Poems from my first collection of poems in English

ENGLISH POEMS OF SACHIN KETKAR





1) This summer too



This summer too
When the thick solar winds go wild
On the desert streets
Houses blaze like tungsten
In the bulb
The dust storm singes
The retina

Or when
The radioactive stars crown
Above the head as Gemini couple
And the Bee Hive thirst for honey


My self
Like a parched leaf
Shall burn
At the focal point
Under the blinding glare
Of existence



2) Inscapes from hostel



I)

in the empty corridors
the locks
hang
like testicles
of an old man

II)

sooty faces
of the crumbling walls
mosaiced
with pink nudes
watch the congestion
of a cigaretted room

III)

the damp smelly underwear
almost cleaned
hang like
lifeless bats
on a swinging wire

IV)

who knows
you may even begin to like
the vapors of urine
near the fetid dirtied lavatory



3) CAMPUS POEMS



I)

In silence the faded pink domes
Share loneliness
With the evening gray and sad
Darkening walls
The dismal trees
Long for someone from ages

II)

Everyone's left
Classrooms brood
Over their emptiness

Shrubs cling to the red bricks
Like memories

Some solitary figure
Is seen on the abandoned streets

III)

These old walls
Will always stare blank
At their dim reflections
Within me

IV)

At night
Silence sleeps in a corner
Like a cast out street dog
In a discarded night




IV)

Somewhere
Sleepless boys
Near a hostel tea-stall
Chant songs
To the night

V)

Silence is empty

The old darkness

Is back again





4) A LAMP


A halo of a lamp
Disappears
Voicelessly
Into the timeless dark


We can no longer
See our faces

I always hoped
You'd feel the warmth
And we'd
Burn together
As a flame




5) A FOOT-NOTE ON AN UNPUBLISHED POEM

i need no more
those desert words
those eroded rocks

for

corpses of meanings
hardly haunt the dark gray ruins
of these lines

smell

these pungent words
the echoes of the extinguished
flames

touch

these lines as you touch
your pregnant wife on
her unrevealed treasure




6) THE ISLE OF CALIBANS



Welcome once more
To this isle of calibans
Strangers with magic wands

Ariels
You released once
But left us calibans
Chained behind

This is the hole where we live
We of very ancient and fishlike smell

After you had left
Ariels and the rest of hermaphrodites
Whipped your language
Into our hides

Descendents of Miranda cackle
With imported lipsticks
And imported smiles
Under the canopies of Ray Ban
Don't they have very Aryan wiles

See us from the Rajdhani
As we shit near the tracks
See us oozing
From the imperial cracks

Welcome to our slums
And gladly hawk your brilliant wares
We've nothing to barter
But these ancient famished stares





7) WATER
An Incantation


thicker than hides flowing endlessly
below the skins below the ground
sweeter than purity surging ceaselessly
in the dark sharper than the cruel rocks
heedlessly flowing in the veins of the old granite
more ancient than the minerals primordial than
truths untruths or the sky the mother
of forests darker than the roots of spirit
mother of oceans surfs and spumes
effervescence of dreams pregalactic plasma
existing before time mother of suffering
let the petrified skeletons riot with forests
shock the deserts with dreams
startle the dry dunes with savannas make blood
fresh as your face drown the abyss with bottomless
thirsts of vortices and the storms of relentless eddies
let these barren ruins disappear in the crowd of wild roots
with thick green leaves protect this small earth
mother of time this sapling born in the dangerous
timelessness of time



8) How to Write a Poem


to write a poem
is a trick
we all can learn

we simply have to let
those black invisible fingers
from Beyond
take over our imperiled fortifications

for poetry is invasion
from skies
from the unlit bowels of the earth

as you turn syntax
in your fingers it turns

the shadow puppet of our self
between its fingertips


9) A HYMN


wash us in splashing
spray of shower
dry us till we crackle
scorch us with brilliance

make us ancient as stones
bless us with eternity
so that we trudge our corpses
like painful lumps of pork

give us your hunchback
so that we remain
like question marks
on the page of existence

oil our helmets
so that we glisten on our bikes
kill us indiscriminately
on these careless roads


10) History



Today in these shattered ruins
We'll hear the pale dithyrambs
Of the vanished bards
Reverberate for the vampire bats
Emaciated by history

Today in these scattered edicts
We'll gaze at the silence
Of the bleeding scripts which conceal
Terrified eyes
Mouths left agape

Today in these pillars of victory
We'll touch the rock silence
Of the devastated women
Watching with ruined eyes the space
Evacuated by history

Today in these empty spaces and ellipses
We'll inject our own absences
And silences to resurrect
The tragic chorus
Of history


11) The Hunt


i have hunted for the black antelopes
stags and musk deers
in the remote corners of my dark continent
forest people with nightmare trees
bogs and silences of the devoured animals
for i wanted to bring you
luminescent deer skins sunlit eyes of the wild cats
and my own head trophied and stuffed

with my primitive wooden spear
i have fished for the fish fleshy and fat
in ambiguous swamps coves and marshes
as i wanted to bring you
bittersweet blood of the freshwater fishes
to moisten the deserts of your lips

i have hunted for the snow white polar bears and lazy seals
in the wilderness of my ice age heart
i wanted to bring you the silken furs
to keep your milkwhite breasts warm with love

i wanted to hunt the dark shadows
of the nameless predators prowling silently
in the haunted tropical forests of your eyes
and lay their dead skins and time worn bones
at your feet


i have hunted for you
in the labyrinthine streets of this haunted place
for i wanted to bring you
your ethereal reflection secretly concealed
behind the long dark lashes

of my eyes



12) A NOTE

Please
Don't stand
In the window
Caressing
Those flowers

The deep violet
The purple
And the tender
Milk white petals

Linger
And disturb
The gray silence
Of the evening


13) TITHAL


Sea is nothing but
Slabs layers of water
Trying to overturn ride each other's backs
Whimper near your feet
Like a mongrel

Seashore is nothing

Here old men come to smoke their dull bruises
Young couples to show they are romantic
Boys come to ogle
Girls to giggle

There is nothing in the sky

And sky is nothing

It is an inert

A dumb blanket

Staring down like

Centuries upon us