By Prithvijeet Sinha

THE MISSIVE I send a letter to you, with drops of blood dyed purple, your favourite flowers pressed with them and the smell of musk on this dog-eared paper, to remind you of me. In return, send back my whole hometown's exuberance, a box of saffron to entwine me to my land and a promise to pray and never blame God. With deliverances of freedom, pray for peacetime to gallop like a glorious stallion on open land and set me back home. MACBETH C. 2021 It's so easy to wash one's hands, rinse off all the blood in a ceramic bowl but the splotches will still show. Look what war has made of this home. The blood on our hands traverses the atlas, open like a dusty tapestry in the drawing room. Blood on the table, blood on the windowsill, splotches here and there, stuck like evanescence on doorknobs, not one corner spared from ghosts. ** Smell of napalm wafts in the air and the burning monk's images make it obvious for him, tiger eyes peek from beyond the page and mortal danger orchestrates stealth, amidst the overgrown elephant grass of forests now turned into a battlefield in his mind. When the world goes to war, all the loons by the lakes go dead silent, as if on some suicidal spree and the shore, abuzz with their beck and call, becomes scorching dry, turned from fertile land to sand dunes. There is no sinister time for him to lose his mind because there has to be no greater pressure-point than this war for sanity. The blood on our hands is dried clean but the splotches still show. Greater than a bullet wound and far more sinister than the general's fallacies from the front lines. The War At Home starts from his bunker. The clawing back to his room ends in loud laughter and then rage and then death by combat with his own ghosts. The war at home begins there.
Prithvijeet Sinha has been prolifically publishing works of various hues in journals and magazines like Cafe Dissensus, Confluence, The Medley, Borderless, Wilda Morris’ Poetry Blog, Screen Queens, Rhetorica Quarterly, Lothlorien, Chamber Magazine, Livewire among others. He believes writing to be the true music of the soul.
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4 replies on “Soldiers and Missives”
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An exquisite and I would say a dangerous poem, PJ. You leave the reader in a state of calamity of “what war (world) is this?” i don’t know where this is from, except that i heard this from one of my favorite films, GIRL INTERRUPTED. The psychiatrist tells Susanna in a session, “what world is this.” i say, “what war is this?,” for this is a spiritual warfare i am undergoing with so many others. And it’s the “missive” that i must be sub”missive” as a soldier of Christ to the beck and call from my God. The Bible says, “‘No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the Heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their Righteousness is from ME,’ says the LORD” (Isaiah 54:17).
Only one thing I would suggest to change in your poem: To change “beck and call” for the loons to “beak and call” 🐧
Yes, PJ, you are a Mighty (Wo)Man (https://timothyjverret.blog/2021/11/11/mighty-women/) dangerous with the pen!
Love and blessings from your “huckleberry friend,”
Timothy (or Mr. T or Comrade T or BOTH)
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Thank you for reading and reflecting on these works.
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