Poetry: Gautham Pradeep

Gautham Pradeep

Poem 1 - Tales of new

I watch the sky turn red

and the roaring sea underneath.

Her disposition still torn at the seashore.

Wonder I those colourful yesterdays, 

rising into the morning mist. 

Must I be high or low? 

Look I into her eyes, 

and she unto the sky. 

Fresh blood under the scanty clouds, 

walk I into the oblivion. 

Walk in and out,

down the rabbit hole. 

Minds whispering in the dark,

a lane I once stepped on. 

Seashore still blue in its nightly ascend,

she and her perplexed looks. 

Seems hard to break this vessel,

ropes winding round the central weakness.

 

Dream I, a day in time,

mine hands end its ticking. 

Coffee mug empty and 

the engravings still green.

Hearing the ode, 

she wails in her evening fancies.

Of days, 

that still exist.

And those,

that I long for. 

Mortal we, 

and the green we step on. 

Till another day, 

when the bell shall ring again.

***

Poem 2 – Opiate me 

Sitting on the mellow sands, 

warm winds steal my sanity.

Wind that whispers into auricle of mine, 

breaks the ladder to my treehouse.

I watch the path unravel from its winter sleep.

Rather the delirious me bewildered,

under the fateful evening gloom. 

Taking the inward flow of youth, 

a leaf of green now lay in brown. 

Feel I the frigid tomorrow, 

forever tied to thought endured.

Never once the rain did freeze, 

in caldera of man that did resist the fever.

Encapsulated is the emotion within,

letting go of the introspection now and then.

Through the waterfall white,

eyes of mine search for the long-lost cavern,

into which the feeble voice faded,

gifting youth the harshness of experience. 

Witnessing the crumbling wall of hope, 

a land now simmers into the darkened still. 

Carried I the tender embrace,

wiping glimpses of the eastern lights. 

I stare deeper,

into eyes I need not look into.

Stealing a fragment of her existence, 

while she spies in the distance. 

She is but the unhindered moonlight, 

loitering about in the dark woods. 

Mirth which clouds the drowsy mind, 

now stays caged in a moment of undoing.

 

When will I dissolve into the eclipse?

setting free the bird in her cage. 

Pain that creeps behind my conscious lamp, 

tranquils the sea, harsh yet mellow. 

Yet, the eye that sees the rising sun, 

often laments the departure of nightly still. 

With dew on the tiniest of leaves, 

the curtain lay risen, for the ode to play out. 

A wide expanse and her burning dreams, 

midst the foliage gleaming.

It burns to ashes, 

every instant I could recollect.

And yet, I lay still,

freeing my puckered face and its innate sadness. 

Rest I in this temple of learning,

writing verses for a later day.

***

Poem 3 - I cry, I live

Cry, 

the next morn is not a bath away.

Whimper, few moments into this cataclysm.

Opened seashells and the seahorse on the evening sway.

Branched cherry blossoms, grey in the moonlit yesterdays.

Die I, 

on this solemn gulmohar high, 

falling into the arms of the albatross.

Scripts written on teary red pool of wilderness,

losing part of myself on the shifting sails.

Weep, 

for your eyes need not see the next dawn.

Weep, 

neither for the clouds looming over the willow creek,

nor for the solitude inherent since birth.

Wish I of a campfire lit, far from these dreary inns.

Regrets dark I burn, on this morn, a slumber.

Die I, 

for I lived for naught, 

a tumbleweed on the African Sahara.

Cry I, 

my last tear, 

for my daughter she must bloom.

Bloom into the fairest twilights, far away from these civilized wretches.

For they are men of pallor, herds following the growling peak.

For truth, 

she must know, 

of how pain shapes life and life breathes pain. 

Cry, 

for you are the truth,

from the blinking of your eyes to the stillness of your corpse.

***

Bio: Gautham Pradeep was born in Kerala, India. He is now pursuing his MBBS course. He tries to explore the existential dilemmas of the present generation. My poems have been published in several publications, including Spillwords press, Disabled Tales, Indian poetry review, Poets unlimited etc.

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Setu, July 2025