Poetry: Archana Bahadur Zutshi

Archana Bahadur Zutshi
The Unease of Light

A witch is deigned potent,
To be dismantled into impotence.
To make her crumble
 like a pack of cards,
From the pedestal.
 Shoved from sunlight
To the darkest hours
by desperate redeemer.
Hunted by packs,
scaffolded lie they
In contrived pacts.
Witch old or modern
Is the Cinderella of daylight
Innocence.
Martyred for her prowess
For distancing herself from the gore.
They gore her for their guilt!
A girl is either a witch or goddess
Someone whose will and identity
Flickers in the dark unravelling
Of brute gospels created and fathomed
In make-belief.
The wind is mistaken
for the windmill.
The tale cannot be related
Without her part.
The daughter disowned at birth.
An unseeming inheritor!
She must prove herself—
The 'instead'!
As a misfit, or vice-versa —
Whose reckoning?
A mob is a freaking mob.
A witch is a witch…
***


Travails of Lovers

We were branded as sinners. 
Hence we became sinners in love–
reluctantly.
We lost a dimension,
And cared not what happened,
Or we did.
We lost it, we lost it,
The spirit we lost
What remained was sinning.
We had lost our voice
And never confessed love.
Shamed in living,
We changed the meaning of life.
***

Reclamation 

To the dribbling streams,
The vegetation and boulders
Give way.
In my soul brims a song  –
Mystified by shimmying vistas.

The selfdriven noise sounds empty
On the shore no staid impressions carry,
In every lapping wave I must blend
And be the ocean, to hear the song.

I blend with the crowds
Overflowing the city streets.
There are putrid drains,
Trapped youth haggling
With commuters selling their wares–
Along with the dreams.
No heart melts, the burden
Of life orchestrates
"Live with measured gaze".
Overlooking the skyscrapers
They scrape into life
As the hunger does not melt
In their sultry run.
***

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