Categories
Poetry

The Resting Place

By Saranyan BV


Summer peaked early

Beginning of April, it had sprung,

Too warm for comfort or sweat.


The flower arrangements came

And after sometime, overflowed,

The priest spoke about the celebration of life.


No cry, no sobs, no one wept,

They waited for a call from the undertaker,

The pit takes long in the seething heat, he’d said.


The choir boys look out of windows.

Mourners chide ceiling fans for being slow,

Bouquets would take a while before dropping dead.



Everyone imagined with shudder,

The day they would lie, with poignance

Hands crossed in front.


Out of the icebox, laid in bed of flowers

Mom saw all this, no longer cool, her soul

Impatient -- is it done? The resting place.

Saranyan BV is poet and short-story writer, now based out of Bangalore. He came into the realm of literature by mistake, but he loves being there. His works have been published in many Indian and Asian journals. He loves the works of Raymond Carver.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Categories
Poetry

A Moth as My Mantelpiece

By Saranyan BV

A moth came home last night. I must have been asleep when she did

She was not there when I retired to sleep.

She’d found a place on the mantel where some curios are kept

To tell the people the kind of person I am, the visitors who come home.

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The mantel holds up a teacup with a picture of my under-grad days,

Long sideburns and disheveled hair and care-a-damn appearance.

Also, there a mascot from the University of Duke.

My son had brought and left so we could remember he was there.

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I am thankful the moth found a vacant space

To spread her wings and in that order chose to die,

I think she is dead for she hasn’t moved since —

The moth not as colorful on her wings as butterflies,

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The wings spread like eagle in flight, above in the sky

The wings have all the sheen, all the curve on the verges

The wings look like cape extending from kingly shoulders,

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The motif on her back hard not to see in the morning sun

The body structure the same, ugly cylindrical, rolling pin with rings,

Her proboscis now immobile, coiled, were once ceaseless foragers.

It would be foolish to remove and cast her

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As dead carcass in litter of the world,

Let her be, be my guest in that departed condition

Till it’s time for my going —

The house has all the air and all the oxygen.

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That it chose to die in my home as mantelpiece is a benediction,

I watch her, the piece of advice sent from heaven,

Something like Gita or Guru Granth Sahib

Passing out in an unaffected stance of corporeality.

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Saranyan BV is poet and short-story writer, now based out of Bangalore. He came into the realm of literature by mistake, but he loves being there. His works have been published in many Indian and Asian journals. He loves works of Raymond Carver.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Humour Poetry

Two Boons and one Bender

By Saranyan BV

Two boons and one bender

Although in a situation where most people living on earth die en-masse
Blown by pandemic or by bacterial catastrophe,
Or by freak accidents like trail of large meteoric rocks crashing,
Or the ocean fed by melting of snow in North pole come bashing
(Like when Arctic begins to look like Sahara and my continent like archipelago,
I happen to be in foothills of Mont Blanc that eventful day 
(For logic’s sake I say this to explain why I don’t die)
Bargaining with the Italian store owner there with cutting edge aquiline nose
Trying to rent low-cost ski-board and other skiing tackles),
Or by evolution of new species more intelligent than mankind,
More robust and more disciplined and more tech savvy
(the funny type which doesn’t tell lies and looks for rationality in all the things they do),
Either by mutation or by unfortunate leak of synthetic embryo 
From some secret lab in Basel or in Rio-de-Janeiro.   
Or the landing of aliens using satellites which look like Harley Davidson
Whose lethal weapons kill in unison, 
Alien species which have eyes located on their bums and can’t see when seated,
(Any incubator company want to design chairs for seating arrangements 
In movie theatre or chaise lounge or bistro, or for suntan under orange-colored parasol?)

Although most people living on earth die like this
(After natural life gets over that is - How boring! How disastrous!)
And earth has enough 6/3 space left to bury
I wouldn’t like to be interned, for who would want to be unearthed,
Discovered long after dead by some disparate archaeologist of random genus
And be smeared with some new chemical which doesn’t let me disintegrate
Either by sound-bite or by light or toxic smell of some obnoxious substance.
I ask God for two boons, one - give me two minutes of life after death; 
To narrate and record events that lead to my death and the causes thereof,
So that no one spreads rumors how I died, that my wife doesn’t say I was reckless 
(God, kill me two minutes before my time and lend me those two minutes for post-mortem!)
I like my remains to feed leg-less organisms in sea, (this the second boon request)
My ankles tied to three-inch nylon rope saddled with fifty kg Hematite rock-horse
Slid where the depth is more than four thousand eight hundred and ten meters
Which is the altitude of Mont Blanc. (we need planned coincidences, right?)
If I can complete the narration in less than two minutes,
I have time to dangle and watch the fishes tugging at me, 
Carrying bits of me to crevices where turtles live and twaddle, 
I like to comb the oceanic floor with my hair, 
Watch fishes mating like there’s no tomorrow
And not fear bad breath because down under the sea bad smell doesn’t carry.

Saranyan BV is poet and short-story writer, now based out of Bangalore. He came into the realm of literature by mistake, but he loves being there. His works have been published in many Indian and Asian journals. He loves works of Raymond Carver.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.