Tell me
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Because I haven’t been able to figure out
Whether it’s just enough to watch the stars in the unfading skies,
Or is it that you have to write your name with diamond blotches of ink?
Is it enough to walk barefoot on rain-bathed damp earth?
Or is it that I have to chase dreams not knowing if it’ll ever be true?
Maybe the magic lies in the chase,
Maybe in the elasticity of dreams,
Or wondering what lies beyond the realm of reality, inside which we are trapped.
Do the stars see us and write poems about us too, like we do for them?
Maybe the yearn to touch the earth
Is a longing to be amidst its nursing heart.
How ironical then, when I turn to dust and sleep on the soft earth’s bed,
I won’t be alive to feel it.
So tell me, tell me,
what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Brinda Das
Global Duncans, beware!
Too much of devotion
Signs a thief
Or, a skilled poseur
Who digs deepest holes in walls
To loot master’s wealth
Or shoot arrows at his chest
To be rich with snatched prestige…
Weird sisters spring erect
Stimulating
Mackbeths to kill Duncans
In cold blood
Every day and night,
Melodramas follow
Peaceful lands get stained with blood
Intellectual oceans get filled with mud.
Conscience fails to catch traitors
Creatures with chameleon’s nature
Featured always as valiant!
Villains know no light
Only darkest might,
No innovation
No motivation
For noble original creations
Shallow are their minds’ depth.
Indifferent Duncans get killed,
In societies
In organisations
Government or private equally
In innocent elders’ realms
Many invisible Mackbeths roam.
O’ Global Duncans, beware!
We need peace and progress
No deprivation
No slavery to tyrants!
Simplicity should not be weakness,
Only truth will prevail, poseurs fall.
Bipul Chandra Kalita
Bless us
Amphan heavy winds on east; locust swarm moves on west
Entire India suffers from COVID
Oh! God bless us how to avoid.
We know new human mistakes; pain lead life with aches
Not to spare us from nature; take us to the wonderful future
We did waste tasks in the past
Fabulous days we lost; we sleep with fear whole night
Lost bright on faces and delight
Satisfy whole human dreams; to see each and every glooms
Oh! God bless green to the earth
To live happy and great mirth.
Prasad Babu PSV
My hand will pop up
once again
From churning of oceans time and again,
Amidst the tsunamis of horrifying magnitude,
My hand will pop up once again,
That is responsible for complete makeover
Of this rough-cut world, initially;
When any earthquake will occur,
Destroying the crust of Mother Earth, or
Any volcano will erupt with a gurgling
Noise, my hand will pop up
Displaying the immeasurable strength of my inner self;
When there is a full moon, and
Stars are hiding, my hands will appear
On the distant horizon defying
The supremacy of moon in the sky;
This is the hand of labourer
Which makes the world worthy of living;
Its power can’t be challenged by anyone,
Whether died of hunger or mowed down
By a running train or truck or bus,
It will pop up again and again,
Like a phoenix, it will rise from the ashes.
Rakesh Chandra