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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Life, Cognition and Creativity 2021 :: Setu, January 2021