Poetry: Rajnish Mishra

Phoenix Rises Again

There’s no logic in the land of emotions where tears drop
without explanation. I am attached to my past, keep pushing
my present into it; sucking my future into my present time.

When I saw him trying to severe himself from his past, I felt the pain
of his effort in his words and at his face. A sure connect, I lived
that pain and then it happened. Emotions swept my feet
clean from under me as I observed them flow silently, fiercely.  They came
and I embarrassed myself in public, after a long time.

But men don’t cry!

I knew they’d come, those tears, just a second before they came
There was a chain of reactions that drew drops out and logged them
on the lenses. They’d leave their outline on drying, so I wiped
the lenses clean while the liquid and the emotions that sent
it there were fresh and alive.

From premonition to the actual wiping live emotions.
What stays behind is the guilt of letting the secret out; the
fear that someone would ask about it.
For men don’t cry.

It’s only thrice, or four times in his adult life that a man cries.
How many times can a phoenix die, and rise from the ashes?

​

Death came visiting

Death came visiting: far away.
Death surprises me even today,
after so many exposures, closures.
I still don’t know how to react to it,
how to respond; how to talk about it,
how to condole. My mind keeps running away,
keeps reaching towards those deaths, those dead,
and those left behind.
Their death close or distant, but definite,

like mine.  

 

I don’t think so

You say, "Don't write about what happened with you".
I say, “You are right, albeit, there’s a little problem,
what do I write about then? Is it okay if I write
about what is happening now or will happen when I’m gone?”

You say. "Don't tell me your feelings, for what you think is not poetry,
Not yet". I couldn’t agree more, but I must say it now
that I feel so venal when I don’t tell you truly my feelings
only to save a poem, as if I care more for my poems
and less for my feelings, and yours!

You say "Don't reconstruct your gloomy, long-buried childhood".
“Right again” I say, “Who wants to read what happened
to a small child some three centuries ago, unless,
of course, they feel that his past is their past too?”

And then you say, "Don't shift back and forth between
the mirror and your fading memory”.
I don’t think I agree with this one.
No.
I don’t think I agree with this one.
I…
um… don’t think.

​

 
Rajnish Mishra is a poet, writer, translator and blogger born and brought up in Varanasi, India and now in exile from his city. His work originates at the point of intersection between his psyche and his city. He edits PPP Ezine.