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[left]
[contributor]Pooja Ugrani[/contributor]
[title]Two Feet and Other Poems[/title]
[num]4[/num]
[back url="https://www.hakara.in/category/turbulence/open-space-turbulence/"]
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Two feet

Two feet witness
those toiling to reach home,
witness the sum of all things unjust,
all seasons adverse, weathered,
shaped by the unprecedented.

Two feet find
the will to break barriers
that segregate, cage, dictate
leap over fears that open out
possibilities to be shared as humans.

Two feet unravel
knots around identity,
enriching such choices
of what is imbibed and what is kept out,
find their way through a tunnel that connects.

***

Knife and phone

I sit down to enjoy my art
with a knife and phone

a faint hunger works up
after listless hours of scrolling,
satiated by plating colours,
textures, guising gnawing boredom

an elaborate post production
followed by regular reporting
to imagined drools, likes,
hearts and compliments

a click later, the deafening roar of
aeon travelled stomachs
shatters my plate. I gulp splinters

stab what is left
of hunger inside

***

On having entered a room

On most days I witness
seesaws of alternating identities 
as we hiccough through planned exchanges 
and spontaneous spurts
engaging in our own little play, 
trying to sit still, weightless in the centre, 
as if we do not matter

Today’s different, somehow
cracks laden with seeped pretension threaten collapse, 
realignments of agreed-upon definitions for this space,
as the sanctity of boundaries between relations 
that changed behind closed doors
is dragged into the public eye 

With blaring earphones and eyes shut
I no longer exist in this room
now I am a cat that waits 
to jump out of balance, to find myself 
to make me whole 
to become manifold, timeless

***

To giraffes who keep their necks above the clouds

aspire to reach the sun
pine hard, long enough
that anatomy changes

crane up to bask
in the effervescent sunlit sky
at a hot air balloon's height

then, also, stick your head
into the bedazzling brilliance
of a jumped-in monsoon puddle

follow the sun to the ground
the linear path imagined
shall curl into a spiral

bend down harder and
you may see light shining
under you, inside you

laden clouds around your neck
cast shadows, obscure vision
'other' the world
don't you want to be
bigger than what shaped you?

[author]Pooja Ugrani is an architect by education, a teacher by profession, a poet by whim, and an artist by choice. She considers the cities of Mumbai and Bangalore her twin homes and spends time jumping between them, writing about the small everyday things in life that intrigue and engage her.[/author]
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[left]
[contributor]Suchita Parikh-Mundul[/contributor]
[title]Three Poems[/title]
[num][/num]
[back url="https://www.hakara.in/category/turbulence/open-space-turbulence/"]
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sunset

watch as the sun drops into
the reservoir of tomorrow
and drowns in its myth;

watch as fumes of pink
film the earth for an awed fraction,
eviscerating the yellow;

watch as fading hues are corseted
by a brocade of stars,
stifling them in syncopated flashes;

watch as deep velvet simmers
with soft shades of puce,
framing humanity in blunt tones;

watch as the kiss of night
transforms twilight to darkness
while swallowing lips whole;

watch as a laced veil
descends over the scene
to paralyse breath;

watch as dark birds
mottle the lunarscape,
foreshadowing a permanent stupor;

watch as creatures recede into depths,
and the earth begins to glisten
like a dying body;

watch, at last, as darkness envelops,
and sleep transforms
to funerary peace.

***

I remember

I remember how green fields
dotted with gold once penetrated
psyches and inspired song;

how depths of confusion
were swallowed at
each thought –

it was a lush beauty
that lasted grudgingly,
eventually desecrated by life…

…now I remember words
that are systematically oppressed
and caged in legalities;

depressive rhapsodies
that shatter the dark,
stealing essence from breath;

motley souls
who choke on sentences
that end in recurring deaths;

a melting pot of bedlam
that christens women
‘hysterical’;

borrowed lands
that are demarcated with
bloodlines and impunity;

posthumous limbs
that are cuffed by effort
and effort and effort;

I remember and remember
and remember
with no foreseeable end.

***

others

dreams leak through perforated sheets
that have been molded into buses,
their rectangular punctures
barred in a weak attempt
to secure potential.

hope pours onto streets,
melding with tar,
leaving remnants
of pliable aspiration
to gradually harden.

catalysed by the velocity
of rotating wheels,
small tornadoes of dust
blur the path
ahead.

so many pairs of eyes
remain shut,
feeling the chastened wind
on their burnished skin
as they lie immovable.

distance lengthens the days,
fields supplant cityscapes,
space occupies thought
and regurgitates
simplicity.

the breeze blows freely
from a distant future,
unfelt by urbanity,
untouched by
others.

[credit]Image courtesy: Shahnaz Parveen [/credit]

[author]Suchita Parikh-Mundul has published her poems in Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, Muse India and Cerebration. A debut collection of her poems, Liquid Apnea was published by Sampark, Kolkata in 2005. Currently, Suchita is completing a second book of poetry while freelancing. [/author]
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