Tapeshwar Prasad (Voices Within)

Tapeshwar Prasad has authored blend of five surrealistic and realistic poetry books, and has been featured in Camel Saloon (U.K.), Cordite Poetry Review (Australia), The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry, Crashing Waves (USA), Scaling Heights (an Anthology on Contemporary Indian English Poetry), inklinks, Anthesis, Episteme, Heavenly Hymns, I am A Poet, Just for you My Love, Kaafiyana, Resonance, The Significant Anthology, Rhyme with Reason, World Anthology of English Poetry, Acerbic Anthology, Mandela Tributes, Whispering Winds, Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace, Hall of Poets and many more. He has been included thrice as ICOP: Roll of Honour (U.K.)

Way of the world

I was not familiar

with this co-walker on my morning walk

Who was striding slowly, barefoot 

on a long two tiled bridge -

a road and the rail lines under it 

But, his act of finishing his thoughts

and starting it again 

drew me a little closer to him -

and I nearly paused my steps further

to listen to his less comprehensible sentences -

Meaningful et al 

I knew

I was getting closer to him 

by his truthful utterance -

as he was slicing it part by part

He was ragged, and grey of hair

Stinking badly, but

of a princely milieu 

I took pause

Under His guidance

and thought about the way of the world -

Those who are self proclaimed rich, have little of their own

Those who are ragged, have all the wisdom to share 

Nothing extra

He has shawled himself, nakedly

longer into this thorny chilly nights

with trembling fingers

bodily squeezed in cold grip around

Penniless he survives

the onslaught of rising inflation:

Edibles smoulder heavily and a unit

of blood costs more than a bargain

A toothless suitor to his own poverty

Pleasantly he shakes his head quixotically

Shrugging off reality from his thoughts

Believing that tomorrow, when his hospital

will charge a hefty medical bill

He will promptly reply to his doctor

wagging his tail:

Was he not in remembrance, that many a times at the construction site

He had laboured more to his hospital with sweat and salt

And demanded nothing extra

Painful riches

She has been doing it

for quiet some time

in the garb of a faint smile

All these years, and before

She could strain herself

to sieve in her pain

Guarding her happier moments

Lest, it must not erupt 

Wailing those unforgettable torment

She would always lure herself 

into a sobering smile, that

on a casket of painful riches

that she could trust,

She could do onto her

What a lost memory could do 

to herself -

As she has been doing this

since her memory was gone

---

Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020