poem poetry – ipsita banerjee

Blazing.

In the silence of the night interspersed by soft snores, a ghost garden is where I walk, waiting to hear a voice that death has silenced years ago. Waiting and hoping each night to dream, of long dead blooms lying scattered as a shadow moves and little tiger baby appears, in the shadow, is it…

i.

I is a line with no place to stand alone. I is a framing device. Let us then move onwards, maybe into light? The bridges we build connect the living, so we reject our Gods until we return to death. The best word I know is ‘no’. No more pandering, no more money, no more…

The return

You never return from some things,yet the body carries on. Sometimesit even travels, reflects light, But when you knock, there’s no one home. How did I leave you? With the bitternessand disappointment of innocents.How did I return? Like a womanwho has nothing left to lose or hope for. The mind still plays tricks, But often the hands fall slack,…

15 August, your day. Always.

When you died, I lost my air. Hit with a giant swell of grief which still flows, streaming into streets filled with tears the rains that followed. I stood at the edge of the water diving in and out again and again, seeking relief. The sound of your voice is fleeting. Time is the thief…

Sunflowers

I do not give an explanation every time I write a poem, I just go about with the emotion and hope somebody gets what I’m saying. But this piece of art has a story and one worth telling. In school, back in the early 80s, there was an Art teacher everyone was petrified of: Mrs…

To a friend.

There is a sciatica running down a leg but I manage to live with it quite easily. I’m in Calcutta where I swore I never would liveand you’re in the other end of the country, so to speak You tell me you’re unpacking your life from boxes, I wish I could help somehow. In school we…

Erasing Bodies

Ars Poetica* (after Kenyatta Rogers) All poetry ought to be torn and thrown, unless someone picks up the pieces, pastes them together with tape as if it means something to them. Like toilet paper dissolving in the pot, the scribbles on the wall scrubbed out when you were three. Life is a waiting room, we…

A dream

Last night in a dream, I thought I saw my mother I tried to visualise her, sitting on her chair book in hand, the one she was reading most of which I never understand. I like fiction, she liked reality. So the books she gave me were left unread, like the books I gave her…..

Ducks in a row

The night is bored, the black it wears, torn at the shoulders… forever painted bleak, bringing in the darkness night after night with no other colour it ever wore. The evening listens to the song of the last koel that called and went and waited at the temple steps crossed legged, but no one returned…

Tomorrow

You smell the same, a combination of Old Spice and talcum powder, The fragrance I know but never remember Weaving into my thoughts as I ponder. Like the letters I wrote but never posted Like the letters that returned “Address un-known” I am that person, that unknown girl That I already have grieved but walks…

colliding worlds

I took a stroll on paths we walked Stopping now and again to stare They have added some bunnies And colourful birds and ducks But the duck I searched for Was not there. That duck was never here This pond was never her home But try explaining that to a girl Who somehow, magically Wishes…

back to basics

Every pore of my body, every spore, craves water As I stand in the shower, hot, cold, hot, colder, When on that hospital bed is your daughter You do not care for much else, the storms mutter Continue unabated, but you are not there, no matter What. If you asked me why not, I would…