A Poem by Gary Langford

Rain man


He grew up in water,

toes wedded together.

I am a fish, he announced,

regretting this when nets went out,

barbeque on, the moment he arrived.


I was always popular at school,

he said, strong on the ironic hook,

especially on hot days.

People prayed I would fall,

or asked to drink me.


Water lifted something cool

on the shore of darkness.

Came the sleeping sound,

leading him further out,

footsteps on the fading sand.


He was in weather reports,

veins across countries.

Much was measured against him,

whether he would rise and fall,

last beyond a brief storm.


He grew moodier, earth cracking.

Some days he disappeared,

refusing to return. People changed,

developing a belief in his movement,

of rain, of water-registration.
 

( More poems by Gary Langford )

My abode

Identity is such a confusing entity..
Do you belong to this or other city?
The citizens of global mayhem..
We are forever exiled...

What am I? Who am (?
Asks my tortured sigh
on a lonely misty wintry night
where am I?


Who says you cannot be on two boats at the same time?
I do that all the time
Life is full of unresolved unfinished thoughts
some really dear and some fraught.

And yet, or may be because of it
I find myself lost
in the mirage of my crazy dreams
entangled…. at what cost?

Suspended reality,
distorted visions
Visceral duality or is it
congenital abnormality ?

Wander lust I ain’t got any..
And yet I roam through treacherous road
sauntering like a spinning jenny..
I search for my abode

( More Poems by Meena Aiyer)
 

A Poem by Rati Saxena

Remembering the camps of exiled Kashmeeris

These days I am forgetting
a number of things
like pen and spectacles;
sometimes I am unable to recall
what I have forgotten.
But today, after two long years,
I very well remember the exiled
like I remember my own mother

When I met them that day, I recalled mother
who was often compared with them
because of the colour of her skin
and the pinkness of her lips.
When I met them again
I thought again of my mother
who still looks like them, with
her pale, dull skin and dark lips

Mother lost control of her legs first,
then of her arms and then her
neck; now totally bedridden,
unable to talk, she is full of wounds and waste

They lost their feet in their land,
then their arms were
pinned down by the political system;
their voices were taken away by hunger,
their hearts are now filled with blood;
one can see their wounds in their eyes

How strange that I recall them
even after two long years.
As clearly as the sky on sunny days
suffocating sounds come from mother's  throat
"ghon" "ghon"

I get restless
And start thinking about them,
I think of that new bride wrapped in a red sari
from head to toe. I remember the room without a window
or ventilator, and filled with 15 members of the family.
I choke thinking of a newly wed couple
waiting to celebrate their marriage

I remember mother when I recall
the eyes of angry youths,
a number of questions on their lips

When I think of their exile
I cry for mother, who was forced to live at
her daughter's home against her wishes,
forgetting to die

Why do I mix them up with mother
when in many ways there is nothing similar?
I ask myself and begin to cry for
their land, their chinar
and my tears wash my mother's feet.