This is the place where I share poetry.

What Came to me by Jane Kenyon
Thursday, January 29, 2009

I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.
It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on th porcelain lip.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.

Pooja wrote at 9:22 AM [ 0 Comments ]

Listening to Mukesh by Pooja Nansi
Wednesday, January 28, 2009

listening to mukesh

Driving to your block,

I slide in my father’s cassette

of old Hindi songs and

I am humming in twilight

to the legendary

playback singer’s baritone

releasing those sounds in that

language that makes me feel like I am

home. In the back of my throat,

I can taste my grandmother’s

translucent thin chappatis

that as children we would
hold up

to the light,

the dough so evenly rolled out

by her hands that not

one lump would show.

I never appreciated them till her hands
shook so much,

she could no longer grip

the rolling pin.

I hear the children from the slum
that emerged behind my grandparents small

two-storey apartment block.

They are swearing

in that deliciously punctuated rhythm

only the born-and-bred tongue

can dance to.

I am home for a while.

I can smell dust and kerosene

in the air and hear
high-pitched devotions to the gods

blending without objection

into the stone thud bass
of the latest film song.

Jamming my brakes at a traffic light,

I realise home is supposed to be these

dustless streets and the smells

are alien culinary concoctions,
like pigs’ knuckles and chicken anatomy,

that my migrant tastebuds
cannot migrate towards.

I have taught my tongue

to like the garlic sting

of Hainanese chili paste

and form some Hokkien curse words.

It even enjoys the harsh bite of it,

but it is not

a taste, a language

that makes my heart sing

like these notes on my

car stereo.

Jaoon kaha batayen dil,

Duniya badi hain sangdil

Chandini Aiyen Ghar Jalane

Sujhe Na Koyi Manzil.

Tell me where I should go

in a world filled with indifference.

The moonlight filters into my house,

But I do not belong,

neither can I think of a destination.


Pooja wrote at 8:10 PM [ 1 Comments ]

For
the poets
who knew that if
all the poems in the world
were loaded onto the backs of trucks
and incinerated, no one might even notice for days
the death of poetry would cause far less consternation
than if the electricity or water taps were turned off all over
even for a few hours , and yet the poets continue to write
because they know perfectly well that trucks, taps
and all those other magical gadgets would
have about as much chance of existing
as babies without parents, if poets
had not first invented
poetry

Pooja wrote at 6:55 PM [ 1 Comments ]
January 2009