Offshore dilemma Storm warnings are nascent on this coastline. The wind spells chivalry a bucket load of gentle caresses evening deepens further as time chains you and we begin to keep time, bathing eternally. If the modern therapists knew how to douse flames within our communion If our cult leader could speak without haste like a true messiah for a change If you and I could sail away on a sand boat as each grain replenishes our ride sneaking, dripping - past our cupped palms Would we be good to go on a cruise ship withheld by the calm? I know even the earnest pleas of orators are marked by silence The stillness - dives, into the graveyards when afterlife is far closer than the shore Drown as we may in our primitive affairs Is it time for a kiss? Say, is it time? I've never been to the sea before never can find a destination from constellations Cauldrons will always bubble when lighthouses are made for witch hunting As the interrupted light hits our escaping silhouette would they murder our sleek figures, destined to die? Oh, and I have never seen a storm before! Not in love off and on the crests of soaring tides The language we speak is bound to learn an offshore dilemma of who to kill to save the innocent tribe I can kick the water and keep waves at bay Rather impossible are daily chores near the blue lagoon Love is made when love ceases to share a family and we haven't seen all of the dead sea or pools of blood A lot has been said of warnings Yearnings and trapped lands of islanders. To free or not to free? I like to believe there are only two of us on this coastline. Others frolic a thousand miles away on dry beds in skyscrapers.
On the way back home I wept back in September once, forgetting when leaves change and the desert rose finds itself renewed in the arms of a foster-mother. I was born to many. Not troubled by who I had as a nurturer. Her milk was sweet enough. As a suckling I knew of days when she bothered not to feed her lone self, seldom preparing for a night with a polygamous man, to be humbled by the scoured fruit from the first land, her fevered dreams unveiled by the sound of other's bangles streaming into her ears. Only two miles away, my caravan stands in awe of that sorceress, now a remnant of the worldly ceiling. The night loses a galaxy or two in the quest of finding a way for the stars to escape. They lodge in my iris, as I trail away from her. I have my mother's fate, not destiny. The child in my arms has me bound – not for long. My hands form sepulchres to entomb the tears of a living child about to sleep. I am a wombless woman, pregnant without a seed, overflowing without a cup, rained on without the fear of sprouting. I am demure in the palms of this child. He has no sun line showing him our destination. They say, when you have handled things some palms grow pathways. Some others lose the very compass in their pointed fingers. A hymn for him will be sung across the river far from home. He will see me, a figure, so deformed by motherly desires, facing the other way. Where will I go, his temporary reflection in this miraculous place? I am almost done holding him. It must still be September. Lately, the stars in my eyes have been questioning their own light. Buried, someone must be weeping away.
Self-love last year the smirk on my face had lingered more my downturned lips were all glossed up stains within and all over my teacups I tried to be proper, when proper did not buy me cash prize on offer, no I didn't scoff at the arson, I called it, for my skin started to burn as I stretched it too thin, and my dimples lost their charm, and I sat, in front of the mirror, trying to bring back lost zeal today is another hour, the anniversary of smug appeal from time to time, I focused on the cupid's bow that protruded to disappoint natural selection, a primordial soup of self-loathing in it withered some lowlifes like me within all of the dirt, hurts to be the only one in green vessels that grasslands summon crickets to fill a room I am those, I don't speak, only hold my sore smile taut the cheeks swell, pulsate and drop, to let my hubris heal until I remind myself of nose pickings of a child who has learnt to dig what is unearthed remains soiled at the corners of my lips, in another year, I'll welcome vices before my sad smirk lifts.
Lost pages bring out my shadow self
It's daytime and only one
alley is paved with books
It's two o' clock in my mind
to be precise and proper
and the letters on the walls are
stolen from the inscription of
book thieves; I found a blessed
figure infusing academia into
streets; I bought from him
some books and forgeries,
limited editions of lies about
the modes of living -- we
mingled into one silhouette
and the vapor wrung out
of us and diffused, I may've fazed the
philosophers in the modern
marketplace, but I forget where reading
led me that day, I know sudden
dips in understanding are possible
when the collector clings to
the spineless - almost soft-
spoken - array of thoughts in
written form. And when the
light veers clear from the window
in my reading room, it's 2 pm,
almost always, and the rest of
the day is spent in the arm of
my shadow: the dark font that
lifts off of the streets when I
publish my footsteps to buy two
dozen eggs and slander lost pages
that passed by.
*****
Protiti Rasnaha Kamal is a Bangladeshi poet. She has a BA in Neuroscience from Mount Holyoke College, MA, USA.
