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Kalyani Bindu
Kalyani Bindu


DISTANCE MEASURED IN FLUIDITY
 
Mornings swell, between us,
with lacunae of erroneous spaces,
walls like flotation devices,
limbs lost in fluid
like flailing hydroponic creatures,
breaths pushed and pipetted,
in silent quadrants
across our skins,
inhabiting this distance, across and over,
this distance measured in fluidity.

 
 GOD OF REMARKABLE NIGHTS
 
In the morning, love is forgotten
(like estranged art on an ancient wall),
but you return, eventually,
as art, abstracted in ripples-
mosaic eyes,
serrated teeth,
and floral limbs,
dancing to an inconsolable song,
and then, bit by bit,
you vaporize
into visual cues to a dying memory,
and infiltrate
my demented prayers,
like an untoward god
(inappropriately abstracted)-
god of remarkable nights
(a souvenir from my forgetful days).

 
SOME SORT OF LOVE
 
‘For the love-stricken Buddha- a messiah- in a red jacket,
wearing earphones, sipping coffee’
 
Midnight howling between
his eyebrows,
a lull in some
accord of peace
looming over
his eyes,
a pot-bellied,
temporal ghost
vaulted into
patterns
across his lips
scorched in ochre,
and a river
across his shoulders,
beyond
a waltzing palmyra,
mourning
some sort of love.

 
 WE RESPIRE LIKE LAND, IN CYCLES
 
We respire
like land, in cycles,
plying birds
in and out,
sprouting
sun-fetching climbers,
conjuring lost ponds
in migraine auras,
lost fern
in necrotic feet,
and shudder, on a common axis,
as love sits
under a starry sky,
open-eyed,
open-eared,
open-mouthed.

 
 SOMETIMES, I THINK OUR PASSIONS ARE DIFFERENT
 
Sometimes,
I think our passions are different-
so different,
they barely kiss.
They stand apart
like some dead, white, million-legged
energy-
some ingenious trap
that sticks and
masquerades
as invisible
magically levitating human forms,
at times,
like states eyeing stone faced traditions
simmering in pallid, unlit flames
over their political maps.
Sometimes,
I think our passions are different-
so different,
they barely kiss.
Yet,
they stand close,
like sewn fringes
of unyielding leaves –
not crushing,
as they are bent,
to touch one another,
but,
crashing onto
one another,
as they are bent,
to touch one another.
Every time,
I think our passions are different,
I kiss.

♣♣♣END♣♣♣

Issue 83 (Jan-Feb 2019)

Poetry
  • Editorial Note
    • Ambika Ananth: Editorial Note
  • Poems
    • Debasis Tripathy
    • Kabir Sharma
    • Kalyani Bindu
    • Kedarnath Singh
    • Nida Sahar
    • Nilamadhab Kar
    • Saurabh Sarmadhikari
    • Sreetanwi Chakraborty