THE FESTIVALS OF MIND
We roister when a word bursts into a million atoms
Each atom carrying the ink of thousand suns
from one infinity to the next
through blood streams
We gyrate when we find the skin of our nuances
melting into history’s conscious
We revel secretly when the universe whispers a dark truth
A firecracker erupting in our bones
For hours, we keep tying and untying tributaries of time
disentangling one soul from the next
until we catch our dragonfly tailing past in alphabets
tie them together with uneven hooks
of kaanas and maatras, rhasvas and dirghas *
in a string of verses that light up against the evening sky
Them blinking: a language of the unspoken
We gambol on discovering the lost sheets of an age
as we raise a toast to an empty labyrinth of chairs
when a poem gets published, unexpectedly
Like an accidental child or
a rocket dying a fragmented death
by morphing into countless crackers that sends ripples
through the Prussian sky
We celebrate the festivals of our mind
unknown to any calendar
uncharted by any astrologer
yet
*different accents in Indian languages highlighting pronunciations
MATHEMATICS OF LUMINESCENCE
Light loses its equation on discovering the orifice
Yellow multiplies yellow, sprawls like an overnight rainforest
The amorphous supplicating the symmetry
A beat erases from the history of her moment
Chest convulses under a string of lost screams
As if, an Atlantis was stolen overnight
- She still doesn’t know the misery of her departure
Meanwhile, her face turns brighter
A wooden cottage caught in the web of sunlight
A chaparral waking up or -
a desert closing its eyes
while luminescence finds meaning
in its own circle
behind her
FEAR IS AN UNWANTED CHILD
Fear is...
...a shooting star from the deep
ink of unwritten possibilities
...a nagging piece of bulb that
blinks in an unilluminated sky
Fear is...
...a faint smile of pink
on a weary face with broken
eyes that forgot to forgive
...a sneering bastard that
gesticulates at the flesh
of your heart even when it is dripping, tense
Fear is...
a gash on the skin of hope
a glitch on the contours of time
Fear is...
a poem written in the underbelly
of two thoughts in a bid to slay
before it rebirths
an unwanted child
Sanket Mhatre has been featured at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival and Glass House Poetry Festival. His first book of cross-translated poems, The Coordinates Of Us won the prestigious Raza Foundation Grant after been shortlisted at iWrite2020 at Jaipur Literature Festival. Sanket’s poems have appeared in multiple anthologies such as Shape Of A Poem, The Well Earned, Home Anthology by Brown Critique, Poetry Conclave Yearbook as well as literary magazines such as Punch, Borderless, Muse India, Madras Courier, The Usawa Literary Review, Men Matters Online, Anthology by Querencia Press and many others.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Borderless 