Vandita Dharni is an acclaimed poet, scholar and gold-medalist from
the University of Allahabad. She has a Ph.D. degree in American Literature. She
has authored three anthologies, Quintessential
Outpourings, The Oyster of Love
and Rippling Overtures. Her articles,
poems and stories have been published in journals like Criterion, Setu,
Borderless journal, Ruminations, GNOSIS, Hell Bound Publishing House and
International magazines like Immagine and Poessia, Synchronised Chaos, Silver
Birch Press, Inner Child Press, Raven Cage E-zine, Sipay, Fasihi and Guido
Gozzano. She is also the proud recipient of the World Poetic Star Award 2019
and the Rabindranath Tagore Award 2020.
The Clairvoyant’s Cigar
In forbidding circles,
night treads on clouds of smoke
convulsively flickering in a candle’s flame.
Hollow voices ricochet near fjords
Life’s sojourn aching to a close
in Cannabis moments vapourized.
Lost in the crepuscule haze of solitude,
a broken winged butterfly
flutters its paper wings-
life’s breath, one deceitful breath
enshrouded by the hostile mist- dark
on a suffocatingly treacherous night.
“Hussshhhhhh!”
the clairvoyant vapes
predicting the highs and lows,
now sunk in the residue of waxen stubs-
false promises he spouts to himself,
snuffed out by his voodoo chants-
“Husshhh!” I see frail fingers resting
replicating burnt out cigar ends
imprinting crimson on jaded greenbacks.
A night drunk in marijuana haze
Life swims full circle. “Hush!”
A New Identity
I transcend binaries- real and acquired
Clutching hemispheres of creeds
in granular sediments ensconced.
My apprehensions wrapped in an orhni
reflect the myriad hues in my eyes,
hope braided along the nape of my neck
and tattooed in my veins.
Fingers morph into numerals
unconstrained by ethnocentrism
nor sealed in equations of identity.
Petals of my being burnished by an alien sun
on a distant landscape. I introspect, ‘Is this
me?’
A myriad shlokas echo my unified sensibilities
congregating into memories, both native and
alien
and as I assimilate the identities- they merge
into one
A sentinel lamppost squints
blinding those numbers away
Leaving me at the confluence
of a new culture poised at the threshold.
I scratch the parenthesis off the slate
blurring my apprehensions etched beneath
Those fated numbers dauntless again
dew drops scratching my windowpane,
hexagonal patterns of a hybrid consciousness
blurred in the hologram of my mind.
Those caterpillar lines on streets paved with
snow
carry me into backwaters of my past, I grow
no longer constrained in a sufi’s chant
nor complacent in the dust of my ancestral
legacy
A new identity stitches me into the folds of
its skin,
I feel the rush of humanity that comforts me
in its warm embrace, divorced from the din.
An Autumnal Night
Cardamom lids dim their shutters
as another day hems to a close- gently,
purposefully
in the echoing strains of a songbird.
Its trill sits upon the twilight haze
in the breath rasping in my chest
or the warm mercurial drops of solitude
that drench tarantula thoughts.
Muddled, befuddled in an hourglass
a fire dies in the throbbing
of an autumnal night, still suckling
on maple leaves with withered breasts
Bleeding its woes red into gravitational
allegiance
Hastening infringements to retract
the moon’s repressive act
of waxing to a fulness
or imprinting footsteps of a hostile winter
that treads on dampened dreams,
Stifled in nets of a forgotten tide-
the tide that only returns its dead
to a watery bedrock of algae,
in dreadful bronze, coal and pewter grey.
The sea is their abode for dreams,
a womb birthing stillborn foetuses
aborted in rivers – bleeding, breathing
While the sun filters through lids
rock cold in comatose, it glimmers
covered in the shroud of a misnomer
stretching, straining to resurface.
The Weeds
(In Memory of Edgar Allen Poe 1809-1849)
Into corners, I entrust weeds entangled
in what lies within and without
in the sifting and incipient drifting-
the debris of a withered life,
Compressed in pages of poesy
dog earing his past, blighted
bursting open- a montage of images
desecrating the lattice of his overgrown
solace.
Here, rests the shovel
snipping Spear thistles unwarranted
those that germinated into cycles of deceit
glowering at their rival’s defeat.
The fire of Prometheus seething in Rufus’ eyes
blinking through dank tunnels
where Oizys held sway
Strife slithering through insalubrious pockets
drenched in sweat and alcohol
a containment zone of mortified fears.
Whose life I contemplate?
I look at the pauper’s grave-
My nascent tears nestle there
and in those dog-eared pages demystified
I see myself, a part of me dead.
Then and now, the time he lived
I thrust the obituary ruthlessly bold
thriving on Rufus’ weeds of acrimony
as Edgar’s blue veins run ice cold.
Vandita Dharni, your poems are fantastic as always. You are indeed a great poet and writer, I loved each poem, and cannot decide which is better. Hearty Congratulations
ReplyDeleteThankyou so much ❤️
DeleteBEAUTIFUL POEMS
ReplyDeleteENJOYED READING THEM
WAITING FOR THE NEXT
Thankyou you very much dear!❤️
Delete