Poetry, Ashvamegh Issue VIII, September 2015
Welcome to the poems section of Ashvamegh Issue VIII (September 2015). On this page, you can read the poems from selected poets for that issue. We hope you will enjoy reading them!
Read Poems by Paul Sohar
EARTH AND DIRT
The dirt was never dirty when
I was still a growing child,
before I found myself in this
grey, asphalted world, exiled.
The first day with school out
I went outside barefoot to play,
one thin shirt and simple shorts
were enough for a summer day.
All summer I went without shoes,
because it was only right
to save them whole for later,
against the coming winter’s bite.
The dirt outside welcomed my toes
with a ticklish, warm embrace
whether it was dry and dusty
or pure mud yielding to my pace.
Walking on dirt road was not
walking in infectious dirt
but on sacred soil from which
all life such as mine would spurt.
* * *
WATER MY SOUL
I always wanted to live near water,
because my dusty old home town
lacked even a creek and it was only
boredom in which we could drown.
Lake Velence was a swamp
with some open water for a dip,
but it was fifteen kilometers away,
much too far for hoofing it.
When I got hold of a bike though,
it was no distance at all;
getting there was half the fun,
the wind was making it a ball.
Speeding along I was dancing
in the arms of summer air
and didn’t really care if I
would actually make it there.
Sunny air, summer air, why did
you ever abandon me?
Where’s the ball now? I have none
to dance with but a memory.
* * *
GARDEN PARTY LOST
Apples are in low supply,
so is Eden’s once-blue sky;
nettles steadily invade
the garden in a wild parade.
The plan was spirited, not rash:
we sprinkled compost spiced with ash,
that was how here we designed
the grandest garden you can find;
neither a plain vegetable plot
with tomatoes and the lot,
nor a fancy halcyon
where nymphs and satyrs carry on
like in color prints and oils,
pictures where life never spoils;
all we wanted to restore
the real Eden just once more.
The very real thing of old
where wise old oaks and beeches hold
a sky whose winds are always clean,
where death never dims the scene.
But once we’d built our halcyon
we just played and carried on
till empty flasks graced every tree
and black wings draped our comedy.
It’s time again to get to work,
dig up and fertilize the dirt,
it’s time today to weed and sow,
again to make our garden grow.
* * *
Paul Sohar ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, publishing seven volumes of translations. His own poetry: “Homing Poems” (Iniquity, 2006) and “The Wayward Orchard”, a Wordrunner Prize winner (2011). Other awards: first prize in the 2012 Lincoln Poets Society contest; second prize for a story from RI Writers’ Circle (2014). Latest translation volumes: “Silver Pirouettes” (TheWriteDeal 2012) and “In Contemporary Tense” (Iniquity Press, 2013). Prose work: “True Tales of a Fictitious Spy” (Synergebooks, 2006) and a collection of one-act plays from One Act Depot (Saskatoon, Canada, 2015). Magazine credits: Agni, Gargoyle, Osiris, Pedestal, Rattle, etc. Anthologies: Consequences, Metverse (India), etc.
Read Poems by Uma R. D
When I……………!
When I light the lamp in front of God
It seems I am falling in love with you.
When I write poems it feels as if you are looking at me.
When I read it is you whom I see in every words of the book.
Do you know that I am waiting for you since a long time.
I have to love you even after this life.
I don’t have that much love as you deserve.
One whole life is small to love you.
So I will come again and again in this earth to love you
Listen, my eyes will search you in my every birth.
Mysterious eyes
There was no light too
Some word were alone
Mysterious eyes were looking
There was no light too.
Only a small hole was visible
When snooping out side from hole
It was caught by the mysterious eyes.
It was first feeling of love
There rose many suns together
It was you, who made music for life.
Now there are light and love too
It is a journey from darkness to light
Which is completed by holding your hand
Word are expressing love
Now there is God too.
Uma is a PhD research scholar (Mass Communication). She is a Talker in All India Radio (specialist in North East culture). She has published research articles in English and Hindi research journals and lives in New Delhi.
Read Poems by Aashika Suresh
I can discern
Salty;
sweet;
sour;
bitter;
unami.
But tell me, Love, what does revenge taste like?
Take me Home
When all my world is shadowed
by the habitual humdrum of merely being,
a wreathe of wretched desolation
threatening to drop over my head,
Darling,
take me home.
Take me home, where a piece of chalk
was all it took to turn
my frown to a
smile;
when every slip-up was met
with Mother’s uncritical embrace
and a cosmic heaping of comfort
food.
Take me home, where the daily
soaps
would be my only dose of drama;
broke was a word reserved
for the t.v. remote, not my
heart.
Take me home, to the perpetual summer
sun
and ice-lolly stained lips;
where the ephemeral ocean waves
would wash my sins
clean.
Take me home, Darling,
so I can live. Once more. Yet again.
Aashika Suresh is a 21-year-old aspiring poet from Chennai, India, with a zealous passion for poetry. Maya Angelou and Emily Dickson are among her favourite poets. She began writing poetry at the age of five, and ever since, has haboured the dream to be a published poet some day.
Read Poems by Charles F Thielman
Light through Stone
Window-fed sun-bars reach across
her wood floor to the dracaena,
coleus and corner easel,
yellowing wall, the fresh canvas
she stands back from, sketched
cliff edge trees gust-raked east.
She blinks away need, one hour
into her work, what horizon there is
is a colorful mirage, brush-tip poised
to paint dragonflies on lakes of wind.
Brush hand cupping the breath of storm
as her true eyes open without faith in the ruins,
silence flying out of the shells of voices,
postures emptied by riptide undertows.
Brush-tip anointing shoreline agates
with glimmers as a marrow-born stroke
arrows through pulse onto canvas.
See the fog mare
canter out on the waves
as a yellow sailboat runs south,
flying jib filled by a nor’wester’s approach.
Paper Canvas
Dune grass ticking on a blue-jeaned leg,
he’s left the pace mined from unloading
boxcars to the tide-line’s broken shells,
stepped inside a whispering current
while so many machete through green,
greasing our slide into a dark cabaret.
Assigned scripts pinned between ribs
as dust circles the veins of our eyes.
He gnaws through brick laid by
grandfathers and father, various
dialects like beads drying his tongue.
He’s ready to river gems past the monotone
inhaled, past the monotone mined
from the cubicles built by white-eyes.
Toxins dissolving the pearls dispensed,
he senses a wave building, carrying
hot debris and bred angers,
statues and columns melting
inside black rains as chaos gains volume.
Fingering the agates in a pocket, he
wonders if he could sense their
gathered light, then translate
it into colors brushed onto the canvas
filling via spine-fed brushstrokes, easel
just visible through that cabin window,
journal on the table pulsing rivulets
of dawn thoughts. Self-portrait growing,
his face reflected on glass as the incoming tide
feeds the shoreline background. Clouds,
yes, on the horizon as he speaks
the Spanish word for storm, borrasca
for rain, lluvia.
Borrasca y Lluvia
Amor, Amor
Born and raised in Charleston, S.C., moved to Chicago, educated at red-bricked universities and on city streets, I have enjoyed working as a social worker, truck driver, city bus driver and enthused bookstore clerk.
Married on a Kauai beach in 2011, a loving Grandfather for five free spirits, my work as Poet and shareholder in an independent Bookstore’s collective continues!
And not a few of my other poems have been accepted by literary journals, such as The Pedestal, Gargoyle, Poetry365, The Criterion [India], Poetry Salzburg [Austria], Gangway, Windfall [Oregon], Muse [India], Battered Suitcase, Poetry Kanto [Japan], Open Road, Poetry Kit and Pastiche [England], Belle Reve, Tiger’s Eye and Rusty Nail.
Read Poems by Indunil Madhushanka
War is Like an Empty Shell
In those days we were naughty, annoying buds
Bobbing, popping little rebels
Held aloof to our parents
On one joyous evening our father brought us
a very palatable pack of sweetmeats
Cream laden, finger licking chocolate pebbles
A very unreasonable, stubborn trimmer
was my small brother then
He stared at me and groaned
like a barking, demented dog
“You, greedy belly, often gobbling up more than me”
Yet, to tell you the truth,
I didn’t do so
I was the perfect archetype of justice
while he was that of the opposite
He tanned and tanned on me
I was not at all stoical
So, I thrashed and thrashed against his back,
rigorously with tightly clenched fists
When it came to the end of the struggle,
our chocolate balls were all scattered everywhere
on the compound
We both lamented and howled like two foxes
Then our mother came to us and claimed with
ironic glee while clapping her hands,
“My fine boys, what have you done with
all your chocolates?
Turned this into a battlefield to grab the largest share,
come here my little foolish chaps,
keep this well in your mind,
what you did is quite useless,
this war is like an empty shell.”
The Politician
The politician known to everybody
A person worth talking about
He has two roles
with clearly different characteristics
before and after the election
An enthusiastic admirer of humanity
setting examples wherever he goes
He talks highly of social services
and is as active as an ant
Even to the poorest pauper
he treats with a pleasing smile
Richly poetic and catching slogans
announced in propaganda
and brightly coloured cards,
make a mountain of pledges,
too much to amass in memory
Water, electricity, infrastructure and buildings
All go onto follow the long line
Yet the person switches the role to the latter,
once he wins the election
thus giving rise to a contradiction
His radiant smile is no more
Now his eyes are struck at the sky
and the walk is a swagger
No longer is he the vigorous social worker
The foundation stones he laid
have grown grass clad
Neutralization of his affinity with people occurs
Appointments should be made to meet the politician
He rebuffs to assist his voters
saying a thousand things
All his proclamations result in reversals
coming to action
and he exploits the procurements of the poor
Referring to his education
He has barely passed the O/L s
Now fully occupied in learning English lessons
repeating,
as he is very weak
Impertinence juts out from the politician
in every instance
The values taught in the
Subhāshitha,
all seem forgotten
Perhaps he is unaware even of
the presence of such a classic
Oh, what a bloody mistake I have committed,
Lest,
I am already guilty of being too much garrulous
Better to put a full stop now
Otherwise,
My cadaver, tomorrow,
may be found,
hurled in amidst wild tussocks
or floating in a lake
Glossary
Subhāshitha An anthology of didactic poetry in Sinhala written by the celebrated Sri Lankan poet, Alagiyawanna Mukaweti
B. H. I. Madhusankha (literary name Indunil Madhusankha) is a budding young poet from Sri Lanka. He is currently an undergraduate in the Faculty of Science of the University of Colombo and he takes a great interest in the subjects of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. In addition to Indunil’s involvement in the field of Physical Sciences, he also pursues a notable literary career. He achieved three gold medals and a silver medal from four All Island English Essay Competitions. He aspires to be a notable poet in the near future.