BREEZY TALK

I want to talk with you till eternity

Like the Wind talking with the trees ,

In waves of whispers

from the excited wings

of the cool  morning breeze--

in words of birds’ undying love for foliage,

in songs rich in flowers’ colourful  sensation,

in  amorous verses  of rills’ raw emotion

in lines of  poetry  written

in Nature’s every little motion :

in seas’ moony elation ,

rivers’  sunny inflammation ;

in rain’s intoxicating potion

glistening on your lips’ vibration ;

in the lyrics of soft dew

kissing crests of mountains ,

in lullabies of mother earth

springing from breasts of fountains ;

in tune with that flow from heaven

that sings of a vibrant fusion

to keep things in divine suspension.

I want to talk till you talk me out,

till I talk my  heart and head out.

I’ll  talk, talk and talk

like lovers talking with their loneliness

in madness of the night,

like children talking to fairies

in silence of the night;

Talk to me before my voice dies out

Let our souls talk with each other

Before time under our throbs slips out .

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

31/12/14

DECEMBER   RAIN

December’s drizzle dampens the pyre of memory

glowing like a moon behind  dense evening mist

exuding wisps of silent gloom without any heat,

reviving that old fire in one past beguiling eye that

had stormed the sea of my love

throwing me away and  smashing my dreams’ surfing fleet ;

and years after…

it has sullied life of those slum dwellers under  a fiery flame

who having lost place of their living, play violence’s dirty game,

pelting stones, inviting  the wrath of bullets and tear gases

that is soon mourned by the river’s heavy-hearted wind

crawling on old knee without any visible solution to find .

Tell your drizzle to stop, December

stop putting us in the throes of bloody violence in every form,

be it the unthinking bayonets  of Maoists or Bodo extremists

or lurid silence of fellow humans when someone is doing harm ;

after all you know how it pains to live under such chilly rain

when the new year is just around the corner

allow at least a few dreams to flow thro’ this shivering pen .

comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi, 30/12/14

SILENT BANGLES

Your bangles are strangely silent tonight

awaiting  to teach me a new lesson of love,

with a passion to bind but without their clang

with  a love blind but without recurring  pang ;

choked with dreams of a union on bed of stars

on the altar of heaven behind tall temple bars

where years back you promised me salvation

under the lamp of a moon radiant with light ,

from your crescent palms under illumination

offering a divine potion away from Sun’s sight;

bind me, turn me breathless  within your hold

till, to petals of a lotus our body does unfold .

comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

29/12/14

SPINACH  GARDEN

Cutting common spinach for the frying pan

is an affair of the hand involving more of my heart

than the taste buds of the tongue, always reminding

me of that newly wedded day when a trickle of blood

oozed from your freshly cut mehendi –coloured finger,

sending a young  heart into a secret tremor;

I kissed the bleeding  finger and you shied away

knowing little about the magic of eros in green leaves

that drew me closer to the gate of your blood streams;

making me a captive of your girlish love trickling

to the lawn of my body transpiring before vanishing

into moon beams sprinkled on white petals of night

where we were left with folded hands bereft of  sight;

now I see the spinach leaves without lushness

wilting to a remote corner

with desires drying on the bed of river Alaka,

the honey-moon flowers sizzling with heat from a harsh Sun

that prods the dear of love like a hungry tiger in the old lawn;

times have changed changing the nature of love perhaps

when I see love through our anger at times speaking

like two tired soldiers, we to the camp fire retreating

not knowing anything about the truce signed by an unseen hand,

keeping mum for hours and then returning to the familiar haunt

where like two babies  we quarrel over the issue of softer pillow

still in an unknown ecstasy , not knowing the pulls from below;

let us desire for the flow more than the river, the sun or the shiver

but for the spinach and the quiver, the common cold and fever

if that can keep us wide awake beyond time and  part us never .

comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

27/12/14

DECEMBER  SUN

Burn my face further , O Sun without thinking of the dark pigments--

Suffering’s those silent ,  seething monuments--

Of burnt-out desires  demurely  kissed by a healing wind

That blows across the stacks of golden  paddy lying in field ,

Smacking of sweet sweat of farmers, not in a hurry the crops to bind ;

Wherein Earth smiles, amazed at the sight of its own happy yield

Where you promised before setting, to plant a kiss with lips too mild;

Before being swallowed by the fishes in shallow river water

Where million desires of Winter in body of water do glitter;

Sending  waves  of ecstasy thro’ every renewed cell

Singing songs  of new love in my village’s happy vale.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

26/12/14

SILENCE

What haunts me 
is the silence behind the flutter 
of those leaves at the far end of the jungle
that shed drops of tears to mourn the hapless poor
who died under their tattered quilts of a Winter 
making us prisoners of a freezing time;

as we hibernate under warm blankets of love
in the cosy comfort of homes
but voicelessly seethe deep within ,
consecrated inside a strange silence herein:

at the roots of grass drying in our courtyard, 
tips of blossoms fading in our garden, 
lips of lovers parted ,
isolation of humans tainted,
precipice of hills wounded,
in the heart of the rivers that have fainted,
in womb of crops that like female fetuses
before yielding, have so hastily wilted…

now we fail to catch the silence in our breath 
while trying to grow intimate with Nature 
that has estranged us because of our nature,
from its elements comprising the life force;
is it the silence of a futile remorse
or an awakening to strive for the real hidden sauce?

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

BEETLE LOVE

The brown petals of your body

Turn me into a black beetle of the night,

Sucking honey from basil leaves

Of your soul away from strangers’ sight;

Your half smile turns me on

Inviting waves from surfing shores,

Of a wild sea as you look on

From behind the tightly shut doors;

Your words are so true but so few

That drop like petals melted in dew

Don’t know how to hold on now

As my elytra has started melting into you .

Slowly I’m becoming you and only you.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

22/12/14

TERROR AT PESHWAR SCHOOL

Violence bangs the doors of education

Traumatizing young learners at school,

Casting a challenge to Republics of letters

With bullets’ six hour long  cruel clatters ;

Mindless they battered  juvenile brains,

Wounding angels, scarring soft minds

And creating terror’s undue weighty strains;

Before they could learn to hold mighty pens.

We  have lit candles to rekindle our love

Of learning in face of attacks on Malalas

With a pledge to protect all tiny learners

Before terror takes over their beloved portals.

However hard we try to recompense

Thoughts hardly flow free as before

Grievous  are the scars of this ugly sore

That hew us at our hearts’  deepest core.  

Comp. n copy right: saroj k. padhi, 20/12/14

RHYMING RIPPLES

You are always there with your ripples rhyming

So well with the waves of my agony

Creating magic moments  of self-forgetfulness

On moon-drenched night’s scented ebony;

When mortals caught in knotty riddles

Crave for bars, pimps , parlour or party

I come seeking current from your flow

To lift my soul to a new  equanimity ;

With blush of smiles around your dimples

Creating  a  plethora of cosmic colours

Flung across the sky of my imagination,

You make my heart  drink strange cheers;

Hold on to my hand now to feel the ripple

Across every cell from toe to  my temple;

Inhale my soul dripping musk from deep waters

With drizzle of honey falling from all corners.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

19/12/14

ALWAYS THERE

You are always there—

In every nook of my stealthy look,

In each cranny of my crazy being

In obsessive neurosis of my skin,

At the heights of my virtuous thoughts

And  at the abyss of my darkest sin;

In soul’s itching and in bees’ fling ;

Always  a new song on heart’s breezy string,

And in the wind afloat on the birds’ wing .

Hardly can I move away from you

As I’m bound to you

In my bondage and in my freedom

In company and when lonesome;

It’s no more a matter of choice

It’s your presence

That decides my emptiness or essence .

comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

16/12/14

I’M AN ADULTERESS

I admit I’m an adulteress,

But ask me not how I became one….

And if blame you must

As you need to blame someone…

Blame it on the numerous nights of smokeless tears

Inside the wounded heart of my lonely pillow ;

Blame it on the stars that kept me awake throughout night

To fill my heart with promise of that tantalizing passion

In each of their restive wink restoring  the heat of true love

Inside the dark cage of routine life, and a little emotion;

Blame it on the insomniac moon that rent my heart

With a desire for retreat to those juvenile dreams

That in some remotest corner kept burning urging my cells

To lose into that flame of meaningful ,crazy beams;

Blame it not on my husband or children who are my sole love

Rather blame it on that wild stream that stole my rippling mind

Into the folds of its wavy heart, teaching me how to flow with glow

That keeps the lover Sun  in ecstasy without  a single worldly bind.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

15/12/14

MELLOW  LOVE

Moments of crisis in life that had sprung

Thorns of riddle all over your body

Open out into colourful petals of love

At the touch of a mist-soaked amorous Sun

Rolling on half-dried grass for frolic and fun;

When every creature here is also on a run

To be contained by hug of the sticky leaves

Of swaying grass on the sprawling Sunday lawn

Where children play with butterflies

At the old rendezvous of our foggy morn.

You have little desire now but a wish

To vanish into the colour of the  petals

That tremble in expectancy of a mellow union

With eternity at the end of our finger tips

Urging us to leave body soon to be born

Again in this virile, indolent Winter dawn.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

14/12/14

YOUR GIGGLE HURTS

Don’t know why, but your giggle hurts this night

Interrupting my progress up to my desired goal,

As I try to impress the moon beaming in her cellar

Who occasionally drops looks at my fragile body

That pathetically hides patches all over the soul ;

Your giggle accentuates into a loud warble of the night

As birds too join you, caricaturing my empty notion of love

That tried to capture real bliss in the net of hollow desires!

And plumb ecstasy in the puddle of sheer mud and mires!

It was no mistake on your part to giggle like that dear

It was perhaps my response to my own neurotic self ,

In the absence of that deep, suave and   luminous cheer ,

Which chills my foolish mind with so much anxiety and fear !

Comp. n copy right :saroj k. padhi

12/12/14

BABA, THE GREAT

When I was a small school boy, he was an ordinary peasant

He taught me exercises to build body and grow brawny,

He also tempted me away to a country liquor counter

And showed me how to drink some liquor to be brainy ;

Many years layer I heard that he visited my brother’s shop,

Gave some divine discourses and had a bout of liquor,

Before  parting for his religious business of giving succour

To the illiterate poor in his village in lieu of varieties of offer ;

Now I hear that he is quite big and renowned a Baba

In the entire locality with big name in the vicinity ,

Enjoying name, fame, honey and lots of money

And  devotees around thriving on his proclaimed charity.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

10/12/14

 a

A GIRL’S MONOLOGUE

How could you peep through the window of my bathroom?

How could you think of winning my soul  by  such hollow glare?

Look how I burn here in the scorching ridicules of the society

With chilly waves of trauma inside and the Sun’s angry stare!

How dare you call yourself my proclaimed lover, my soul’s partner

When you are simply driven by blind passion without emotion?

How could you be so unfair to yourself in the mirror of self image

Without bite of conscience? Wasn’t it a sign of your frustration?

For God’s sake don’t sully the word ‘love’ with such stupid acts

In the absence of being aroused by some nobler instincts

Keep away from my shadow to revel in your lurid dreams

Today with great remorse and regret my lone heart screams.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

11/12/14

SCULPTING IMAGES

Fog of this morning is sculpting strange images

In thick showers sagging onto the ground

Drops drizzling like monsoon rain in thicker doses

Making  bear-like shadows of walkers around ;

Bushes  move like prowling  animals of the night

With fall of leaves causing instant fright ;

Fledglings at the tree top searching for their way

Back to their nocturnal nest

As if after break of dawn there was another night

On a swift return from the nearby mountain crest ;

I get the smell of your damp body in the freezing drops  

Of sensual  sweat at the tips of shuddering leaves

And in trees’  drenched arm-pits

Smacking of yester night’s voluptuous dreams

In the lap of a swinging moon in frequent fits

As the clouds kept her under constant fanning

To fade into the Sun’s engulfing desire in the morning.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

08/11/14

FREEZING FINGERS

Winter bleeds here with a hidden desire to be cuddled that sweet way

You held my freezing fingers and rubbed them before going away

As the unseen icicles of insecurities dropped down to the ground

Drenched in  drops of dew and a darkness bereft of sound

Evoking buds in slumber to open into winking eyes of the morn

As sparrows imitated you in action they do, with beaks so often

On  the face of  the Sun-licking mirror kissing your shadow

As you fluttered around in and out of my open  window

Inviting the Sun to gather heat from our twin hands

And the sparrows to play many more sweet bands

It was a moment for Winter to touch  two heart thro’ fingers

With a music of sorts playing around that in mind still lingers .

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

07/11/14

BOATING ON CHILKA WATERS

The lake trembles here at the touch of your feet
With an old annual excitement in her body
As the tide from the bay sets the boat afloat on the vast expanse of waters
With a dash of a poetic crimson shy from the Sun
To the western corner of her shivering face
Blazing your pink chiffon anniversary saree ;

Birds fly out of the nests built in her braids
To soar still higher singing to the tips of those rocks on the hill
Where I inscribed your name in color of my young blood
And we basked in the campfire of a wintry night
Not caring for the wild growling jungle animals then;

We have built a sweet home here for awhile in the fold of waters—

As we did then in the crevices of rocks under twigs of aromatic plants
That sheltered our panicky hearts under lightnings and thunders
When you searched for a patch of sky beneath my cotton shirt
And I had turned into a den for a young tigress’ pent up hungers—

With Goddess Kalijai sending her blessings in misty showers
Of simple faith but love intense like those offered red flowers
That send their delightful glow across our unseen future years .

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi, 05/11/14

WEDDING ANNIVERSARY (dedicated to wife Sabita)

Jasmines soaked in pain of the foggy night
Glisten like stars of this December morning
Putting off all our plans of mourning, over
The common loss of lives of many smiles,
That dropped dead as we kept fighting over
Issues trivial while walking long miles ;
Across a desert filled with human sands
That stormed in the way like mirages burning .

You have tided over many such clashes
In your own simple way of beaming
Instead of wailing , when even vultures
Died from over-eating carcasses of dreams
That bled to death in accidents
At our life’s big twists and turning .

Come, my rose of the day,to hug the sweet ray
From Sun’s mellow bones on your soft petals ,
And make me an eternal thorn on your twig
Till the night at the edge of our life finally falls.

Comp. n copy right: saroj k. padhi
04/11/14

TROUBLED SMILE

Moon’s is a troubled smile to-night bemused at her own image

In the mirror of a formally dressed sky interrogating each dimple

 In her tainted cheeks with glints and glosses from chit fund money,

Where the brunt of blemishes from curses of millions of bellies

Have formed blotches of burnt out hearts on her face and thighs ;

She seems ashamed of her cabre danced only with a ribbon

Of galaxy around her waist hardly hiding her breast or belly—

‘Wasn’t I silly enough to commit such a grievous folly?’, she  muses

‘To dance like this on heaven’s sacred floor ,in guise of Miss Jolly!

As if I was meant to be a sheer feast for these Chit Fund owners

When my real lovers love to enjoy my celestial beams  so fully!’

‘It was a mistake but I think it was not such a cognizable folly

For money has made inroads into my land too in this globalized

World where people love night parties till six in the morning

Drinks, drugs ,dance bars, music loud and all grand hurly burly.

I  also feel sorry that the largest chunk  is the poor’s money

With their foolish investments tagged to dreams  all bonny

On your wide earth of so many hungers but very little honey

Where common life Is fraught with a little joy but risks so many!’

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi 03/11/14

REGRESSIVE

‘We are a highly progressive society’ --

we say in our camouflaged anxiety--

In terms of values and practice ,

With one foot in shoe of modernity

And another,  in deep prejudice ;

There is hardly any potion here

To lift us from this rotten abyss,

Where hearts lie in splinters,

Love is literal lip service ,

Where ecstasy is mired

By torrents of hypocrisy,

And honesty is muzzled

By  winds of a corrupt legacy.

Our souls are preoccupied with

Money, matter and fetish

And compassion, a pretence

In form of disguised  avarice .

In this claustrophobic world of the insane

What is wrong if I seek prolonged peace

In the little world of my courtyard

Where there is a pinch of silence and bliss .

Copy r. n comp. by Saroj k. padhi, 02/12/14

UNDYING DREAM

There is a strange satisfaction

In holding on to a dream

Fallen like a wounded pigeon

Into a stifled stream ,

Bleeding, tumbling, splashing

Flying up to fall again

But striving all through in acute pain .

With its sheen gone

Look how it lingers on

Like a half-faded rainbow in the horizon

Where the concept of union

Assumes a new paradigm

In the trajectory of hunger ;

Taking on ancient defeats, repentant retreats

Moving us still higher,

Levitating the spirit to survive

In the face of battles, guns’ ceaseless rattles

In the long- drawn-out drive across the blue sea ;

At the fringe of which lies a haven of peace

In the heaving bosom of a crimson sky

Where suns and moons always die

Without any longing or remorse

But with a romance with the near and the nigh.

Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi

01/12/14

ADIEU

The day you finally left me
in the hot shadow of a harsh noon
Under the spectre of a fading moon -
I lost count of days and nights ,
Control over sounds and sights ;
And many strange things happened
Like lightning , every now and then
That to all so very soon !

Every simple thing was just an image of you
Every small sound , a whisper from you
Every second , a memory
Every happening , a story
And spread across the canopy of imagination
You were the lone, faded , past glory .

The mirror lost interest in my face
And in the courtyard of my own home
My name lost its address ;
I fell like a cursed star out of divine grace .

Your parting time copper sulphate look
Put out the entire colony of desires,
On the corridors of power houses
Sunk into a pitch darkness of dead fires .

I have turned into a heap of ashes since then
With a few flickers reborn from time to time
In the oven made of dolls house’s mud and mire ;
When you are in constant love with fire
Burning there in the land of your constantly rising desire .

Comp. n copyright Saroj k padhi :
30/11/14