Member Poem

My brain is in full bloom
in the loneliness of the lock-down.
The pandemic-shaped flowers are dark.

My thought-tooth pierces my mind-shell;
poetry hatches out.
It’s a downy truth
likely to grow in the reader’s mind.
The crumpled papers lie like empty shells.

My past bin is full.
I recycle the experience.
The new product delights at least me.

There are born-poems like blooms and birds
and made-poems like plastic primroses.

I enjoy flying beyond the borders.
My verses cross the sea,
land in the heart of a foreigner.

Can my characters,
who wear dhotis and saris,
take the boiled rice and the sardine curry,
smoke beedi and drink toddy,
fight fanatically for foolish causes,
and cremate the dead,
live in the faraway Florida, London, Queensland…?
Will the native English editor fumble
in the corridors of my Indian English?
Can he see the nature and the culture of my land
in the light of his reading lamp?
Yet expectancy energizes my waiting.

First published in The Literary Hatchet.