Theatrics of the Absurd

Maitreyee B Chowdhury’s poetry has a very earthy flavour with an eye for detail.  Her poems have the smell of the earth and the flora and fauna coming out of it. The verses take the reader close to nature where the poet finds recourse and reflects on the world around her. So, it is not a Keatsean escape but an indulgence in the garden with awareness of the diseased world ravaged by the virus and its offshoots. Her verses weave synesthetic images that reflect the absurdities of the world around and also ring in the sounds of her subconscious mind or her surroundings.

  

Theatrics of the Absurd

 

How one re-arranges the weeds,

placing the crooked seeds of Calendula

amongst the red Radishes

in the cocopeat of a tiny garden

is everything.

A voice from far tells me-

I live between the unreasonable passion of loving you,

and yet there is no joy in declarations-

of the theatrics of the absurd,

anymore.

I stare blankly at the screen,

blink for a while,

look away, awkward.

 

Has death not hit the streets you’re hiding in

what an absurd time for love,

or is it?

Everywhere around you, bodies wash up-

in holy rivers,

waters of deceit they become.

Virus bathed,

the smell of decay

that the Mustard greens,

couldn’t kill.

Mustard is life giving, rejuvenating,

the golden yellow at the top

unable somehow to hold death.

 

They say mulch and cow dung helps the garden

trap moisture,

stimulates growth-

I see untimely forget me nots

thrive in another vase,

the flowers scattered,

pink on the fringes of blue.

A Red Adenium suddenly blooms,

in colours of a forgotten Patkai.

I’m obsessed with the absurdity of growth,

sideways, and soul-searching sun

are directions to live in now.

I am Oxygen prone-

Collector,

and hoarder of basics gone wrong.

I wear its stolen scent all day long

bathe in Vitamin D,

the brutality of the sun

shining all day long on my empty breasts,

now brown and hanging

they haunt me-

where is firmness, one asks?

Finding light and breath

is this year’s accomplishment-

for how much longer,

these questions of survival, then?

 

2

Odour

 

You and I, we begin to swell,

float beyond ourselves.

We become cabbage,

peeled in one direction, re-winded in another.

The ground beneath us is odourless,

from where we sprung,

barren-

the colour of the earth, gone grey.

You talk of moisture, as if it were a caress-

stolen, and to be chewed upon

in random yellow taxis, where we found ourselves at night-

divided in parts,

in black and stained yellow teeth.

Like a woman’s petticoat and its yellowed frills-

stains from the water she forgot.

 

The stench here is real,

so is our unreal- ness, our other-worldliness,

this familiar terror of un-spokenness.

*

Maitreyee B. Chowdhury

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