ఆజాద్Saranga English section is now happy to announce a new column – Featured Poet. We invite submissions to this feature at editor@saarangabooks.com This fortnight we’re presenting Abul Kalam Azad.
Abul’s poetry is an intersection of interior and exterior beauty of life. He speaks about the innermost reality of his self and makes a journey into an endless path.
1
My body,
an unlit cigarette
The flame,
far apart
burning as a moon,
for all to smell
When we meet,
our love shall be the ash
hiding in the nooks
of our bedsheets
2
“Die on me, darling”
“My tomb,
between your breasts
My obituary,
drying on your lips
Your eyes,
my gravestones,
Your pupils,
my frozen sonnets”
3
“My fingers search for you
across the night sky”
“Maybe,
galaxies are desperate scribblings
of distant lovers”
“And cosmos a sad dream
of a poet who never met his lover,
refusing to wake up from this misery”
“Sleeping with her eyes
tightly locked in his fingertips”
4
I am naked,
without you
Dancing to my desires
with a broken mouth organ
Oh darling,
hop onto me,
claw into my crevices
Then, as the night withdraws,
cloth me,
with your surma
5
“What if you hate my voice?”
“Your words are already stained
with the scent of the sea
that flows between our hearts”
“These letters are just
the flapping of my arms
drowning in those waves”
“I gather those on the other side
to sew them into a sonnet
with which I peel the layers
of your longing”
“Peel me all you want,
to the last wisp of my bones”
“…till we become voids,
where we hide the other’s scars”
6
If I was with you,
I would be caressing the skin
shed by your chapped lips
while trapped in a long kiss
I would be hanging the hammock
of my wounded heart
along the dents of your shoulder blades
I would be visiting, hand in hand,
the quaint bars in your decaying city
and scrape the walls of despair
drooping on those drunken streets
My fingers would be gently walking
around your pubic hair, as if whistling
to a fugitive underneath
If I was….then, maybe, I am
Do we live
only
where we love?
Are all other lives just apparitions
waiting to dissolve into absence?
Is love the only presence
inside misplaced hearts?
2
Dirty Poet Scum
“ Did you ever feel
a strange pull
to a distant soul
sprouting just
from the words they spit,
from the colors they court,
from the nightmares they carry
like halos on their cursed hearts?
That intimate reckoning,
that, perhaps, when you peel those words,
erase those colors,
unlock this distance,
then the person you meet
shall be closer to the shadows
you embrace, in secret,
when the moon takes a sabbatical
from the lonely nights
and chokes all the happy stars,
than you can ever be?
Somehow,
I feel that with you
At least,
that mirage of you
That dirty poet scum
dancing on the graves
of all the men Medusa seduced
wearing white lilies
you stole from the blood pool
of decapitated hearts
piercing your nose
with peacock feathers
you found in burnt books
your nerves filled
with pagan verses
of dystopian artists
rioting alone
in surreal visions
of obscure humans
and,
when the night falls
like the minute’s hand
of a dying clock,
you groove from a swing
across the edges of a borrowed moon
on the terrace of a haunted house
I yearn to caress, deeply,
all that remains, scattered, in you,
like raindrops sinking
into wayward ashes
of a desolate graveyard,
to spread your colors
in my syllables
and dissolve in the fumes
of that decadent union”
“ Peel those words,
all you find is piles of shame
Stink of unresolved regrets
shall mute your besotted heart
Erase those colors,
all you cradle is a stillborn lunatic
Memories of madness
shall wreck your widened arms
Unlock this distance,
all you face is disfigured anger
Echoes of crippling rage
shall crack your coddled nest
This ravaged heart of mine
cannot be loved, dear one,
for all that beats beneath
is self-pity and cigarettes”
“ I am broken beyond belief,
dear desired one
Every corner of my naked self
nurses tales of comatose tears
and smells of botched suicides
I know well the contours
of unlovable lives,
for mine is one
Maybe, that’s why I am drawn
to the shape of your sighs
Perhaps,
when two cracked mirrors lock shards,
that snatched image of silence
can be salvaged,
just enough,
to be wept upon
Perhaps,
a real kiss can only grow
from bruised lips
I live in the same nook
that you inhabit
maybe, by a different cranny,
but I am stretching my shadow
to reach your window
If you long
to place your frozen palms
on my ashen cheeks,
I am always at a finger’s reach”
*
పెద్దన్న
కృష్ణుడు
శ్రీనివాస్ గౌడ్
కృపాకర్ పోతుల
తిలక్ బొమ్మరాజు
కవనమాలి
స్వాతి కుమారి
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