‘I am filled with desires but have no experience in love’: Five end-of-year poems by Ashwani Kumar

Raining Raag Shudh Kalyan

The sky is lit up by blue lightning
flowers of insurrections.
Dark-brown golden clouds suddenly
burst over the parched sea burning
with the salt of my youth.
Breathless, I dig remains of burnt
syllables of her language
retreat into the hidden juke box.
Why is the land of priests and prophets busy
settling stone-age disputes in poetry?
There is nothing left of ancient prejudice –
The earth is covered with vermillion.
Huddled around the lanterns of sorrows, the ageing
spring and autumn
shyly mate in my wounded eyelids –
a restless, rebellious melody softly disappears into
pear and coral bodies of memories.
What makes her wait?
I am filled with desires but have no experience in love.
My old town slowly sinks in the river of blood
meandering through the famished rice fields.
And I grieve like the fragrant camphor in raag Shudh Kalyan
What could I give her after this if I were you?

Childhood, An Arbitrary Linguistic Sign of Memory?

Who says mushrooms are poisonous?
I realised early in my childhood
I speak only dialects with particular

attention to my private parts, recreational fantasy for saints and sinners.
I dream –

I peel my dark freckles like the
vicissitudes of hunting grasshoppers in a cobbled street.
I close my eyes and see
mother is in the tulip fields, and
my nine siblings slowly vanishing beyond a sea, another sea.

I invite her to Iftar party, lift her veil
inhale her silence, coppery fragrance of ripe plums.
After a further silence
she kisses my speaking lips
vibrating with moon-rinsed Friday prayers.

She insists on choking our hookah-shaped
bodies with honey and tobacco.
I lean on her wild...

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