A WOMAN: SYLVIA PLATH
Her style
her apprehensions
her poetry
mysterious
painful
convoluted
like a woman
they taught me that
there is a way
out of the mind
an exit leading somewhere
without a name
a place where all thrusts of logic
are powerless
Did you know Sylvia
you female bird dressed
in human skin
that by commuting between
the skies and the seas
you ripped the ties
trapping those like you in mortality
And did you ever stop
while searching for a word
to think that you would never die
In rags your existence
never had the riches
-in death
it does-
I read you Sylvia and I see life
I can touch your limbs
the same that got caught
around your neck
and broke your throat
I can hear the child in pain
and I know it was in your womb
that your soul brought an end
to your poetry
Surrounded by the invisible smoke
of your ashes
I hear you perpetually singing the songs
of frost and fate
of womanhood and death
In the contractions of my pain
you breathe, throb love
It is through you that
the whirlpool in my eyes
provides the remedy
healing
the absence of god in us
while living the devil in men
BARREN MOMENTS
At times
a destructive urge
takes over me
plunging my wits into
unprofitable sounds
it happens heedlessly
I indulge in the unpleasant space
of sleepless nights
my eyes lose control
of my horizon
my legs wobble
my hands freeze
and my world
evaporates into emptiness
Ineluctable it all becomes
Joycean moments perhaps
when I feel like betraying life
so that perhaps
I can be born again
with a new, vigorous smile
in a timeless universe
without that poison staining
my sheets my veins my bed
Nobody in sight
only a destructive urge
intensifying the pounding
of my heart
yet
never quite
destroying
my innocent gaze
A tale of you
Hold my hand so that
I can hear your breath
You are dying in my heart
As if your life had just
whispered
the unintelligible sound
of defeat
counted its moments
of doubts
surrendered at the smell
of dawn
You shall never talk
the love of life
Never will you know
the wisdom of a touch
Go on
open your eyes to me
never mind the words
that doomed your soul
Your search has no riddles
just the gloom of
someone else's mourning
The cycle you have drawn
has no rings, no ripples
it lacks wheels
it's faint, shallow
Cyclops were galloping
everywhere
it was a feast of eyes
but alas! you were busy
looking for a hide-out:
dreaming you were guilty
guilty of ripping in a slash
a stranger's throat
MARCEL'S FUNERAL
Stony I stood
my wrinkles trembling
my temples sweating
in disbelief
this funeral, his funeral
the worst of life's betrayals
(and they still them me
I have to trust, give love)
rewinding the pain
no cruel lover will ever
match
the coldest of winters
under the hottest of suns
Marcel, a breeze,
shot to death
by a storm (not a kiss)
the aftermath hardly matters
forever gone, he
forever alone, I
Those gazes I reached for
those friends and the others
those strangers,
hardly matter
as I cried, in anger,
for he was that embrace
squeezed within its flesh
The mirk and all the rest
hardly matter
lost its value
for he listens not
for he's gone
for it is he
who is no more
FOREVER YOU MARCEL
A youthful smile
wrapped in hopes
A sudden storm
unleashing sounds
(like a kiss)
both as tenuous
both as vibrant
both scare me
you them all
you, Marcel
Might you come
and refuse to paint my walls?
Not you
Can you remember
that steamy night
in Chinatown?
the night I left you,
didn't want your silence
sparkling, raging
in your frozen gaze
You did I know
help me draw the lines
you, the curves deviations turns
you, hidden secretive adamant
categorical tender loyal brother
you
my trials saw
but not my love
Do I waste my time
wondering
will you ever hear me
singing in our roots?
Lingering with trembling hands
forever you Marcel
LESSON OF A CHILD
Next to her picture
it reads
"Free to be herself all the time"
A label, a fate
Will anybody say she shall not
if, along a tide of convoluted wings,
her body makes its first attempts?
Free
to search to find
and to lose
countless dawns?
(Perhaps freedom is just a poem)
The child knows
her innocence goes beyond
her gaze reaches far
The woman is afraid
her wisdom is still raw
slow-witted
not sharp
slothful and diffuse
burning the root of her voice
The woman thinks
If men build their pride,
it's in her hair her style her smile
and repeatedly
she bows with dogged conceit
compromising her beauty
(which has no face, no shape)
to their whims and taste.
The child plays
and the woman is frustrated
her body
a heavy load
not a particle, clean and bright,
it's the stiff shadow of a corpse
obstructing a clear view
of the ocean
a hindrance
it is,
along the road to life
to womanhood
Always the child
hardly the woman
it's her mind collecting
rewinding, revising
never quite the same
all the data feeding
her constant search
(for freedom or for love?)
only silence can distort
and it's only then that
her voice breaks screams
unintelligibly
squandered in her brain
Can a child be a woman
a free beast
a docile pet?
Can a woman be herself
candid today
cold the next?
Could she ever be a Magdalene without a Christ
Will she satisfy men's needs
(even if she never knew them all that well)
always staring at the sky
but never glancing straight
finding riddles
contradictions
a taste of freedom perhaps
“Free to be herself all the time”
But freedom is a party
that inevitably ends
“Free” but did not know
could not feel
could not love
could not stay
buried under men's whispers
Nobody knew
Freedom
just a word
an abstraction unworthy
of a poem
of a life
A POOR PRINCESS IN A BLACK HOLE
A tear escapes out of her blooming eyes
It was the tear she should have dropped
that morning
when we all met her
and did not because
she claimed
it was too cold
and raining in the world
A beautiful little girl is crying
has no curls
sees no light
A child then
she is the Princess
we see jumping barricades today
because she doesn't see them
they aren't in her way
Still beautiful
(she now has lots of curls),
she is the same Princess who travels
with her wardrobe
her shiny dresses
who likes to sigh and vanish
as we start talking to her
for
though none of us might recall
we all saw her stepping on branches
without a horse and naked
a foamy foggy path leading her astray
(or was it perhaps only the dust
her feet left behind we saw
or could it be that a beast had cried
there before?)
How does the Little Princess feel
now that she lives inside concrete?
Does she know her life
(the illusions of her steps)
stretches beyond her grasp
squeezing, possibly crushing
the earth below her?
Little as we know,
we are convinced that the love
(whose touch her lips betrayed)
barely licked the birth
of the tear
she dropped
her gift to us
It was a pleasure
a royal joy,
-you might recall-
for us to see her silky little hands
imitating the trotting of the horse
she failed to caress when we arrive
And all because she claimed
we hadn't seen her smile!
True, it was her tear we saw:
it never fell below her lips,
you might recall
Do you remember that we only
saw her running,
and she never laughed
when she saw herself in front of us?
even when we first met her
the day she lost her horse
What happened to the smell
the taste of love
she brought
when she arrived?
Could it be buried in a mass
of wheat that never dried?
Is it gone like the needle
she lost under the marble bed
(or was it the brass table?)
on her way out?
We never asked, never knew
where she was going
We all speculated:
either she was running after
that love she told us about,
or she was flying away
like a body rolling in waves
We all agreed, remember?
that she was looking for that
lock of hair the rain
had left untouched
somewhere
We all know,
though in this we shall never
agree upon,
that we never met her:
The Princess was dead
when we arrived
AWAY, LOVERS GO
Hesitant
almost out of breath
they arrive
Insisting complaining explaining
they have come
from far away
Soon
they will gallop away
and if you hear them crying
don't you mind:
in their imaginary flight
they thought
perhaps the rain
was to blame
for they were wet
Ignorant
unlike their name
they have no memory
forget all sites
sleep under the rain
don't ask or want to know
how much I hurt
Away with you
lovers in a cage
away you go
shrinking in no nest
like newborn rabbits
away
you have no voice
how dare you expect to find
queen-like
a madonna teaching
in sparkling white?
My blood is more than red
with streaks of purple
mirk shows under my hair
too many colours in my home
and them lovers have to work
-in black and white-
and always leave
hard furious jealous
is their flight
but in their haste,
they always find
a way back
soon, they will kick with pride
and spit fire in the night:
they feel and cannot own
my flesh my heart
(both can only warm
my empty bed)
they taste but cannot buy
my lips my mouth my tongue
their magnifying glasses
none can kiss
LangLit
An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal
UGC Approved Journal – Arts & Humanities – Sr. No. 49124
Vol. 4 Issue 1 12 August, 2017
Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +91-9890290602
Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI
ISSN 2349-5189
IMPACT FACTOR – 4.23
I give but cannot sell
not even can I bow
under the invisible friction
of their efforts in lust
Away, they go
for while I sleep,
they cannot love
my breath my peace my silence
Away, they have to be
so that I learn to love
those that never knew me
and the others,
those I never met
A TALE OF YOU
Hold my hand
so that I can
hear your breath
You are dying
In my heart
As if your life has just
Whispered
The unintelligible
Sound
Of defeat
Counted its moments
Of doubts
Surrendered at the smell
Of dawn
You shall never talk
The love of life
Never will you know
The wisdom of a touch
Go on
Open your eyes to me
Never mind the words
That doomed your soul
Your search has no riddled
Just the gloom
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