Kushal Poddar – Four Poems

Here Comes That Season

The stones heat up for a brief period.
Their cold heart, beginning to add
another layer made of leaves, surface
even before the evening emerges.
The birds invite sleep on the emptying
boughs. Not all will wake up. Some songs
will be silent. The water streaming nearby
gurgles and spits out a writhing fish.
The dark slumber flies across the moon-face.
A slowed down rodent creates a feeble noise
in our kitchen. The noise bloats up, bursts.
Our wares and glass shiver and settle.

The Pill For The Earth

If not the guilty one someday
an innocent will bear the cross of the blame.
“Reveal.” I say.

One white heron threads
through the patches of sky, blue
possessed by the possibilities of rain.

“Reveal.” I urge to the authority.
A hiss, one thin blade of grass seems
mobile. My toes feel wet.

A meteorologist friend calls from
the desert, “Sahara is flooded.”
“On Earth,” I tweak Beckett,
“We have no cure for that.”

Reveal. You can still give us a pill
with a sense of justice and
the most passable moment
we ever lived capsuled within.

After The Fiesta Ends

I have no inkling to whom and what,
albeit, I bid adieu to something, whisper,
“Ave.”

During the first few days, once the fiesta ends
slow mornings fly in, chirp, and five different
chords I can hear, but miss innumerable ones.

At one point of time the chirrups continue,
albeit within a jelly-flood of silence.
I cannot fathom those anymore, hearing the blue.

I dive from my edge of our balcony.
On the Hemingway days I drown, fall
through the bubbles of thought and white noise,
reach the bottom and meet the cacophony.
Bow those are one, soft, viscid.
On the other days I soar, fly too close to the Sun.

Explicit

The girl who videographs
the lovers in the blind lane
sells them if you pay.

Today Sun kisses the mossed wall.
The slant of the big star has changed.
Today’s the stale taste in the air.
A lizard inserts its prickly body
in the pear tree.

The girl has two sisters, and they know
not to go in the lane. Their junkie mother
sleeps on the couch. The paper boy says,
“You know, Lisa, they’ll shatter and rebuild
the wretched lane. She sighs and records
this last kiss, wonders what the winter be like.

Although Kushal Poddar has authored ten books, the latest being ‘A White Can For The Blind Lane’, and his works have been translated into twelve languages, and he has been a sub-editor of Outlook magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing, and he does some illustrations and sketches for various magazines if you ask him, he will say that he gardens a growing up daughter. His book, Postmarked/Quarantine is available from the Ice Floe Press website. https://icefloepress.net/postmarked-quarantine-a-book-of-poems-by-kushal-poddar/ Kushal can be found on Twitter at: @kushalpoe

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