Just live like a bus

driver, all the diversions --


then become the route.

I’m a Bengali in sombrero
An Indian from Kolkata
I live at a stone’s throw
From where flows the Ganga.

I speak in Bengalee
For me the sweetest language
Like the Ganga flows freely
Has Sanskrit as lineage.

Rice is my staple food
So are dal and fish
A cup of tea is too good
With two biscuits on a dish.

Around me spreads green countryside
Where grows all the foodgrain
Rivers flow wild and wide
Their banks home joy and pain.

I was born and reared in this riparian land
Where soil is tilled in peasants’ sweat
Sparkles in moon the Bay’s white sand
Weaving dreams for many a poet!

Willow limbs susurrate in clandestine murmurs,
brushing the lake’s gouache-green reflections.
Beneath—jellyfish effloresce, spectral inhalations,
ghost-thin, unmoored, drifting toward oblivion.

Dandelions unravel, golden tendrils severed,
carried off in the lungwork of wind.
A musk rose lingers—feral, aching,
its scent curling like unshed weeping
beneath the hush of twilight’s jaw.

Chevy lilts down arteries
stitched in coral marrow,
leather still inked with your laughter,
your dark brown eyes—
blackwood, abyss, a gravity
I would fall into, fracture utterly..

Et pourtant, je t’attends, infiniment.

And in this risette of evening,
where sky spills into sea, salt-lipped, weeping,
I wait—
soft, surrendered, affetuoso,
a note held past silence, raw, humming.

Our souls do what they do best. Speak fluently in silence.

We are not Flawless
bad crossings wrongly drawn
shifting paths
exacting revenge
reflecting our existence
by delivering force.
Neither are we Lawless
living and learning
shifting paradigms
exacting our course
retaining our existence
by showing remorse.

Downcast breath,
one as before death.
Raised head,
kept tears from being shed.
Sewed lips,
silently weeps.