Two Poems
Rituparna Sahoo Painful Fireworks An abrupt and indelible boom unfamiliar to these streets, stuns everything to a terrible silence everything but my heart that it sets galloping like a mad horse. Is it a bomb detonating? It might be something out of a TV news clip on war in Gaza. The overwhelmed brain is left to its inept speculation till the source of the sound is revealed. The frail nerves so wired to the brain are now turned on. I can hear them scampering like rats. Then around the corner of the street I see little children at play setting off fireworks. The stars now seem forgotten -- as the faux stars melt into a shriek lighting up the night sky, garishly -- and take their place. Then the blazed trails of flickering gold dissolve into fumes blotting out their own artistry, filling up the lungs with a sharp metallic stink that gags the inner light leaving behind a sense of inky heaviness. On The Beach The sea suffers from a sad formlessness. It tries to reach out to me. I stretch my arm out to seize the importunate waters, but my fingers close on nothing. The vast isolation of the sea magnifies my despair. Pink and delicate, the shells and conches glisten like precious dreams. The sight of little children collecting them fails to warm me. These are the little treasures that the sea hides which come from a place far away as happiness. The winds sneer at the sea like fate, goading it into rage. Then the stubborn waves crest to the wind’s sneer. But the futility of it isn’t lost upon the sea. Resignedly, the waves fall to their demise -- Their resentment dissolves at my feet. Alone in its ordeal, the sea is intent on dragging me -- The tropical sun, the glitter of the sea, or the flaps of the gull-wings against the clear blue sky, nothing melts the darkness inside the head. All I see is the finality of bone-white foam. Its message is death. |
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About the Author:
Rituparna Sahoo is an amateur poet who writes poetry because it helps her get through her bouts of anxiety and depression, calm her restless spirit and manipulate her experiences into creating something intelligible — something of value that embodies a part of who she is.
Rituparna Sahoo is an amateur poet who writes poetry because it helps her get through her bouts of anxiety and depression, calm her restless spirit and manipulate her experiences into creating something intelligible — something of value that embodies a part of who she is.