EARTH AND I

Yes, I am Mother Earth
From my blood sweat and mucus was born
A ball of fire
Water, soil, moist fragrance of a magical planet
On being born she said, I am the one who is your mother
If so, who came first, the earth or the woman?
Woman came first or was it this profound earth?
Maybe, maybe everything is impossible
I am the daughter of this Earth
Maybe during a magical union between the Earth and the Sun-god
I was made out of the X and Y chromosome
I am primeval, I am borderless, I am reckless
I have come here again and again propelled by dreams
In my own womb I have nurtured every atom of the earth
The earth and I are siblings sometimes
Sometimes I am mother, sometimes daughter
In this way secretly within our blood
Love grows ecstatic
We live on clasping each other-
Mother-daughter, sisters, Earth and I.

Mallika Sengupta (More Poems By this Author >>)

Blood

Blood oozed out of my black-ink pen
It snaked out and soaked my white paper
As each word I wrote
Became a blood smeared blur
Whoever knew the old pen to have had so much blood in it!
It looked so like any innocent pen
But every time I picked it up to write these lines
A blob of blood
Glistened like rose red ink
Pure and simple gore
Till I felt submerged in flowing human blood
Gushing undeterred through the rivers of time

How much blood will I have to spill
To map the fault lines
That criss-cross the depths within
To script the unseen terrain
That traumatize every living moment
The spiralling air suffocates with the stench of human blood 
Crimson words born on the white page 
Appear like bloody bombast
They scar the pristine page
Torn from the dark uterus
Of deathless doom
Offsprings of love's labour, sadly lost in gruesome lust.

Sanjukta Dasgupta (More Poems By this Author >>)

DURGA

Strange are your ways and wide
Death-strung and dark yet drenched in light
Blood-bracing brown flesh wrapped in pride
Brood must you on mortal plight
Spirit-immortal bride?

Wed-yoked, vermilion-dappled, dawn to dusk
O' hearth-stoking love-throbbing body of fire
Dumb with rod-wrecked-wrath you bask
Silently, deep in the fury of the flaming pyre
Draped in myth and damask!

Sickle and Plough and Hoe
Bare-brandished cleave the blighted ground
Drouth-struck and dry. Tear-pangs of Woe
Caress the bone-encrusted ground
Blasted by winds that blow

Lashed strong O' Soul, you strive against the tide 
Of grief shoreless- heart-binding courage with Hope
Ah! Till earth slough-shifts and slide
Under your shuffling and stamping, as you gasp and grope
Drowned in the dark, my bride!

Shimanta Bhattacharyya (Introduction of this Author >>)

The Paper Boat

The paper boat
I set adrift
In my childhood
On the flooded road
Of a metropolis
Has just arrived
This rainy evening
At my doorstep
Under full sail
Inviting me 
To set out on it
For a nouvelle
Adventure.

Aju Mukhopadhyay (More Poems By this Author >>)

TENDENCIES 

I saw a flower
Plucked to please a lover
I saw a dame
Sacrifice life in love's game
I saw a pious bud
Placed at the feet of God
I saw a youth stake
Life for his parent's sake
The tendency was strong
Long ago, when I was young.

By the advent of time
Tendencies changed the tune
Flowers replaced by fanciful glitter
Platonic love with sensual pleasure
Pleasing Gods with rich gifts
Playing with lives with selfish rifts.

Where are we heading at this rate?
A question that often agitates, yes.

T. Ashok Chakravarthy (More Poems By this Author >>)

MEMORY TAKES WINGS

Where did they come from, the poems?
from the written word : tormentor of feelings?
the spoken, sometimes a defaulter?
the weather-beaten rose,
in early morning's awakened holocaust
the grey dusty Radiant Reader
plugging its way to school with monotony?

The school hall brooding over boys
in grey-green uniforms . . . 
messiah of sad spirits


They still brood these poems
Music of lives, my life

And
Memory saunters . . . 
Takes wings.

Ananya.S.Guha (More Poems By this Author >>)

Unspeakable


In Fallujah
a family buries
their nine-year old son
in the garden
among the eggplant
and sweet pepper
Shrapnel in his stomach
The U.S. Marine patrol
on the other side
of the clay wall
A bright red cascade
of bougainvillea

Here a raucous crow
in the silk tree
calls and from up the bluff
first one then another
answers
A murder of crows
black beads 
of an avian rosary
Until the last
audible crow
raises its voice
and all sound dies

Christina Pacosz (Introduction of this Author >>)

Far From Home
(The Law of the Streets)


I know where all the houses were
On the streets that are still there

The streets rise on their own hands
Their level of hatred their hands

Our mountains¹ teeth
Have been pulled to pave them

Paid evidence has proved them
To be the only road

On these streets no law
May overtake the guilty

The innocent still look for the signs
Taken down long ago

The streets lead away, away
From the houses no longer there

I am far from my home
That was on the streets still here

Margie (MTC) Cronin (More Poems By this Author >>)

Trees in Winter

The trees lean against the December cold,
still, as if fasting.
Their branches sleep,
point in many directions
and never choose one.

I come here from many places
never finding where the road I chose led,
though it carried me for years,
went through a city and beyond
while friends fell out of view
like clouds dispersing,
and I remember them only
when raindrops settle on the leaves
still, full, shining.

In this woods where nothing has begun
there is a stillness
like something praying.
I feel I can go back
to the place where the roads began,
see them set off in their many directions,
and wait
like a bud waits
inside a twig in winter,
remembering all it knows
and has known
before it sets out
stretching into the milky air.

Linda Benninghoff (Introduction of this Author >>)

Greenfield Butterfly Conservatory

A young man stands watching them fly 
and when they land long enough to be viewed 
they aren't as pristine--all the wings 
are ragged at the edges, but it doesn't seem 
to hurt them. There's a sign that says 
"DON'T TOUCH THE BUTTERFLIES" 
but you're allowed to let them land on you 
if that's what they want. He thinks this might 
also be the best way to deal with women. 

He remembers a story about Walt Whitman: 
how old Walt used to sit in his front yard 
rapt, watching the air and the butterflies 
would come in droves and land on him, 
covering his long grey beard and his shoulders. 
Maybe that's how god looks in heaven 
when all the bright souls have fled to cling and flutter. 

Some might say they were landing for sugar, 
that Walt had eaten cookies that day and left some crumbs. 
But those of us who've stood naked in a dark forest 
and felt the radiance as something from within 
know that love attracts love, and beauty beauty. 

The young man thinking of Whitman as a father 
fears that his soul's not yet enough 
to draw the fluttering monarchs 
from the flowers to his shoulders. 
The reactions of children make him 
ashamed of his own responses. 
He wants the butterflies to cover his whole body, 
but he wants to stop desiring it long enough 
to become a child again and achieve it. 
They gather brightly at the greenhouse ceiling 
and he stands with tears in his eyes watching, 
waiting for the power. 

Luke Buckham (Description about this Author >>)

((((( KALKI'S CRY )))))

The horse
buckles
under its hydra-headed rider
The whip waits for the lash(ed) to cry out
But head down,
helpless
hurt hides her wound
Barren, unbridled deliverance
Rivers rutted through
Wind-cast cries heedless of shaping
When the fog breaks-
riverbed-ed milk-white bones,
earth-stiffed mouths,
hooved stones,
net-scattered clamor,
rain-scared glint where titans clashed,
inbred rule (outed) still rules
No time to think/ no time/ no shelter/ No shelter
Unhinged door/ threatened ear
Shackled room/ bed no place for hiding
Screams the last thing
to conceal/ a stone-skinned heart
the last and least to heal

Healing wants wounds
Gut-given rights
Self-arisen scars for lips to decipher
Crude sighs/ obscene signs/
stilled gestures that stay meaning
while we shrug or wince
Question-less,
the mind stutters still/ Occipital endgame
Breath-scathed gasps sear the lungs 
Flawed, in mercy,
the pinched heart succumbs
A susurrant sutra seals itself in
Spent seeds scattered in a dismal land
A ghost-ghast stench
Wind shifted shapes rise from below 
By what we disown, 
our out-cast selves kept apart
Parting glances stilled with shame
Ricochet eyes
shot through with denial 
Burnt offerings/ signature in soot
Retrace your steps/ the road not taken
has no name
Rung staggered ladder buried too deep
Behind vigilante smoke and flame
(a shield/ a scepter/ a pronged crown?)
mountains reign


How easy 
through storm's long night
to lie South and shout
North
till the brazen peaks fall
On high Himalayan ground,
sunk in cold, foot-bare, weed-rung rocks,
a forging blood flows deep,
sustained and rooted
In morning's too-soon fierce light,
on all fours, cliff-crawlers,
sweating frost, drowning on air,
left behind to wing it home,
tell those that follow:
fallen bodies like ballots cast,
who kills more and kills
again, rules. Tell those that fall
that martyrs lie
A nation is or isn't, but people dying
Are

What the "last-seen" see
through gg ggags
and twitches… glazed scenes,
bucolic massacres
Zoomed out witness
Can't say what you see?
Bereaved/ bereft of words!
Put on a holy face
No eyes No lips. Clack those rabid
teeth and swallow, truth-teller,
blood giver, The State 
needs only one more transfusion
for you…
to bleed to death
with honor

Wayne Amtzis (Introduction of  this Author >>)

For one who is no more,
for one who painted on my wall

The tree 
in front of my window is very quiet
today
very quiet are the birds

very sad are the paintings 
hanging on my wall
the red hot spheres also 
have grown very calm

he wrote to me
I like rain very much
I will come to you 
to get wet 

In this rainy season
the painter came quietly
and
hung on my wall
as his own painting

Rati Saxena (Read Full Poem >>)