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FACE TO FACE

I command my soul face to face,
Success fights failure in a steady pace.

Raping corpses you'hv awakened death,
But could you glorify your gunpowder breath?

Ecstasies of your fatuous rifle do crave,
For the throb of brave hearts,that can't be buried under the grave. 

Sunrise and sundown are now an illusion,
War and peace in pages of history breed hysteric delution.

Your atrocities and dictatorial frown, are forgotten with the oppresive crown,
Fear detaches as a birth cord, shrivelling into a scab, brown.

Like a demented mind you always flaunder,
Your vigilant rest wants sleep, fatigued with super power.

Drunk with the spirit of the universal light
I burn my desperate flame into a fire of flight.

Corpses of our friends and foes lie bare,
They all breathe and germinate together.

© Kakoli Ghosh

It’s a wonderful feeling,touching the silky pages of this Anthogy, which is a combined poetic work of the Indian and South African poets , compiled and brought forward by the joint efforts of Dr. Amitabh Mitra and Zena Velloo John. Published by The Poets Printery, South Africa.

The collection of ‘Feminist’ poems by the women writers voices the taken-for-granted presence of love, which is available for free like light, but is never valued until darkness shrouds.

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NEW ADDRESS

Now the world is a shelter,- nameless
with a raw-wood door hanging hingeless,
which is never knocked at for an address.
The careless dusty lane of time , everknown -
has lost its way of returning home.
Moments swirl in smoky despair
from the endlessly smouldering life cigar.

Time, older than the universe
transcends the fear of ageing,
and looks back through the loopholes of leisure.
Clumsy souls touch heaps of death,- stark
as shadows grow longer and gets soaked in the dark.
The newly formed world
emerging out of pandemic chaos
lingers with the starry silence in ethos.

Wisps of hope billows out of gutted breath,
life murmurs like habitual phrases of praise;
washed and ironed remnants of oblivion
folded carefully with disappearing time
recedes into the simplicity of fading.
Fragments of trapped dream
bloom on the debris again sprouting green.

Like an excavated civilization
the new life peers with hesitation
through the latticed hope in lifelong restrain.
Long silenced cries are once wept aloud again;
mysteries of life scribbles on time
new songs of longing and love still chime.
Levitating freedom sweeps all masks of fear,
wayward soul breaks the cage of barrier.
The poem NEW ADDRESS has been published in the anthology ‘New Normal – Poems from the Pandemic’, edited by Joie Bose and published by Excellor Books, in association with Oxford Book Store, India and Poetry Paradigm.

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THE BLIND GOD

PC: Koyena Ghosh
My shattered shadow pines for my form,
as fragrance seeks to fill a vacant trance,
my dreams I set ablaze to adore the norm,
in floral hues, blooms the scent of silence .

The old streets of the ancient town
take my chariot astray through the hesitant traffic,
I don't look simply at the passing crowd
as I can clearly see their frustrated shroud.

Vulgar details I seek not anymore,
thousand shades hide in prime colours;
tides and waves of despair, I ignore
as happiness of a voyage rests peacefully ashore.

© Kakoli Ghosh

Published in Glomag, May,22

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WHERE DID I GO…?

PC: Kausik Das
Sometimes...
staring at these empty benches
I try to recall, where did I go that day?
Now, in this park I come often
to collect fallen feathers of rare birds 
whom I've seen never.
I take a quick glance
at the cardboard faces, talking, smiling,
passing by these green benches
through the autumn lane.

I hear the lotus lake lapping
just beyond the green wastebin.
I vividly remember the clanking
of the trailing away train, its tail light,
carrying you away from my sight
slowly and peacefully along the track;
the shining railway 
merging into the distant dark.
But where did I go then,
when, the sky dropped the curtain?

The benches count my feathers;
the crisp brown leaves drop faster
than the yellow ones, that escape grip
levitating unsure of how to waft dead,
where to go ahead, falling weightless.
A dead fish floating past the reeds
was caught by a dreamy eyed cat;
a flying kingfisher lost a feather
in its sudden flight to disappear.
Where did I go, still I can't remember.

©Kakoli Ghosh

Published in Glomag, edited by Glory Sasikala, March’22 issue

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DIAMONDS ARE RARE

Out of the snow covered peace
scream my scattered skeleton pieces
yearning through the wuthering winds 
to merge into a whole emptiness;
dreamy as turth, proving a real lie.

The flakes of my unconquerable soul
cry as silently as the crucified Love
in the snow sleets of the bleeding sky,
the bat evening hangs upside down  
from a parapet of a blasted hospital.

Leaving behind the menaced lanes,
the ruined square that leads nowhere,
I rise out of Love's aborted embryo,
unbowed and imperishable as soul.
I liberate my fate from pit of destiny.

The shards of a broken mirror
never forget to reflect, whatever,
but lies as dangerous as a knife
resting in a crafted scabbard of ages;
as hatred silenced into frozen peace.

Pain, that have not cried aloud,
a flame blown off when still in flicker, 
dying, standing in a queue of life 
for bread, or melting snow for water,
such stunned deaths deny all horror.

Charged with unwept tear of anguish,
staring eyes of bewildered corpses
turn into diamond in the mass graves;
unearthed coal masters the power,
diamond shapes the ultimate crown.

©Kakoli Ghosh

Published in the anthology : “Poetry for Ukraine”, edited by Robin Barratt, published by The Poet.

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ONCE MORE

PC: Kakoli Ghosh
From the depth of oblivion,
do come back once again, I pray,
shaping  the void of my illusion 
in your form of loving array.
Let your serendipitous stride
shimmer like flakes of pride
on my flowing river of night,- dark,
carrying the depth of tomorrows' spark.

Do come back once more,
like a truth deeper than fact,
to leave me behind once again though,
like the golden flames of fire, pure
leave the smouldering ashes, for sure.
One day my relentless yearning for you
will unite in your own eternal hue.

I will conceive God in my tomb,
an innocent hint of flesh and blood, 
throbbing in a  developing mound;
God will breathe in my womb.
My love child, will born free in your serendipity profound,
in the primordial joy of creation,
breathing throughout ages of separation.

©Kakoli Ghosh

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BLOOMING WOUNDS

Are you bewildered to see
my wounds blooming!
See how the deep sores of adversity
swathed in love, has started to heal, 
and the leaking pride of death, seal!

Look at the desperate blood
that had gushed out once like flood,
now choking the birth canal of the sun
with wads of gunpowder clods;
from heaven unheard prayers return.

Leaning on each other's shoulder
success and failure share a lit cigar
in between their confident fingers.
Trudging through the remnants of war
they stumble on the rubbles of power.

Fatigued graves gently smother
the wind pipe of violence and terror. 
Burning and fuming patience,raped,
gives birth to another naked sun. 
Breath meets life at a sudden turn.

Featured in POETRY FOR MENTAL HEALTH (12-02-2022) https://www.poetryformentalhealth.org/

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MILES

An elusive presence, swayed like a paper rose,
visceral in lavender-grey
at the wind-washed doorway
of the running train; speed tamed
miles of rhapsody into prose. 

Dusk behind the Agra Fort 
was dressed in whispering gold dust,
fragrant with ancient incarnations.
The thirsty sequins of her flowy skirt
absorbed moist sandy dirt.

Footfalls of speeding time ran
along the tracks, - old.
The journey, clung as a skeleton
to the metallic miles, - cold.
Colour of wind turned mauve.

The black scarf of absence
caressed the paper-rose presence.
Green tresses of the flowing wind among trees
traced the brows of the Taj, -
possessed by anguish of blue ease.

Yard after yard of stolen dreams
lay squared among the vast expanse
of shimmering dissolved pride.
Treasured absence whispered silky breath,
warm, on the shoulders of sightless presence.

©Kakoli Ghosh

Published in GLOMAG, October 2019

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THE LAST BREATH

PC: Kausik Das
After the prolonged living
through hopeless medicinal assurances,
blue silence creeps cold
through the network of veins,
until the last breath blooms unnoticed.

Divine hymns chant peace,
White flakes of heavenly bliss
turns grey, on its way
through layers of faithless surrender
settling old scores with embarrassed God.

Now the last breath breathes a prayer,-
like an extinguished flame - smoky, tearful,
that can be passed through,
but can be held never
in spite of thousand clenches of despair.

The morning star on the upper lipline
of the ageless tomorrow will glow
as a beauty spot, – caressed
and kissed by the lazy dawn,
until the golden-shower tree declares the morn.

© Kakoli Ghosh

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খোঁজ

PC: Kausik Das
আলোর খোঁজে, করেছি আঁধারে প্রবেশ, 
রাতের মত পুড়ছে অসীম সময়
স্বর্ন শিখা জ্বলছে অলক্ষ্যে, অপার, অশেষ;
দেখ আমার আর পড়েনা কোন ছায়া,
পার হয়ে যাই যতো রেশমী মায়া,
পড়ে থাকে পিছে আমার সকল ক্লেশ।

স্বপ্নের পিছুডাক বোঝেনা অনন্ত আঁধার,
অগ্নিহীন শিখায় জ্বলে হাজার প্রত্যাশা,
ছাই হয়ে উড়ে যায় সকল কর্মভার,
চেনা নামে ডাকেনা আর মর্চে ধরা হতাশা।
এখানে তো নেই কোনো পথ চাওয়া, 
মনখারাপের সুর তাই হয়না আর গাওয়া।

এ আঁধার জ্বলে  আপন আলোয় নিশিদিন,
অন্তরের আলোয় ঘুচবে যত ব্যর্থ কালো,
চলার পথে রইবে পড়ে ব্যাস্ত ধুলো,
আমার মুক্তি ফুটবে তারায় তারায় অন্তহীন;
আলোর খোঁজে হবে স্বাধীন জ্বলন্ত আঁধার,
দেখা হবে নিজের সাথে হয়তো আবার।

© Kakoli Ghosh

কবি নিশীথ সিংহ রায় সম্পাদিত কবিতা সংকলন “প্রতিভার অন্বেষণে” প্রকাশিত।