Three Poems By Mosarrap H Khan

Mosarrap Hossain Khan

- Mosarrap H Khan

Contented

We snuggle close like two

expectant adolescent youth.

Each of our measured movements

is meant to walk a well-trodden

path. Each curve, each concave,

each convex of her taut skin

I have known. The way one tip-toes

on a dark staircase, when the lights

go out on a wintry night.

I know when she will reach

the crescendo of excitement.

And then we will hold

On to each other’s limpness.    

I am back at my desk

by the window, contented,

to write Nirbhaya’s pain.

As if poetry and I will ever know

what it meant to be scooped out

bit-by-bit, and thrown down the

untrodden path of fear. 

Pain

I have neatly numbered the poems.
A collection of sorts, I presume,
will take shape.

I presume.
Because I have embraced those uncertainties,
which make you feel you could be a poet.

I have tried to write tonight –
a fragment of what I think would
one day become a novel.

Pain can’t be narrated
like the scene in a novel. Pain jabs at
you. Short, sharp, pointed jabs.

Like the lines of a poem. 

Mumbai

In this jumble of human forms,
you gain a sense of perspective –
A tiny speck swirling in a
sonic disaster.

You bid goodbye to a foreign
city you loved and partially embraced;
A city, you were never sure, if ever
loved you and embraced you back.

You stood there brooding, longing,
secure in the knowledge
of human mastery over space; an imposing tower
lording over rectangular grids.

Here you swirl, float, duck,
along with particles of dust,
soot, muck, disease, like cigarette-smoke
curling up before vanishing abruptly.

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Bio: Mosarrap H Khan is an academic based in a small town, Kotulpur, West Bengal, India. His creative pieces have previously appeared on The Bombay Review, The Sunflower Collective, Asia Writes Project, and Café Dissensus Everyday.

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Setu, July 2017