Tag Archives: poetrycollection

a poetry collection: LITERARY JEALOUSY

Disclaimer:

 I have lost the ability to write poems long before I could ever write a real one. It feels manufactured now, I feel bitter if anyone comes up with a poem, a real one. If you have ever written a real poem. I HATE YOU

.

“Writer’s Block”

I think too much to write down a sentence,
I fear it will go to waste,
The weather forecasts of a stormy week ahead,
The office cubicle remains lit.
I wonder if my boss cried to his sleep last night,
Or anyone in this office did.
Prashiddha shed tears on a corner of a restaurant yesterday,
I listened to his muffles as I ate my lunch,
The patters on the roof start drumming right then,
I realized I had forgotten my umbrella again
.
If I tell you about my job,
I write speeches for a five-foot-three-inch millionaire,
I still think too much to write down a sentence.
This week also marks Simran’s one-year death anniversary
I remember it being as rainy as today.
I sighed with relief this morning,
when J’s STD report came back negative
one good news to this gloomy day
the weather reported a 60 percent chance of rain
I swear I didn’t forget my umbrella today,
I just must have left it on the shoe rack while I was slipping out of the house.

.

A good poem is Amla Fruit (SO FUCKING BITTER)

A good poem is

not a pebble, not a marble,

But very planet-like, even though tiny

The surface isn’t tough, glassy, cold,

If you bite on it soft enough

like a hickey

it seeps green fluid, a bitter spill

the tongue’s floor rises and then falls

like tide, like disgust

stuck out of the mouth

flipped off

like a finger to a face

.

More fucking angst (MFA)

The snap, crack of an ankle

You are then out to a crowd clapping for you

In the last few months, I have figured out that I write extremely long sentences without correct grammar punctuations fuck balls shit and dare I correctly use commas,,,,,,,,,,

Now you’re in one of the book launches

Your jaws are tired of holding a smile or an accent

You are hugging a white girl

Four times in the same conversation

Because you’re glad that she shit on some canvas again

.

You lie to people that you have a job

You say things like, “Money isn’t an issue”

You’re hiding something –

.

You giggle mindlessly in a conversation

You congratulate people sounding like an orgasm

You correctly pronounce sky-fi as sci-fi

.

It’s been a while since you last said sorry

.

My writing voice is a scared one.

Whenever I read something good

the writing voice lead me

smooth and gliding, deeply affectionate

letters of scrambled ink, the steely towers of Telecom

clank a sound so daft that it rises and falls like curtains on a windy day

if it had a face, it would look like someone who can play the flute,

not too wryly

trustworthy like a confidant and kind like a lover

.

the writing voice is a bright circle

from a throat,  purging out beautifully

 a shoal of migrating fish

flourishing like a burst of cloud,

a paintbrush dipped into water.

.

i wonder if this is a disease

and i am looking for a cure

in books, in between the little triangles of A’s and the flat surface of L’s

my half-written sentences

a half-born child,

there is no voice but only cries

scared and wet

like a mouse in a drain pipe

.

poem and nosebleed

(nosebleed isn’t a skill to be acquired. Doesn’t come to you often, even with practice)

An hour before evening,

The day was left to simmer aside

like a hot bowl of soup.

neck stretch, a long day

Something deep in my bones grunts back

With spontaneity

A red trail of blood trickled

from my nostrils

red polka dots of medium red,

drop, drop, to the page on the table

.

I face upwards the blazing slate roof,

I am unsure what happens to the blood

If it ushers back to the trail, flooding my skull

but what I’m sure of is-

If The Noseblood was a poem

I would wait for a humid day, head down

with a measuring cup in my hand

.

A good poem is Amla Fruit (Reprise- anecdote of sweetness)

A good poem coats my taste buds, bitter and sour. I’m jealous I’m jealous. The bitter coating awaits for a washout, some water/saliva. My tongue shriveled and colorless longing to feel the presence of not-bitter taste, now flimsy, grainy, ghostly, and translucent.

.

When the water washes out this bitterness, I’ll feel it right there, not the wetness of the water, but the aftermath of it, an intrinsic warmth from the alcove of the tongue’s pores. Not the stark foreign taste but a feeble built-in sweetness, like coming home in a dark night, and not missing a step of stairs.

a poetry collection: mr. mortgage lucid dreams

Concussion

First comes the shame

of being naïve, un-anticipatory

Then comes the guessing,

if it’s the fore or back of the head

that has bumped into a hardened object

and before the pain gives away any clue to the guessing-

a sudden vision darkens

like a plug pulled out of a power socket

.

 Man, I have big dreams

I gnawed on the mango’s pit

It’s sweet yellow hair stuck

Between my teeth

.

I stood by the windowsill

A ripening orb in the sky,

measuring the pounce, a somersault-

From the windowsill to the galaxy

.

I stared straight into it,

a burning spot on my retina.

I close my eyes and dream

of swallowing the sun.

.

Man, I have big dreams

.

Writer on a bank’s loan department  

The crisp tuck of my dress shirt under my pants stretched as I shook hands with the loan officer. I was reminded of being fairly young when a middle-aged man called me sir. We discussed the base rate and down payment plan for a mortgage.  To break it down in layman’s words, we were there mostly for counting. He showed me offers and packages, Counting on the payments, and counting on days, my ownership and freedom.

.

When I remained hesitant about the payment plan, the loan officer said, “It takes thirty-seven years for a human to count to a billion. No number is uncountable. Eventually one gets there.”

.

I counted- One and two of my feet, squished on my leather office shoes, a stark contrast to the white shiny tiles below.

I shook his hands at the end of the meeting.

No number is uncountable. Eventually one gets there.

.

I kept repeating

as I came back home

I sat on the floor, a sack of rice opened

determined to disprove rice as an uncountable noun

.

Exfoliative Keratolysis: simile, metaphor and analogy

My fingertips are shedding,

Like a snake does-

.

Wait, scrap that———-

.

I found something else,

A closer fit would be thin potato peels

Scraped off to a smooth potato skin

.

But the image I want to create,

The peeling of skin persists

.

Unless I say

My life has become the dead skin left,

On the bushes stuck on a few branches

As the snake slithers away

.

Mr. Mortgage browses poem

I browse poems,

Poet.org has unlimited of them,

On the search bar

I type, “financial advice”

And click into a poem, an author appears

Black and white, MRP photo

He looks me in the eyes

.

A knot appears on my throat

that only goes away from crying.

.

Asthma

A deep breath in

and fistful wheezing out,

“your chest is hitting all the high notes”

A doctor said when I was thirteen

The cold metal stethoscope

against my skin

.

My parents rushed me to the ER

my chest had tightened like a knot

.

The first time I had trouble breathing

I was eight,

But asthma wasn’t the culprit

rather it was a balloon,

I had inhaled the balloon

In an attempt to blow into it,

Immediately blocking airways

An eclipse rolling in my eyes

.

The same image recurs,

When I think of my friend

passing away

Her refusal to go to the hospital

despite having a hard time.

.

I lay unable to sleep on my bed,

The pale reflection of the ceiling

Marcel Proust was asthmatic as well

In a letter to his mother

He was pressed from embarrassment

to reveal his wheeziness to the guest

.

I remember being embarrassed

when a classmate saw the

asthma kit in my pocket

before I could explain, she procured

her kit out of her pocket as well

.

She took deep breathes on her wedding altar,

 in and out, perhaps it was nerves

I clutched my blue asthma kit

Inside my pockets, each time she took a deep breath

.

I imagine my dead friend

standing on the corner  

pleading with me to go to the hospital

my eyes rolled up as I passed out

My father’s gaunt finger was like a hook

Fishing the balloon out-

.

Loosening up the knot in my chest,

A melted balloon on the floor,

I breathe-

.

You’re gonna know my name (sure signs)

The parents have fallen asleep,

the winds have pushed the clouds

opening of stage curtains,`                         

Introducing a full moon

.

the top of my stove catches fire,

ascending into a full circle,

a neon glow

and the sound of gurgling water

steams up the otherwise cold night

.

Somebody somewhere

is gonna know my name

.

11:11

a poetry collection: My little kitchen

A missing bird (police report)

Police report

Date of the report:  23/03/2022
Officer’s badge number: 887 
Suspect(s): The fat boy in the kitchen 
Date and time of arrest: 8 am 
Location of arrest: The Little Kitchen  
Nature of incident: Recovery of a dead body  
I responded to a call on March 23, 2022, at approximately 7:30 am. As soon as I heard a chirping sound from the phone call, I directed the call to our linguistic center’s bird language expert’s desk. Upon translating the call, it was found out that two sparrows were suspicious of a fat guy trapping a young bird in the kitchen.

The location given to us was a two and a half storeyed blue house with a red roof. Upon arriving, we met the sparrows leading us in the direction of the stairs and then onto a kitchen on the top floor, right below the terrace. The kitchen had a red roof, and its broad sliding windows were facing a small garden, a possible trap for birds to come by the balcony. The morning sun had yet to ripen in heat, and a feeble light fell onto the small garden, its shrubbery packed full of yam leaves, and foxtail grasses, providing shade to the loose cool black soil beneath, like a soft underbelly of the lizard. The periwinkles and a few roses accessorized dots of pinks and reds on the green shrubbery through and through. A couple of sugar canes and a guava tree over-looked them, climbing towards the full sun exceeding the height of the red roof.

The kitchen was empty, with a tiled kitchen counter, a sink, a dining table, and a kitchen rack. No suspect was found. However, after a few minutes of search, the stiff body of the bird was found right behind the rack, its body stuck and wings clipped in between the rack and the wall. It reminded me of the man who goes on a trek and ends up his arm stuck on a big rock. Entire footage of him, till he cuts his arm and gets out of there. He watches videos of life back in the city, billboards, cafes, and people. I wonder if the bird did think about its nestlings, its babies, the branches, electric poles, pulses, soil, and worms. I felt sick to my stomach, as I thought about soft bird muffles, as life escaped from its beak.    

In the meantime, the suspect was taken out of the shower and sat down for interrogation on the front porch. Officer B presented him with the lifeless body of a bird, the suspect closed his eyes in reflex to the flailing three slender toes across his face. The officer asked, “There was a dead bird there an entire time and you never realized?”   

The suspect nodded blankly.  

Upon his arrest, he asked a single thing, “Do birds have ears?”

My little kitchen

The soles of my feet, translucent

White blotches appear like the Orion belt,

Spread across the sole- a night sky,

The whiteness from being pressed out

On veins, blood circulation

From standing at work, on the bus, and on a walk home.

.

A handful of rays from an evening

Slither away from my hold,

Throwing off my Jordan 1s on two different sides

Of the welcome mat

The thumps on the dry concrete,

Follow my steps to the little kitchen,

Full of jostled dishes on the sink

A quiet breeze from the large sliding windows,

whistling of the pressure cooker far away, drown

the evening in a collective murmur

The neighborhood plunge into darkness,

So does the kitchen with its bulb-out

Except for the lights from the neighborhood,

shining palely onto the smooth tiles and ceiling.

.

My little kitchen,

sits in silence, with its face on its palm, 

Turning its back on me, a few roaches running on it 

 I touch its shoulder as I insist, 

it turns to me at a sound of a switch, 

It smiles- the fluorescent tube light flash 

.

I take off my socks, 

I run the tap water and the same three songs 

remain to hum on my lips 

a dry spell

desperate to be taken home 

.

Aimless love

On a luscious Sunday evening, I find myself cutting some pork belly for dinner on my kitchen counter. It starts off as fatty-meaty slime, sticking to palms, clogging the pores as the knife’s plastic handle forces its way. Through a deep plunge into the thick rind, the cut, barges further into subcutaneous fat depot, slicing down the tissues, muscles, and then meat. A gaze of mine falls down like pieces falling down to the chopping board as failed as frivolous dominoes with no intent of being one. The pieces remind me of the earth’s surface’s deposit, the soil horizon from a childhood science book, and three layers of topsoil, subsoil, and bedrock. All of it is divided in such a simultaneous manner that it almost looks like a face, not in terms of geometry, but rather like someone with flesh identity: a beautiful red meaty bottom of full lips or flushed cheeks, slapped up with a gush-mush of shiny fat, hardened up jell, all covered up with a thick, crisp pork rind like a scarf over a pretty head. As I keep slicing through and through, more feverishly, the pieces happen to take momentary incarnations of shapes and sizes, one precise piece tears apart at the rear end of fat terrain in such a manner that it looks more like Pearl Krabs, the whale from SpongeBob. The characters keep on changing with each new piece, sometimes it’s a cow, then a jellyfish, and even shorter pyramids. When poured into the hot pan, it sings tempered noises of screams, a melody, a foreign language conversing shriller, every time I pour onions, garlic to fry, or tomatoes for gravy. The fragrant smell of a bowl full of spices settles as hot damp steam on window panes, as I turn off the heat, I stare at it with the affection of a lover, a love born out of adoration, destined to adore without any unkind words, slam on the door. Just like comfortable silence on the telephone, it stays still, steam rising off from its runny rich golden oil’s shimmer, soaking in the colorful glory, tinted with blushing myoglobin’s delight frosted with coriander. Just like a town introduced.

कुकरको तिन सिट्टी लागिसक्यो (मुर्म हाइक)

रन्थनिएको छेपारोको तालमा रफ्तारिदो एक मुठी स्वास

स्वासको मुस्लो सँगै फुल्लिएको छाती

लटरम्मै फलेका स्याउ जस्तै गाला

र मुर्म गाउँको टुप्पो उक्लने आश

लगभग मेरो कम्मरसम्म कद भएको

तर उमेरमा चाही निक्कै पाखो

रुखको भूतपूर्व हाँगो

बाटोमा गासिएको एकलौटो मित्रता: लौरो

.

कठै! लौरो, मेरो ताते जोरमा जसरि तसरी मुर्म टप उक्लियो

ढुंगामा थचार्रिए म, लौरो चाही उभियो

पन्छी-आँखे दृश्यवन, तल बिश्राममा रहेको मुर्म गाउँ

मुर्म वासिन्दा र मुर्मका बालखे गीत मु

र्मका थिचिएका खरका छाना

गाई गोठ र कुखुरे बस्ती

घोक्रिएका बोकाका गायन

.

मेरो कथित छुट्टिको बिश्राम

‘अलिक relax गर न,

 बिर्सिदे पिरोल्ने कुरा’ मनको सुझाव

तर आफ्नो नाम कसरी बिर्सु?

न नै बिर्सिए मेरो घरको आवाज

 इट्टे गोरेटोका नेपा-अंग्रेजी गनगन

‘हुन्छ नी like, हैन the thing is, you know नी’

“ओयॆऎऎए अशिम! के बसायिस यो? कुकरको तिन सिट्टी लागिसक्यो”

my mother’s scream cuts through

right here, right now.

कुँजिएका बानेश्वोरका ती गल्लीहरु

राजस्व बिभागमा मेरो टोकन पालो आयो कि?

फोनको टावर आउनासाथ क्रेडिट कार्ड म्याद समाप्तिको call पो आउने हो कि?

मेरो ९-५ जागिर, चाँदी जलपी कपालको बिरामी स्व्याँग

८८४८को बेलानाकार बोत्तल र साथीभाइका ठट्टा

चैत्रको छिप्पिएको घाममा छाले जुत्ताको पोलाइ र अनिदो आँखाको हेराइ

.

दाते हिमालका कल्कि तिर

लम्किएको सुन्तले घामको छाया,

निला, शान्त जलाशयको मिठो निन्द्रा,

एक जोर भइ टासिएका बादलको संगठन

र यी विशाल सम्पदाको बीच

म केवल थोप्लो भएको आश्वासन

.

मेरो लौरो साथीले म घरको यादमा भएको सोच्दो हो

तर यो लेखाइ, त्यो सोचाइ विपरित

कोरिएको सफल-असफल प्रयास…

.

If only mirrors were half as kind as the soup. 

The streetlights are yet to go out,  

Tired from its night’s service, 

The shops around the neighborhood,  

Remains shuttered like a closed eye. 

The chirpings of the morning birds, 

Drown into the whistles of my pressure cooker,  

The white mist is identical to the fog outside. 

.

When I take off the lid from the cooker, 

A boiling stew vapors off and settles on the windows, 

It saves me from cruelty, 

That my large side windows reflect-

My large silhouette, 

Stout body broadened and ballooned,

The shape of my face puckered into a puff,

While the thin, weak, un-toned arms dangle,

Unnaturally falling unto unflattering positions.

.

I pour the soup into a serving pot,

My shadow is thrown from the kitchen bulb,

onto the soup, onto the pot. 

I pretend I have a flat tummy, a slim face,

Strong arms and thick neck,

I am seven feet in my little soupy world, 

If only mirrors were half as kind as the soup.  

.

Russian Satellite

When the bodies fell

I fell too, slumped on my plastic chair,

An evening in my little kitchen.

I was reading a Reddit post,

a man from a war country

His last drink before a battlefield,

Watching over the disappearing streets,

Buildings cut in half, crushed with screams.

.

I wonder if he recalls before the flash,

a silent stretching midnight cityscape,

Its lanes- thick, young, and green,

the main road, the swimming pool,

the theatre and the crest of hills.

The roofs and their building

Steaming, and curling for a midnight tea

Their windows level head silver moon,

Gleaning and glistening

.

Then a sudden realization

in the midnight sky,

the dotted white portal opening

ungainly spiraling, materializing

a Russian Satellite,

the flash realized into an explosion

A video brims with screams from it,

I could feel it through my kitchen walls

.

I wonder about the world’s indifference

Out of the kitchen door,

Whose back remains punctuated

with a metal hook, a hung lapel of

an office bag. It looks at me.

I look back at them with teary eyes

.

Phantom Smell Syndrome (I &II)

I.

It’s been two days since I’ve been unwell

The windows are shut inaudible, to the

curly swirling of the wind

that leaves a knock to remind me of the havoc

of what lies beneath the groaning sky.

.

I’ve been skipping school and my spine has fallen off

from my pocket, I’ve lost it somewhere.

I am the lump of my bed, rolled in a blanket

Like a bandaged arm,

Beads of sweat rolled to my belly button

My t-shirt shrunk, plastered to my skin

Sticky like melted cotton candy

A bitter warmth in my body

Shivering from the sweat or fever

.

The most bothersome thing that exists

between curtains of my forehead

Swooshing out of my nostrils

A hot travel of fistful blow, Congested

Swollen passages of nostrils, leaking

.

But every time I would smell something,

Powder of ashes, crushed like the cotton bud of a cigarette

Burnt out a little more before being put out

Folding, crushing, colliding cindery

against a cold concrete – would be smelt.

.

I entered the kitchen listlessly, looking for a solution

I did what I knew best, I put a pot on a stove,

The cold of the kitchen warming with its vapor

Turning like a suspended tornado, slowly

Dissolving into the thawing patch of warmth.

The bottom of the pot dry from the heat of the gas,

Pouring of meat and veggies, the smoke of garlic and chilies,

The steam rises off the soup, the dancing pieces,

Of chunks in soup, the swirl of the spoon.

.

However, a sharp inhale of the soup,

Brought an unmistakable smell

Of burning logs on a foggy winter night

.

I googled the condition, it was called

phantom smell syndrome

I slump into the plastic chair, from the defeat.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

.

II.

With a bored man’s movement,

I take up the spoon to my mouth,

As the vaporing spoon enters my mouth,

The buds of the tongue lathered to the gravy of the soup,

The soft pieces of carrot,

crushed with a delicate touch of a chew,

the melting meat and its succulent gluttony,

the warmth of the swallowed food,

reaching to the parts of the abdomen unaware of the consciousness

.

on the satisfaction of the food,

I sigh in relief, an inhale in between the congested

nostrils, the air is tasted for the first time,

it’s transparency like the honesty of

a rivulet found between the mountains.

My palms find themselves opening up the sliding window,

A kind breeze passes through, and so does the smell of wet soil,

Rain droplets, green leaves, and the stars

.

A little further on a shrubby rise,

I squinted at a shiny object,

I found my spine

hanging on a guava branch.