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| Kushal Poddar |
The War, Shadow and The Worms
The weather warms, the weather
cools, and the aid workers worry
about more than just the people.
Worms arrive at the war fields.
The other night one fills
a shadow orphaned
because its flesh, long gone,
left no dirt for it. No dirt
means a shadow doesn't grow
into a plant and be born
again as love.
The aid to the flesh came late.
One worker regrets.
Worms eat the rest.
A splash of rain washes
the shadow selves.
***
Iron
Bleeding traverses
zones, time and lives.
I see the cut on my
father's green thumb
but fail to see mine.
Which day is it anyway?
His death has blanked
another anniversary.
I celebrate with some moonshine.
Throwing the empty bottles
against a poster advertising
some psychic births fireflies.
The crickets in the nooks
of my head sing hard, drain me.
A stupor dawns within.
Blood tastes like nothing
except a scent as if I am iron.
***
A Rendezvous With Rain
Yes, I shaved, rain. I am
your scratch-pole this night.
A rickshaw passes us.
The horn asks why I love monochrome.
Who doesn't like black and white?
In thousands rain blooms,
in dark, in light, and if I breathe hard
it bursts, burns the skin of the lane.
Tonight is a mixed media metaphor.
Tonight ceases to care, make any sense.
Gasoline floats on the rain puddles,
and its rainbows. Objects fly inside
the closed houses.
I hear the rain fainting. Will you help me
to carry it on our shoulders? Let's catch
the long bus with rectangles, yellow
and prescient,
buy a ticket to the last stop, and then let's hitchhike
to the town of water, its home, where no one misses it.
We shall return and the city will belong to the rain.
***
Shooting A Wish
On the brown and black arc
at its height the road
stops, stoops and the lights
trigger its vertigo.
My daughter desires to find
a suitable star, falling, and I
find her a confusion box
of confiscated effulgence.
I find the dream logs
and the necessities, ask her,
"What does a shine mean to you?"
We take the next tram, steal
two window seats. We cast
our popcorns outside.
The white and edible sparks
may make some wish upon them.
I say, "Wishes always shots upward.”
***
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