Rajat Ubhaykar: Poems

Fickle

Rajat Ubhaykar Jul 2014

Fickle

A cursed affliction of the heart

A human condition that drives us hither

And thither chasing a ghostly calling

On a restless search for mirages

We are all actors

Playing our role

Said a great sonnet writer

We use to quote platitudes

But what of those who wander

A crossroad of diverging futures

Where one role does not satisfy

Their boundless hopes and desires

A poet one moment

A grave digger the next

Who shovels mud in the darkness

And finds meaning in the light

A role fit for a novel maybe

Or at least a bad play

Starring unknown faces

Gesticulating to an empty theatre

Some find solace behind the pages

Of a tattered copy of Crime and Punishment

Leading a vicarious life of alcoholics and whoremongers

And some become what they don’t read

Blessed is the mind whose devotion

Is pure, untainted by the spectre

Of what is and what could be

Charting a singleminded road that plods on

To heights heavenward

To places unexplored

In a narrow field of vision

Towards a sunlit horizon

And not be stuck in the bogs

Of indecisive action

Of halfhearted measures

In a dreary haze of possibilities

But it’s only a cosmic joke one would say

For why did the Almighty in his wisdom

Make a world so vast and beautiful

Our ambitions so conspicuously lofty

And our fleeting lives so very inadequate?

#human #restless #fickle

how to kill a poem

Rajat Ubhaykar Jul 2014

******* a poem

how do you bump off a poem

you suffocate it

with superfluous words

and stuffy grammar

for it cannot

inhale the pretentious fumes

of a smouldering thesaurus

in indelicate hands

or chop off stanzas

with a fountain machete

watch the words dissolve

into immutable discord

a jigsaw puzzle

that’s no longer a picture

you stab it

with the drab discipline

of a force-fit

two-bit

rhyming scheme

and leave it gasping

for a breath of free verse

or strangle it

with a taut wire

of ineffable material

imbue it

with playful profundity

and everything else poets do

except the crucial dash

of yourself

yes these are

the standard

operating procedures

in the do-it-yourself manual

on poemslaughter

but the sure-fire way

to **** a promising poem

is to never write it

because once born

a poem never truly dies

even upon mutilation

it is only relegated

to literary life-support

until

a chance rearrangement

of potent words

in the fevered imagination

of a sentient being

infuses it with

a lust for life

i’m alive

it’ll proclaim

jump out of

its feather bed

and quietly

mutter to itself

i’m still alive

A poem on ******* a poem

#poem #poetry #death #writing

media

Rajat Ubhaykar Jul 2014

media

a talkative beast

spewing half truths

and half lies

confident as the kid

in your class who

always raised his hand

to mouth

the wrong answer

a kettle on the boil

whistling absurdities

shrill as

a woman who

has waited an hour

at the rusty tap

with a blue plastic bucket

to find the last drop

trickle away

a menagerie of vultures

salivating in unison

at moist corpses

in the street and

swooping on the dead

for a quote

like eager students

waiting for exam results

to be plastered

on the notice board

a mercurial mistress

who breaks

a different bed everyday

for limp men desiring

a high-decibel

performance for

a two paisa act

culminating

in a contrived

******

an electronically enabled

carrion crew

reducing pillage

to inches of column

on newsprint

a veritable feast

isn’t it

with Marie biscuits

and steaming tea

there is no escaping

this monster

of many heads

and one tongue

for it whispers

a worldview

its gait

insidious and stealthy

as it pounces

on sheep who

then bleat

its platitudes

as the truth

and nothing but

the truth

The media as a cauldron of conformity

#media #rant #conformity

— The End —