Distance

                         Pic Courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/joel_r/8538713642/lightbox/

You might wonder, why I keep writing you poems 

Day after day,

one after the other.

A belief, word by word,

a sentence would travel the miles,

Unraveling a message of love.............

https://troumagazine.com/2020/08/11/distance-by-j-george/

Letters to You

               Image Courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47039528@N08/5316903185/


I want to write a hundred plus one letters for you to carry with, as you fly, the other month after the sun rises taking away this lock down and replenishing hope in every country I want you to take these breathings of mine along with you, in case you miss my night cream fragrance of comfrey and niacinamide tickling your nostrils, in case you miss.......

https://issuu.com/humankindzine/docs/issue_one_-_vulnerbility-compressed_compressed_com/100

Video Call

                             PC : http://conflictingheart.tumblr.com/image/46078469794

But, here we are,

exchanging love and words in Morse codes

via smiles and blinks, owing to this poor network,

that swings itself to death, 

with every wind that passes my home,

flushing the bougainvilleas and their

leaves to the floor for me to sweep.

https://issuu.com/initialjournal/docs/the_initial_journal_august_2020 page 6

Heredity

                                  pc : https://www.artandcommerce.com/artists/photographers/Richard-Burbridge/Portraits

 

The way a cracker fires up to the sky, and then blooms into scattered pieces of joy;

Like sprinkling water, is exactly how my father’s hand moves in hopelessness.

He raises his hands upwards, a little higher slowly,

and then throws his fingers from its closed bud, to the air opening up,

“Ohh…Onnulla” (Oh! Nothing) ,...

https://borderlessjournal.com/2020/07/14/heredity/

Pencil Shavings

                           pc : http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/75074331762/zoom-hyper-realism-of-romulo-celdran

Every evening I find the shavings of your eye brow pencil

near the dressing mirror,

along with some talcum on the floor;

Like tiny pleated skirts of dancers on white snow, they stay.

The sharpenings of your pencil, for darkening your eyebrows.

Shreds of oiled skins from frequent touching shed down,

for some newer beginnings with sharper goals.

Each evening before you, your pencil is ready

with the blunt past chiseled and the rawness of the moment ready,

like mother, every day before you with a cup of coffee,

brimming with hope, I believe.

And your willingness to change papa, I see,

you shove the pencil into the darkest spot of the shelf,

after shading those lines to thick eyebrows – a perfect illusion.

http://www.literaryshanghai.com/jgeorge-pencil-shavings/

On Fire

I call Eli Eli repeatedly from morning till night, my phone’s auto-correct changes her name to Elijah and so, like Christ on crucifix, I call out her name, my last hope, calling my sister for having food, I hear my father’s feet missing the floor like magnetic repulsion, a rebellious act from the floor, a shout-out, no more tolerant, these flames burning our little glass house; the fire has been eating our bricks, one by one since long and we learnt to live around it tending to the burns, making us more of christians forgiving for a living, a vengeance in disguise, the fire initiated by alcohol and a spark from kitchen, sometimes it’s someone switching on the light to cover up the darkness forgetting that there has been a gas leak, ever since alive, I wonder who named it love, their marriage; Ah! No. No, I don’t expect a miracle, to magically change the wine to water and save our lives, maybe it will rain with thunder and hurricanes, sirens to rehabilitation centers; how we have locked ourselves in this four walls calling it a home, despite being nailed to this crucifix, it’s April the summer colors have tanned the bougainvilleas pinned to hanging pots decorating this broken home like roses on the Easter crucifix where Jesus forget to resurrect and slept on for years, maybe it will rain and the flames will stop eating us, before it consumes us whole, while alive like a pyre.

https://llumierereview.wordpress.com/issue01/

Crocheting

On crocheting a happy content life, I could teach you Dear Chere,

you start first with the slip knot, yarns and hooks no procrastination!

Ah!  the patience and time would roll in,

chain many, the happy memories row after row

for that strong base, we need.

Skip the major vapid ones, for that unique design,

double and treble crochet the moments of unplanned memory bringing joy

stitch through the vapid skip, mending the pain, stitch through

swapping colours and adding more yarn of love.

Keep going the callow in a canto,

to crochet a happy content life, bejewel all journeys of fright and might,

and finish by tucking in the left over pieces,

cutting off that extra strings of trouble, 

finish off by tying securely the strings of bond.

keep crocheting for that happy content life,  mon chere..

https://issuu.com/storiedstitches/docs/storied_stitches_vol_9_issuu

Letters

I remember we once agreed to meet every three days

like an international postcard mailed with a stamp pasted on its corner.

Just so, we could avoid the suspicion of evil eyes,

drilling their bore wells on our parched lands.

But you know well what happened as the fireflies flew between us,

Floating, Cupid’s portion glistening on their tiny backs, glowing for our nightly rendezvous,

making it flower, like miniature lanterns flocking;

reminding me of the neelakurinjis of the Shola forest –

purple and blue flowers blossoming once every seven years, phenomenally.

Isn’t that why we went back there each night – to find the swarming dots of light

and dip in the fragrance of wildness – the flowers and the rest?

By the way, those flowers over the climber, covering the tree

with that bench beneath, neatly tucked inside the shade was my favorite. Yours too.

That tree often reminded me of the black hair of an Indian bride bejeweled with white jasmines,

like snowflakes on summer mornings, the blend of warmth and whiteness of those nights;

We always hurried to hide behind her cascade of leaves,

like hungry locusts coming east during the summertime,

before the monsoons could range a battlefield of marshness,

before the land found us sauntering hand in hand,

and before reality dawned on us like the rain showers, unprecedented.

http://www.literaryshanghai.com/jgeorge-two-poems/

Ambrosia

I walk a mile around the road, just to avoid the rickshaw and cut down expenses.

Ten rupees saved by walk –an offering I always keep for the roadside temple.

I do this almost every day without fail.

My daily pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine on tired legs;

I think of it as a penance for the guilt, for confessing sorrows,

and for sharing toasts.

One can see ideas and debates on living life rising as fumes above that roof –

The roof of the temple, by the corner of 7th Street in Choolaimedu.

Near a Neem tree, so pure, our holy temple stood – a modest tea shop for every commoner.

Nothing less than Ambrosia itself is a Chai flavored with friendship, I say,

lifting the weight of this daily routine at the altar like priest and his chalice.

Isn’t a glass of tea similar to the soothing touch of the oldest therapist working her long fingers on every mind?

Sipping this nectar – Heaven’s drink – down here on Earth.

I dare say, a day gone without Chai is blasphemy.

And I walk a mile around, to cut down expenses,

Now that my offering to the temple is done.

http://www.literaryshanghai.com/jgeorge-two-poems/

The Voicecall

Oh! I could barely contain this joy, this excitement spilling poetry from the edges like molten lava of a volcano; on hearing your voice through this corded universe coded. My heart here knows today, such tremendous explosion, like the sudden boom of an underwater sea bed. Sending those ripples of zeros and ones across the sky surface, I decipher them in the space between us, to a bottled note of love, music in the ring of that call; and there is a voluptuous eruption of joy in my bosom as I taste your hiccupped laughter over the line, like bubbles in my cappuccino, my latte. Ha! The words flow nearly noiseless like honey from a dipper, smoothly dripping from your lips, shhh! reaching my ears too far away from your tongue tracing its curvatures, yet piercing my innards you go on talking. Oh! Your voice, so rich so intense cutting across this silver network of signal, fails to make believe me; how far a kiss is homed, and there I curl my fingers over some lately cut bangs, cuddling to a leech in the gaps between your fingers, I try to knot you in my tangles, 

First published in https://troumagazine.com/

St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

By evening seven, we are sitting opposite each other, at Café Coffee Day,

in the less crowded Ispahani Centre by St.Teresa’s Church,

on the Thousand Lights Road of Nungambakkam bearing witness to our meeting.

St.Teresa’s Church, where you said the choir was always lively - not a word on the sermon.

And Ispahani, a fading landmark, in the maps of closely-packed constellations of other malls.

Like us, opposite each other, they have always stood, cut open by a busy highway;

St.Teresa’s for the lop-sided altar boy and Ispahani for the socially-awkward-writer-girl;

One by faith went and the other for the memory, the view of the barbaric yawp came.

It’s quiet there -

like in the library, like in the chapel of St.Teresa’s and in the elevated grounds of Isphahani,

a divine quietness shrouding, as we take those sips of cappuccino.



While I try remembering the color of your eyes today,

all I could recall is the roasted beans in the showcase;

with a tint darker than that – incandescent - hanging above us.

The warm cup of cappuccino between us and the busy road.

Your voice three months later on phone, telling me, how desperately you need the road,

a two way road, barricaded in between, so that St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

could stand opposite to each other, never meeting, in no universe,

confiding an entire cosmos between.



Coffee tastes great there in Ispahani, red velvets too

It’s an old mall in the great city of Chennai and she carries memories of love all kind.

She stands there, withstanding the great floods, hurricanes and earthquakes

like the best antique property of the city, priced, incomparable.

And I write this poem,

not because you asked me to.

I can’t contain the ‘you’ in me, anymore -

https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems

Almond trees on 4th street

The red ripe leaves of the stone fruit tree garnishing these streets

falls raining on the empty road, tarred black.

It’s Autumn again;

the leaves are falling down in hope of rising.

To a dormant sleep of vim, they tumble

like bright orange embers, waiting for the winds of harvest.

An endless forest fire, he would initiate in them, on his visit,

They know, so do I.
https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems

The Dust Storms

image credit DUST STORM BY STEPHANIE FROSTAD

The dust storms have clouded my lungs
Dunes of solitary ruminations.
Brewing heaps of scorched drab dirt
In my burrows of some unresolved sorrow.
They clog my pores of respiration
Choking me, on my phlegm of paranoia
In this exotic land of doldrums untold
Enthroned by fear, I live my peasant life
Trying to rise a feet above the soil!
Oppressed by the rulers of my own democratic ink.







http://www.museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=feature&issid=85&menuid=8335a

The Mystery

                                         

image credit etsy.com

Doors that seldom open, despite frequent banging
Fastening away from the monsters, or enclosing within the devils?
Muzzling the demonic wails, maybe
Or warning the restrains, could it be?
Buying time maybe,
Killing time… can it also be?
Shrinking in silence sometimes,
At times sinking to a hush.
But always locked inside,
From the broad roadways, few subsist.
A mystery to this world
That claims The God’s eye

http://www.museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=feature&issid=85&menuid=8335

The Roller Coaster Ride

Two heart patients on a roller coaster ride, 

and their hearts tied at the end of a string,
the frail string of a matrimonial sacrament of the faith.
Like a balloon held high above their heads, tailing them
they held to it so strongly, so firmly
their hearts at the edge of that string,
ready to take flight any moment
ready to do that ultimate jump of fear, at any moment of a slight blink, and cry,
when the string might slip like water, like sand,
through the slight gaps of the fingers,
drifting their hearts away, in the path of the blowing winds.
Yet, in the course of the ride, it flutters…
trembling in the fleeting wind changing its path
the hearts, the balloons, much above their heads
fluttering, trembling, trying to break free from that hold
from that firm hold of fear, it sways in the ocean ranges of a cyclone.
And maybe when they get down, they will notice the fleeting balloon,
how from their huge palms, it ruptured free unnoticed.
how the bruises were made, by holding that string too long
and how two heart patients went on a roller coaster ride and called it a marriage.

https://issuu.com/theparagonjournal/docs/volume_eight___september_2017-merged

Romancing this International Boy

From across the globe, you embrace me,

in a dream.

And for a moment,

I feel your presence tearing my skin,

oozing shattered colors of bangle shards.

Decorating the marble floor, devoid of a spot.

there, you become the questions to all my answers;

just like mentalists performing,

who knows well ahead, what I might ask.

And I fear, given time, I might write you a love poem

Travel the moon, across the seas to reach your sands,

and bend my knee, “Be it a moment or more,

Let me know the alchemy of belonging,

as these cultures from across the worlds, blend together,

like the perfect ocean floor crust, withstanding every eruptions of volcano,

and yet cradling an entire ocean to its breast.

Let me discover that paradise of joy existing within you,

while shining through that cracks and breaks of your tectonic pasts.

Let me love a poet like you, with a kiss of the pen!”

Ten thousand miles away from you, my fingertips ache,

To touch the poetry you weave, from your solid mind.

uprooting my rational seeds of thought,

I keep romancing this international boy.

https://issuu.com/theparagonjournal/docs/volume_eight___september_2017-merged

The Mosquito

As days pass by flushing like a gutter,

I get used to these empty mail boxes, empty purses,
And your lies filling my thighs, spilling over in perfect roundness.

And like nothing more than a perturbed buzz of a mosquito,
You linger a permanent echo in the air; empty of your scent.
Sucking blood from my limbs, I saw your tubular stomach fill red,
What did I even think? That I would suffice your eternal thirst? I wonder!

That you turned to yet another body
That lay unblanketed for you, all along!
Nearby me, nearby me.
Why did I even panic in worry!
Was it not a mistake of mine,

To think that I would serve adequate for your pangs of hunger.
When, your perennial buzz of discontent was gone unnoticed by me.
Was it not a mistake of mine,

To watch you drink like a vampire to life,
While I suffered the sting of your poisoned fangs.
The zit you left for me, to heal;
In the place of a mistaken kiss.

As days pass by flushing like a gutter, stagnant in its flow,
I get used to the aftermath of this huge mistake in the name of love.

http://www.activemuse.org/2020_Open_Poems/Twinkle_George.html