Sanket Mhatre (Voices Within 2023)

Sanket Mhatre’s first book of cross-translated poems, ‘The Coordinates Of Us’ won the prestigious Raza Foundation Grant after being shortlisted at iWrite2020 at Jaipur Literature Festival. His poems have appeared in anthologies such as Wives, Indian Literature, Yearbook of Indian Poetry In English 2022, Shape Of A Poem, The Well Earned, Home Anthology by Brown Critique, as well as literary magazines such as Punch, Borderless, Muse India, Madras Courier, The Usawa Literary Review, Men Matters Online and others. His second poetry collection titled, ‘A City Full Of Sirens’ was recently published by Hawakal.

 

 

Fractured

 

We speak in a language

fractured -

by time

splintered through distance.

With each new day

we close a door

morph into updates

Our heartbeats are negligible blips

Emptiness festers

an undergrowth in the arteries

A virus that cannot be spoken in words

 

Each day, we ask,

a perpetual question - 

How many more days

till we shut all the doors?

 

Undivided

 

One moment can be refracted into seven idle truths

Seven layers of our being, distilled every single time

Seven coherent possibilities staring at you, wide eyed

While you choose one, like picking a berry from a basket

Unravelling the skin of the clock to find another time hidden beneath

There are seven ways of me & seven ways of you

Meeting at seven different places in seven different cities

Saying seven different things or thinking of seven different poems

I have found one of them, when you took off from the airport

(The one I’m writing right now and awaiting the other six from you)

I have kept this truth, as close to me, as your lips were, a few days back

Before it splits into another moment

Contemplating my birth in seven different ways to fulfil your body.

In a single, undivided night.

 

When Apocalypse Ends

 

The world won’t stop and think. The cogs won’t be oiled for a week.

Beaches would be full of naked bodies swinging for another chance at life.

There will be party. One world will abandon the other.

While finding balance, we would lose some too.

Once deserted airports will witness flash-mobs of the quarantined

Now a gated community with special privileges – they had suffered the most.

The virus and the fear. They are a new caste who will fight reservation someday.

Suspicion will flutter from windows and balconies, the last of the dregs, kept to dry and wilt.

Science will vacay in exotic places. Miami. Seychelles. Recently opened Europe.

The cure is now served in almost everything – from alcohol to chocolates

Injected into generations for a virus free species.

Lovers, once separated, will make furious love in rooms across the globe.

The chaos of finding joy will skyrocket as much as stock prices.

The world will stand back on its feet, and count its bruises, before saying, “not much.”

Nobody will know that this was a silent war waged to divide humanity

Until the next apocalypse strikes.

---

Setu, November 2023 :: Voices Within 2023

Sanket Mhatre: Poetry (Voices Within 2021)

Sanket Mhatre is a well-known bilingual poet writing in English & Marathi. He has curated Crossover Poems – a multilingual poetry recitation sessions that unifies poets from different languages on a single platform. Apart from this, Sanket Mhatre has been invited to read at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Poets Translating Poets, Goa Arts & Literature Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival, Vagdevi Litfest and Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan. Besides curation & recitation, Sanket Mhatre has also created Kavita Café – a Youtube Channel that combines cinematic vision with visual poetry. He’s also a columnist who contributes regularly to leading news daily in India.

 

HIGHRISE

 

The upper lip is a penthouse deck 

Illuminated by the first sunrise over the city

Promenade pleats that lead to wine trails

The footprints of my wanting kisses strewn

Sky high

and yet filled with the first scent

Of the cave paintings in Bhimbhetka

But 

The lower lip is etched in the earth of time

Blossoming like an orchard of green apples

A sky upturned

Created to defy gravity

Even before it was discovered

 

THE ROCK

 

Once a blind child

Playing along a river bank with his friends found a strange rock

Like a story amongst a thousand stories on a cloudless day.

The rock had something carved on it

His hands saw what most eyes couldn’t

It was a name. Someone’s.

Intrigued, his hands began deciphering the shimmering, wet alphabets

Nature’s font isn’t meant for those who can see but for those who can feel

“Allah!” The child’s echo rose like smoke.

Do you know the rock it was carved on?

You.

Completing the destiny of your name.

 

HISTORY

 

There's a reason why history chooses 

to repeat itself 

We believe in erasure

History believes in posterity 

To that end, our struggles 

with our past brave on. 

Maybe, history wants us 

to remember more and forget less

Rethink alphas while we are moving 

breakneck into omegas

Hear the language that arises 

from belly and beaks 

Unlearn grammar of a self-made world

History patiently waits for us

In the corner of a room, in the dark

for a century before it strikes.

History isn't desperate.

Just clinical and disciplined. 

It has learnt its lesson from nature. 

---

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

Sanket Mhatre (Voices Within)

Sanket Mhatre is a poet, columnist, curator and Marathi lyricist. He was the chief assistant director of Kavyotsav 2001: the first bilingual poetry reading festival of Marathi and Kannada poets. His title song for the daily soap 'Radha Hi Bawari' was awarded the best song at Zee Alpha Gaurav. Crossover Poems is his brainchild that unifies poets from multiple languages embracing sensibilities unique to every language. Sanket Mhatre has performed at multiple festivals such as GALF, Vagdevi LitFest in Orissa and Kala Ghoda Literature Festival to name a few.

Where You Belong

If I ever knew you belonged 

to the corners

I would hide the screens of my eyes 

and just keep the corners empty

Squeezing out the last of my tenant tears

If I knew you belonged to the corners

I would keep my crevices intact 

and let my body peel away into the weather

Intersect lines on my forehead to create extra room for a rain-soaked day

If I knew you belonged to the corners

I would light up the space between my toes

Place a lamp on the seating within my navel

Decorate the concaves of my armpits 

with the scent of your lips

If I knew you belonged to the corners

I would build a house full of corners

Erasing rooms and erecting walls

That never square up

Leaving a green angle where you'd reside

If I ever knew you belonged to the corners

I would create tiny hamlets on the fringes of this country that nobody 

would ever pass by

Unname a few towns

Build roads, each taking you to a new corner

If I knew you belonged to the corners

I would inhabit the last planet in the galaxy

And make edifices that shy away 

even from the moons

If I knew you belonged to the corners

I would merge all the corners in the skies

For all your births and deaths to culminate 

So,

Let me redraft the symmetries 

of this space

While you stay in the folds 

of my dreams

In the meanwhile, 

let the skin of my existence 

Be a makeshift corner 

where you belong

Truth Could Be A Poem

Truth could be a poem you never wanted to read

Lines that could punch a hole in your stomach

While you sit by the poolside taking in the blow

Truth could be a chat window romance passed off as poetry

Potent enough to asphyxiate you with the brutality of their romance

Truth could be a blatant realization that your words were repeated

Once before

by a different lover in a different city in a different room

Truth could be a love poem

Like a bullet shot through an existing wound

Or an iron rod inserted through your rectum

With no recourse

Truth is knowing that truth has so many possibilities

And one of them is you.

The Impermanence Of It All

We are a perfect imbalance.

Thin line of absolute abandonment

Twists the gut inside

Ends up dripping out a poem,

One drop of blood at a time.

Maybe, you have it all figured out

Maybe, this is for me to write

After emerging from the pits of uncertain hollows

Not with the joyful completion of a poet

But with the suffering of a half-accomplished writer who can lose anything, anytime

(Let me tell you, I have dealt with this before and I know that)

Your impermanence is designed around my words

You do it with the seasoned hand of a mechanic in a car shop

You can open the flap of my chest anytime, check the wires that caused me to stop

You can rev me and put me to a standstill any minute.

Some days, you are an eternal beacon

On the rest, you have flung me far and deep with absolute certainty of never finding

The tense of your feelings, changed.

And this might as well lead us to the end.

This childish shape shifting that you think neurotic joy is more painful

Painful to cut the chord, disengage the wires, replace the ignition

But you are a child, never told what bending of the heart can do

You were given a free hand to deal with flesh & blood

You understood early: Pain causes poetry.

And you designed an entire curriculum around it.

But you don’t know one simple thing yet –

Cars do come with self-start function now. 

---

Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020