has ten books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a four-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe. 

 

New Poems: Kushal Poddar

On A Slow Gloaming

To Rijurekh da

The thin light from the window

sniffs, recognises the smoky petrichor

rising from my mellow core.  

In the garden I buried my lies, fed by kitchen rot grows

a Pinocchio reed.

If you stare hard; eyes blur; 'I' dissolves 

freeing you to see more in one, how a reed holds 

some infinite reeds, possibilities, 

as if a lie can be true when its turn arrives.

On Our Seventh Anniversary

A frayed postman

wearing a threadbare flat cap

delivers a letter you posted

seven years ago.

I offer him a dream.

He chooses coffee instead.

He leaves; I open the envelope,

and grasshoppers

from the heartland green 

hops out of the creased within.

I remember - we've declared 

them to be the national beings

of our Republic of Mind.

You are asleep. I whisper,

"They are alive."

Cat's Tongue, House No. One Hundred And Ten

The lane makes a bottleneck.

We have a name for the narrow isthmus;

we forgot that; perhaps the lane's purpose

is to pour the world into the house at the end,

No. One hundred and ten.

I desire to apprehend if you still live there,

keep the books you borrowed from me

decades ago on an evening remembered

for hidden feelings, fog muffled streetlights

casting unstable shadows of us on my celadon wall.

My mother coughed and coughed as you depart.

I recall you bent, hands fisted, books in your tote.

You didn't acknowledge that you would not return, 

no one could. We stopped and watch a starling caught

in the orange cat's maw. The cat spoke 

with its mouth full. I didn't know the tongue.

The Ghost of Democracy

The children's parade

led by a white eyed man

whose wand tilter rotates

and performs as a guiding baton 

passes.

The morning lies thick on the skin.

Even the starlings in

the moist grass observe airy sombre.

Future nears the middle ground

where a leader will summon

the ghost of democracy and

the roads, streets and lanes will

shiver like a Ouija board.

The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

Featuring Kushal Poddar (poetry & photos)

 

Buddha

A bird's chirping swirls out

from sleep's exoskeleton. 

Haze and halo greet the room. 

The bird seems to say, 'Sakura.' 

In this life I've never seen 

a cherry blossom, not in person,

albeit I know it is Spring.

My other lives 

are the garden ornaments, 

their hands hold invisible blessings.

Reflections

That year reflections, shadows

and shades grasped my heart.

I shivered seeing shapes and light,

not quite, the opposite of it and

what it co-creates with our flesh,

its interpretations of us.

This year following the halo of our

headlights on the pitch black path

I wonder if heart died after a long

convulsion. We throttle the gas.

Even the glory they cast on the big screen

doesn't make me feel anything.

The red car, premium retro drive-in revival,

home videos of my mother back at home

or your kisses all swirl, scatter and fall

like grey flakes.

Insane, Self

Insane, if you call me

I'll agree, not because 

of my soliloquies frequent 

in front of a ghost audience 

and not because provoked, 

I turn violent, 

because I repeat my old defeats. 

I shall answer, desire to know 

about your children and you will show

anger because you have blue 

and gray at heart regarding that.

Look at me watching my dirty water

trembling twin. Look at that toenail

born and reborn yellow between

flesh and reflection. 

A wind touches your head, glad

that madness is not airborne, 

you say, "Stay well." I see you go.

I shall see you go again.

A Grave Provocation

After a sudden friend's old death

we found it hard not to make love

every dusk, returning home mid-work

as if that could cure gunshots

and the memories not bled 

because death didn't delay

pushing through the cafe door.

Death could have been late, kept

the bullet for a day in May or thereafter

and found our by then best friend

sad with his love for both of us.

He might not have any solution,

startled and relieved, desired to ask death,

"Why are you so late?" The cafe

would have the same white out.

Every New Year Eve

The bridge, not built to descend

near the azure, ferryboat, 

a flash of scales and of feathers, 

but it bring us to the jetty. 

I cross it everyday but the bridge 

behaves thus only once in a year.

You ask me if I desire some caramel pop,

and as usual I want some savouries.

Only on this eve you become my father

and flowing.

Kushal Poddar the author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe