July poem :

A kind sun struggled through lazy shrubs
to dapple my face with July's temper.
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©MadhusmitaBeura

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Last bird returns home.
A herd of pious red
reposing in the gaps of my fingers
recoil from trance, hurry after sun.
Passing wind,
parched from entertaining the futile vexations of a moody sky,
forage for comfort in the barrens they leave behind.
A half-moon escapes from the spreading arms of old gulmohar,
the other half makes a poem from the dregs of my tea.

©MadhusmitaBeura

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I drown.
Old poems float around unconscious,
their bodies effusing musk of my existence;
noise of my thoughts breeding on their decay;
heat of my memory scaling their lengths;
desires of my heart scavenging their remains;
My fingerprints uncoil to grab a few of them.
We sink past a disc of light weaker than my skin
watching over us
in a redemptive stillness.
Behind it
sky takes up the colour of a senile leaf,
clouds deflate to the size of its veins,
air kneels down in surrender,
I age.

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Clouds gather over my thoughts
to break apart all over again.
Their cold grey shrinks to become kind threads of assurance;
I spin them between fingers
to amuse my breaths.
The last leaf I was in love with
suffered autumn terribly than the rest;
every rain after its demise
pity the one poem I couldn't finish in time.
I held it on my palm while it was dying
listening to death lament over its conduct;
telling how it can only live on the breaths
that belong to others;
how it merits the curse of fading hibiscus and wailing mothers;
how it can claim every life on this dying earth but its own;
how it is but a saga never to be known.
So when rain brings smell of leaves,
young and old
I whisper to them woes of death
hoping that they would take its hand when it comes;
stripping fear,
they would make love.

©MadhusmitaBeura

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Heavy clouds impersonating men in quest of love
drop by my window to rest.
their bodies radiate despise for their own feeble shape
that exhaust faster;
I tell them to chant Rumi's poems for relief.
They suppose they may find love
while day surrenders to night
and a second ages into another
for love is vulnerable
during the act of giving up.
They hurry
in the direction of a colour offering its life to rival,
leaving their wounds in my safekeeping;
I return to Rumi's poems, for relief.

©MadhusmitaBeura

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I decide not to lend the heat of my palms
to the shivering hope tonight.
It drags itself
to the spine of the book I just finished reading
sniffing for warmth
in places
I positioned my fingers on.
In its wilting gaze
I see contempt rejoicing my faltering breaths
vengeance eliminating regard for my name
angst stagnating memories of me
only to dine on them later.
They look around my nape for lingering air
I undo my hair to conceal, just in case.
I watch misery growing all over them like maddening algae,
them uprooting ample of it with proportional madness,
never submitting.
I watch and savour it.
Pardon my coldness!
For once, I want them to be on their own.
For once, I want them to be.

©MadhusmitaBeura

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Dear rain

As your many ripples disappear into many others, I desire to become one of them. Your quick breaths, descend on my skin, to make it perceptible like never before; I hold out my hands to hold your disintegrating body. Memories of your past visits yawn behind my ears; in every one of them I uncoil from the discomfort of a heavy monotony slanting against my back, at your arrival, just like the present moment. You lull to sleep every dust under my feet; they dread no more the footfalls of the indifferent wind. In their faraway dream, they unite with you; sighs of gratification crowd the air for hours that follow.
I watch leaves striving to contain you between their weak veins; I watch you deceiving them with equal solemnity.
You know not the depth of dismay you leave behind; not yet.
You know not the amount of pain demanded by a poem in your name; not yet.
When will you ?

Yours sincerely.

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I hold close to chest
the agony of poems half-written.
They keep vigil on the rise and drop of of my ribs
waiting to pluck a handful of the breath I draw in,
to feed on.
Their turn in sleep is a question on human nature
that love and loathing make a liaison to respond.
Taste of winter returns to my mouth every now and then;
they grieve over the smell of dead poets it brings
who could have built them a house with war remains.
Stale clouds that wander whole night
drunk on rotting desires
stop by to meet them.
They talk about fortitude giving in on itself
the moment they begin to summon
all notions of their existence;
they fall back to dying.
Yet death never comes to them.
They don't get to live either.

©MadhusmitaBeura

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Half past 12
your feet recede to a land you have never been to.
Leftovers of rain on the unopened buds call out your name.
8 corners of your room develop hands all extending at your direction.
You swallow a mouthful of the suspended dark
to reassure your petrified poems on the other side.
Murmers of past
stir them into an inescapable current.
You want to pull back from your skin
and jump in
to protect them
but your surface is afraid to let go of you.
You are soaked in sweat
that washes away your desire to smell like petrichor.
Stillness of night trail your veins.
Placid breath of humankind at the time of its birth
rush to the back of your neck in torrents.
Your own breath kneels down beside you;
you collapse into eachother.

©MadhusmitaBeura

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