Laksmisree Banerjee: Poetry (Voices Within 2021)

Laksmisree Banerjee
Laksmisree Banerjee is an established Senior Poet, Writer, Literary Critic, Educationist, Scholar, Rotarian (a Multiple Paul Harris Fellow) & practicing Vocalist, with many National and International Awards, Books & Publications to her credit. She is a Senior Fulbright Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar and a National Scholar in English from the Calcutta University, India. A University Professor of English, Poetry & Culture Studies, an Ex-Vice Chancellor, she has lectured & recited in Universities and Literary Festivals across the globe. Has been widely anthologized with Five Books of Poetry, One Hundred Twenty Research Publications and Three Academic Books on Poetry. 


TIME CONTINUED 

Yes, he waits upon us breathlessly 
Like a statuesque gatekeeper
In an old, worn-out, dusky T-shirt
Glaring with sunken marble eyes
Like an antique, invisible stern icon
Prevailing in corners, cups, biscuits, bathtubs
Sun-soaked curtains, rain-smothered windows
The sinking, wet tea-bags and gates of life.

Yes, he winks, ticks and blinks at us often
Playing the miracle healer or invader
Through his surreal wrought presence
While perhaps embalming some wounds
Which sit tight in our bruised souls,
Tiny scabs of glow worms with dark dry wings
Till we pull out these desiccated patches
To throw into the waste paper bins
Perhaps willingly in mindful forgetfulness.

Yes, these invisible marks still flutter
Like grey moths tingling deep within 
Our fluid selves tucked away carefully,
 Screened off in endless seasonal cycles
Buried silently within our covert terrain

In pathos symphonies often mixed with revelry
Our rocking rail-ride continues with speed
With this invisible, ruthless engine driver
While we meet for a while sipping sweetness
Like ex-lovers prattling on a treacherous journey
Through long stretches of a strange no-man’s land
When the train stops jarringly with an abysmal jolt---
***


FENCES 

Let us not lie to ourselves and you
That we live till date under the same blue
Let us not lie that we are done with Partition
With this new menace of a new Nation.
Imposing the Self on the Other hue
Let us not pretend that we never knew.

Let us not lie through rain and sun
When sweets and kites have given way to the gun.
When fences are created for differences of birth
Where is that loving embrace to weep in mirth?
If Terror has no colour, faith, race or creed
Why rail against any diverse breed?

If Dissent is not Democracy
Why veil the evils of Autocracy?
The gates are closing, the death-knell ringing
Beware the void of a bottomless beginning!
We cannot build on the dreams of the past
Since History is catching up faster than fast.
***


RED ROSE CALLING 

listen soulfully to
 the whistling rose
a red sizzling bride with
 the fresh florescence
of the springtime fire 
 lovingly cuddled within 
her nuptial bed of balmy leaves
 laughing with the endless
kisses of nature’s tumescence
 with her open arms 
for the beloved or in the
 cascading warmth of 
a mother’s embrace while
 she softly unfurls her
coy quivering petals with
 her deepest secrets in coitus
with the blessed bees abuzz
 nestling in her amorous gaze
 as she glows with the soft touch
 of the coaxing green hands
in her bridal bower making
 this redness a song aloud
of love’s godly cadence 
 with the echoing chords 
of human essence
***


AWRY DREAM 

ah! a jolt to wake me up
 from my aphrodisiac sleep
there I go and force myself
 into the entrenched grooves
the twists the turns the quirky pain
 of must-be worked out nothings
for daily life and living
 of having to heat up
the late-night food
 to prepare a bed for
someone else to snooze
 to draw the curtains or 
switch the dim light on
 to pull up someone else’s 
quilt and then be gone

to chop the onions or 
 spice up the food while
 my burning eyes spill out flood
 to slice the veggies often
with cut fingers oozing blood
 or burning oil scarring my face
when singed marks remain
 to vanish after months or years 
never counted through joys or tears 

pushed out of my comfort zone
 once twice thrice forever
to create a salubrious zone
 for those not myself but some other 
 
I play my role pretty fast and well
 like a cowherd or agonized village belle
brought up in these times but caged in
 a tutored mind-set of days far gone by
seems like dark aged static pre-history 
 or when Time has gone elsewhere to play free.

waking up before sunrise
 going to bed after sundown
late later latest last
 the hard chores which have 
chiselled sculpted etched me
 with a never-ending blast
 lacerated me into a full being
other than my own self
 while I live and die every moment 
drowned as a void pearl shell

deep in the ocean floor
 floating with my rudderless boat
 my treasure trove of songs, books, poems
 and unfulfilled fanciful remembrance
 as the cool silver moon winks
 once in a while looking at me
 and through the clouds smiling
 as if his angelic dwarfs scintillating
would soon coax and sweep me off my feet
to my very own Wonderland with rhymed beat.
***


 RED AND BLUE 

poetry pushes me through
eerie grooves and magic grottos 
across dark shimmery gleams of
cryptic lightnings which
strike me yet do not do so ----

I live with my love-filled heart
 where the songs of heaven rule
 and my enchanted rhapsodies
 in the drift of the breeze
lilt across diverse clusters
of islands torn apart ----

I still pacify my reigning beloved
across the benevolent blue 
I hold his heart in my scented 
clasp while my singing lips
kiss his soul in lambent hue ----

the silvery slants of the rains
 drench me while I swoop and 
 swim in arcane silence across
 the oceans in zestful glee 
with love beams where the horizon
in red intense glory marries 
me in the restless heaving sea.
***

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