They killed him.

by Poulome Mitra Shaw

They killed him.
Tonight he will be lying in the morgue
Like so many anonymous men
Who had no history
No relatives
No friends
No men who were kind
I heard they killed him in the evening
He was wandering naked in the streets
Trying to enter shops and begging for alms.
Each of them threw him out
The restaurants across the street where they serve meatballs to the rich
And the restaurant just beside it Where the band comes alive at night
And the traffic police just across the street whose pockets are full of bribes
They eat money these days
They have desolate rooms in their homes
Full of conscience that money can buy.
They murder significance
insignificance and echoes of remembrance,
They offer empathy and syphilis
They have mastered the art to be blind
Rolling in my bed tonight
I promised myself there will be no sleepless nights
The CCTV camera was wide awake
It registers fucks, tenderness,humorous voices and cruelty.
No, we do not rise
No one checks cameras
No one sees homeless madmen with amiable eyes
I heard the shopkeepers beat him black and blue
When he lay whimpering on the road
the city ran by
Spaced with apathy and the human fear of being hassled
But then who killed him?
Everybody has that coward in their bellies
Weeping their weakness and growing shrill mountains in their minds
I didn't kill him
I wanted to hurt the men who hurt him
I had run down when I heard the story
There were closed shops unprecedented emotions,
silent trees and misty darkness.
An upraised situation has been knocked into a morgue
Somewhere in some part of the city
to forgetfulness
There we weep for madmen, long nights,and faithful ghosts
And we are all there lying across the city
Tossing and turning for hours
And we are all so lonesome
Smashed by the palpable, the cruel and the absurd.

Our love was an overnight bag

by Poulome Mitra Shaw

We never made promises
So that you never have to keep them.
We never had battles like the rest
So no such passionate interlude ever paved
There were no edible stories, no blossomed breeze
We were in blooms within
We had a fiction of you coming back home to me
In tie and cufflinks
And I had prose of me going back to all your boundless
caressing your inheritances
of phobias, of fears, of nothing,
of that little in between
precious and sterile.
We had a surviving little nothing over dissolved and advanced

You never allowed our bodies to stain over mind
I have been safe in there, as safe
as a woman would be once hurt and in need of a haven
And I never asked you to remove our moist soil
Unspoken, bound and betrayed within
Our love bore flowers and growth
Each morning since then I waited for the trees adorned
and the season's been nine months
Expecting and never pregnant
It's been so long since I have lost count of my yellow summers
And shawl wrapped winters
They were Ruskin's seven husbands
Loving, with rapid stubble
But now we have our rain and betrayal
In overnight bags, packed to discretely leave rooms
Who ever said we needed spoken and shed?
Who ever said I only believe in promises?
Whoever said my eyelashes won't break wet when you talk of letting go.
Whoever said
I never made you promises
And I never have to keep them.....

Our love was an overnight bag packed to leave rooms

Poor, yours and defined

by Poulome Mitra Shaw

I want to meet you over heartbreaks
When your eyes will caress the purple rings under mine,
I want to meet you across closed doors
When we just have memories spilled across the sides,
I want to meet you over your crumbling years
We won't have our passionate denials,
I want to meet you over some infidelities
I will dissolve myself in contained deities with my religion tr...aversed.
I want to meet you over fun, frolic and picnics
I can be wary of your eyes following me in weightless love
I want to meet you in insomnia
In silent darkness, on a pink bedspread, in timeless connival of moist cocoa butter
seething restless on my misty skin
I want to meet you when you walk away
When I go prophetic to deny my blinding fears
I want to meet you in a cemetery, exhausted over bodiless souls
Who knows, you may descend to the memoirs on the pungent smell
You may return to the madness of love and life
I want to meet you in hospital beds
My last wounds will birth you in healing.
I want to meet at the church then
To belong and to be your bride.
Dressed in all that finery of convictions
Rich, poor, yours and defined.

All My Dreams Were Caring Women

by Poulome Mitra Shaw

All my dreams were caring women with hips and generous bosoms.
With the tender moon tucked within
With every disenchantment in their stride
They always walked back home
religiously, oh so religiously every night
without pleading with the closed doors
to unafraid beds violating the nightmares seen
They were caring women with forgiving hearts and large kind eyes
I always knew all my dreams were Mother's within.
They let go of all the verses that had baubles of disdain
I always knew all my dreams were Women within
They let go of every stab, every excess untold
I always knew my dreams never trembled
even when nightmare played out its role
They were compassionate women with tender smiles and loving arms.

I have finished crying

by Poulome Mitra Shaw

I have finished crying.
I cry no more.
I wept months for you
Stained shadows left on the bed sheet
Need to be washed, dried and ironed.
Everything's on as before
The tea tasting the same,
The crows knocking on the pane,
Morning sunlight framing the shadows.
You and me stand buried deep in a frame
... Amidst monsoon symphony
A decade since followed. You fled when all lies caught up with us.
Every morning the smoke mounts to burning eyes
I sit forever with the tea
holding a habit as ancient as hope.
Waiting for you to return from all those roads that lead you astray
Waiting for you to keep those promises
Waiting for you to look at our baby
Postponing living each day....
Swaying days and flipping pages over
As if today doesn't matter
I have finished crying
I cry no more.