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 Feb 2023 SUDHANSHU KUMAR
Khoisan
Barefoot down the aisle
clean feet
well groomed
a matrimonial journey
enticingly different
filled with pitfalls
trials and tribulation
[on holy ground
where there are angels all around us.]
I imagined a couple tie the knot barefoot
To my eyes, your smile is an undiscovered idiom.
Why are people looking for justifications to leave? A phoney smile was all they had done when they entered.
I watched a movie last night
toward the end saw a couple on a boat
rowing toward the western golden light
then the clear Aegean
floated me into a cove in my brain
where mystery and emerald waters
became plain.

My memory organizes my life
by place.

The brownish sandy beach
where I whittled driftwood with my first Case knife.
The oleanders near the cyclone fence,
climbing the wiry fence tops chasing my friend Vince
who cursed those wires that caught his *******.
The river running through Tamaqua
on a family trip east as a kid
but I can’t see the faces or hear the names
of my New Jersey kin
I do see the wood box where me and my cousins hid.
Gone are the faint glimmers of folks
beyond the red-blooming poisonous bush
the names of aunts back east I wrote juvenile letters to
but I recall their ice cream parlor wall painted bright blue.

Closing my eyes
I see the yellow floor
and the bent aluminum legs of the kitchen table
I wiggled under as fast as I was able
to avoid Daddy’s long brown leather belt
and when he missed I heard his anger melt
when he couldn’t suppress a giggle.

Ah! the joy of my lively geographic memory.
~
alone and an imposter,
deep in syndrome.

she absorbs the frost of seasonal ghosts
and hopeless feelings
of death and darkness.

she only shows one side of her every time.
she calls a random number
from a bar in the middle of the night,
seeking to confess
or find solace in the voice of a stranger.

but any stranger might just happen to be
a lie detector.

still she lays bare all the duplicity
and fragmentation of self:

prescription bottles with two different names,
elaborate façades in Los Angeles
and in New York,
so complicated she creates
something she calls the lie box.

inside her purse there's a collection
of file cards. "I tell so many lies," she says.
"I have to write them down and keep them
in a box so I can keep them straight."

alone she waits for either
sweet apricity or identikit:
each a memento of her faces.

~
 Feb 2023 SUDHANSHU KUMAR
Doshi
Hope
 Feb 2023 SUDHANSHU KUMAR
Doshi
Hope is two-faced
How she keeps us going
but also stuck
in the same place, all at once
waiting for something
that could be nothing
after all
 Feb 2023 SUDHANSHU KUMAR
Crow
I once heard someone say
when discussing life’s troubles

“Don’t worry, God is flipping
the big pancakes”

I thought
“It’s a good thing somebody is”

even the little silver dollar ones
come out burned on one side
gooey on the other
and stuck to the wall
when I try
Once In awhile
I’d take
A Long  ROAD drive
TO nowhere
So that I could
HAVE a conversation
With THE three KINGS
SITTING at the THRONE
ME
MYSELF
AND
I
TO WORKOUT my mind
TO FEEL GOOD.
TO BE STRONG.
To get deeper into the abyss
Of the monster’s SKULL
To travel to another world
To see different perspectives
TO BE MINDFUL
TO STAND TALLER.
BECAUSE I WANT TO
TO BE HEALTHY minded
TO EMBRACE HOW HOT, ****, CONFIDENT,
POWERFUL, & FABULOUS The mind can be
FOR MY MIND. FOR MY SOUL. FOR MY BODY.
FOR MYSELF and OTHERS in needs
TO LOOK at the man in the mirror and SET AN EXAMPLE.
TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I CAN DO
ANYTHING.
I CAN fly
I can Swim
TO SEE IF THE WORLD IS REALLY MINE
BECAUSEI DESERVE IT.
BECAUSE I CARE.
BECAUSEI COME FIRST.
BECAUSE I LOVE MYSELF.
BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I Need
That’s what I am that’s what I want
BECAUSE I CAN

BECAUSE
ONCE,
I  COULDN’T………
Nothing ever changes,
where the worth of this and that is set.

Tell'em all, who hook ah, ha, chiral

reality, hearing, hmms and bzzz meeee
whining all kinds of things,

down, dirt hertz low, as one of those
contrabassoons,
French bubinga wood,
-Google it, it is as magic may be yet,
magical contraptions contrived
in a mind,
in stages,
whistle phone, I ignor thee,
Lady, of Spain, I adore thee,

If I had chosen a differing way, some time ago,
decided I was made
to be a river kid,
but come to find out, we breed best, where
our mothers were born,
- high green vales
- home feel romantic, as such antics were
portrayed, more, more, more
in the bread and entertainment
citizenship bought
for thirty man years
of absolute loyalty
to a bevvy
of oaths
by
any child shaped for leadership, bonded
entered into the system, asked
to swear
in the name
of all that is holy, set apart, behind the curtain,

not in Oz, Jerusalem
in that mind Christ used,
right, Romans-
let this mind be
in you… word level logic magic any may imagine
we pluralize our individuated minds,
and join in seeking clear channel communication
- tear ye the dusty curtain -
after all the outs are in for the evening,
cool of the day,
spirit and truth,
wow
we
make breathing work, come to think about that,
if your will is telling us some thing we may think,

3 major sneezings 3 by 3's, gobsogreasygoferguts,
we survive,
having coughed up a tiny, eyelash-size hair,
meta vessle,
where my bet is in the bits on this side,
war
has no
lever see,
free is bein' out of bounds. We may consider Kerouac,
his teletype paper rolls that he could imagine
becoming my entire system
liquid crystal frame nets fishing
for sentient mindshare where global peace, accepts
string theory as
my gnosisnot, is it spirit if it is true. If we are paradox-
ical, we are not stupid as a species,

we've bought a bill of goods, they used to say,
we found reason to believe,
we were lied to
for a set of reasons.
- first being we all lie, we think we know.
The onto logical truth, in my case, is - in 2023,
my life is good, I am a slob, and out of the way,
so, settled in some ways, is dust fine, we flake away.

My choice is to consider the reader, who reads
for fun,
kicks
in text
be unaffordable - attention is commodity
in any other context,
some things
are words, mere, as a word,
is one of them,
a class of flavour overlooked missed,
mere [hap]
anon,
we turn the radio on, and all we hear is humms.
Abnormality, in truth we find such things used beautifully, often,
passing in flashes one can respond to for - some time, a measure of it, may
be per haps
we have each lost a child

in our own way,
some by irreversible mortality,
some by the sea rocks wreckage
of finality of mental disease, disbarment

I have no grave to visit,
if only! a palace to mourn
and celebrate the memories,
might it grant a sorted, seminal healing?

my memories are double bitter real,
still sweet, but biter dark chocolate
encasing bitter almonds casted my
aging doubling regret, my chiefest failure

send an email to someone today,
who refuses my existence, triggered,
heard a U2 song, him, ago, he was an
early discoverer, sharer, of their music

the song provocation was shaking, words,
ripping, words, rent, refreshing, scars uncovered,
decades long, I’m whipped sawed
by ragged teeth deepest cutting irony:

”And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away
With or without you
With or without you, oh
I can't live
With or without you
Oh, oh
Oh, oh
With or without you
With or without you, oh
I can't live
With or without you
With or without you”


2:39 PM Sun Feb 29
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