SilkenTongue Poetry - Hello Poetry

Aug 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

No joy is greater than playing with the children
It's then you stoop to be a child
And stop to be an adult.

You must choose to lose
When playing with them
Pretend you know little
About the game.

They win and you heartily clap
You lose yet wear a broad smile
You're almost their age when you play
Giggle and roll and laugh to make their day.

Suddenly you realise it's no pretense
You're truly a child in all its essence
There was always a little one in you
Happy carefree and without a worry.

Grab the rare chances to play with them
Change your mind, take a new name
Patient or doctor or thief or police
Whatever the game, your reward is bliss.

Aug 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Like a Prayer

Wipe your tears
I wasn't meant to be here forever.

Did I say I love you
or was it unuttered
too feeble to be heard!

Maybe you knew it in the small moments
our eyes met
you could read my emotions
in the chance glance
I cast into that ocean
and you caught its fleeting shadow.

Do your tears betray that love
of two souls on a voyage
in turbulence and calmness
in light and in darkness
building nests on the way
where you showed the child the sky
to fly away one day.

You too never made
I love you audible
but I heard them in your lips' quiver
like a prayer.

Aug 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Light of Sound

The one umbrella I give her
and get drenched in the rain.

My eyes are not dry
as rain bathes my eyelashes
makes me cry in joy.

I'm happy she's not wet
as it pours on pitter patter
pitter patter.

In the rain I find the might of love
and in the music of the pour
I hear my heart burning
in the light of sound.

With her in the rain, morning Aug 2 2024 on way to school.
Indebted to Nat Lipstadt for his inspiration against my comments on his poem "What is a soundless Sound".

Jul 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Landscape

Marvelous looks the way
same route though everyday
amid leaves' rustles
and street hustles
walking jogging running
merrily with the nimble steps
skimming on winds
in an imaginary land
soft little fingers
slipping in and out
of the age worn hand.

Ten minutes to ten minutes fro
changes the landscape though
stiff barren dull sad heavy.

The trudge back
along the insipid land
with no hands to hold.

The landscape holds nothing..
it's all in the mind.

Jul 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

40 Years

The path strewn with hurdles and gravels
40 years is a long way to travel
Two souls sewn with love and peace
Two hearts dipped in bliss
Two minds not always in same strength
But determined within to walk the length.

40 years of building the nest
Patience and endurance put to hard test
Before one day the saplings become a tree
Heart upon heart two becomes three
Through fall and rise and sun downpour
Years flew as the three becomes four.

It's no easy work to raise a family
In all sadness live strong and happily
Blocks are thrown doubts are cast
Moments of life try to break the trust
But we didn't bow continued the thrive
A grownup family now, we number five.

40 years together

#anniversary21july

Jul 2024

South-by-Southwest

Late at Night

In the December of my time
I find that silence
feeds me sweetly
without dread .

"I'm all right , right now."

Late at night ,
bathed in the moon's
delight . . .

"I feel all right , alright."

Just say "let it go."
Let the emptiness
swallow you whole .

"Just let it go now."

It's all so right .
Close your eyes ,
Hold memories tight .

"So tight."

"It's alright , all right now."

Jul 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Route

I too will go to you, says the son
to the face of the father.

He broadens his smile
thin and gathering dust for long
as if to acknowledge
he always knew
one day his son would stand before him
resigned and weary
willing to join on his route.

The son sees his father's lips
move in the briefest prayer..

Welcome.

Jul 2024

South-by-Southwest

Old Long Since

The flute
evokes the rites
The pipes the pain
Long standings
in a winters rain
so ends
his reign

Some people
are buried
some are flamed
Some we raise
our glass unto
and drink to fame

We sink
our hopes
and shed our tears
and like little children
we face our fears

auld lang syne

Jul 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Briefly

He left at 67.

No one knew
he caught the first light
through the window glass

smelled dew when autumn came
was joyous at the trills of birds
caught all the blue in his eyes
and smiled the sky was his.

No one knows
if it was too early to go.

He knew
he was briefly happy.

Jul 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Virginia Girl

1965
she was 15
and I was 5

The reclining sun tanned her face
her eyes hidden in 60s goggles
and the vast wheat field behind
colored her brown.

Can't remember if it was Agfa or Orwo
the tint was of distant land
and Virginia came to mind.

It wasn't the girl
standing on a rice field
eyes lowered blushing
the colours of her glass bangles
irrecognizable in black and white
that I could easily fall in love with.

But I cried to be with the Virginia Girl
and I was only 5.

She is still 15 in the timeless print
and I'm 5.

Originally unwritten in 1965, now given the light of words.
If alive, she would be 73.

Jul 2024

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Someplace Else

Sometimes I feel so sad
burdened with the invisible
crying between heavy sighs
breaking under pain of a misty loss.

I'm alone in those times
under a sky of long past
in a place where moments gather dust
with faces I pine to see again.

Envelopes me a darkness
as thick as the feather of raven
stifling suffocating all I have
making what I lost on the way
golden treasures.

Sometimes I feel so sad
weighed like a blade of grass beneath brick
crying upon this passage a while
rowing rivers into the sea.