In the Season of Winter
You rushed down the frozen stairs of yester-years while I tried to hold you back in vain, taking stock of my mineral water bottles and deciding to go down to the northern springs for fresh tear wells of sorrows. You had gone round the block to the store for provisions, condiments and pickles, fish and pizza, insanity and defeats. I just cannot take it anymore, said I, while you sedately polished your glasses against my designer stubble and blue Indian skies.
Sound of Silence
You are there and you are not as the doors would neither open nor close and I may see you now while the very next moment my sorrows blind me, my sorrows that are quite so gay and straight and black that I may not see you dressed in white in a darker room and smiling for a moment as you are angry like evermore . . . I may even touch you in the nude and may or may not feel jovially embarrassed, my new found delights that pain me like nobody's business as you are always there and never once haunting my rich city of memories, the Chinese downtown and the WASP countryside, my poor city of oblivion and joyous hatred . . . You are there and you are not as the doors would neither open nor close like a clash of cymbals that I may or may not enjoy like Coca-Cola as you are there and you are not dressed in white and naked stark . . .
Cold Collation
You and me in Paradise while my salad days fornicate in Calcutta, my days and ways being served as funky platters of crab casserole, ecstatic white steam sizzling and blue skies burning in agony . . . We know ice tea to induce quickies so we squeeze green lemons like cruelty, discard white and yellow pips like disdain, Do not Disturb signs hanging frayed and loose across our Anniversary Suite, the AC hums like sex as wine glasses crash against wine glasses and the blue smoke of cigarettes . . . You and me in Paradise while our gay salad days make hay in Calcutta, your rightful place in the sun hanging loose like my destiny and precarious like dollops of ice cream, you scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!
White Diamonds
Your white chiffon burns as the sky burns in Calcutta and I dig inside molten sundae and ketchup like religion like recluse like fantasy, your white chiffon burns as I admire the riverfront and the bridge girdled like chastity, the breeze and its fragrance like a woman in season and panting, your white diamonds burn like your eyes, black like Bengal’s sorrows and ranting, your white diamonds burn like ashes like Coventry like merry sex like royalty
Calcutta Oh Calcutta!
My City never sleeps and can never live down her boisterous indifference whenever there are those dark rain clouds hovering across the skies of Bengal. I know her vanity and inanity and sick desires and yet cannot do anything to redeem her glory that is rightfully hers. Calcutta my beloved is a cat crossing the thoroughfares of sorrow and desperation like myself, Calcutta my desire is myself driving my auto in confusion into the night. My City nowadays never even dreams her colonial dreams of grandeur and divide and rule. My City never ever sleeps the sleep of the dead or divine.
Abortion
There is an unreality to my sadness as I happen to recall our child whom I’ve killed tonight in Calcutta, as cars rush back like madness to their individual orgies, as the rains splash down on my sick city like benediction, Calcutta my beloved and my oblivion, as I stare past your agony of yester-years like a cat walking nine lives like fantasy, as you stare past my memories hanging loose like mascara after lush quickies, after Calcutta, after desire, after defeats
Dr Prasenjit Maiti (1971-) pmaiti@vsnl.com is a political scientist by occupation and a writer by compulsion! His print credits include 2River View, Blue Collar Review, Brittle Star, Brobdingnagian Times, Carillon, Circle, Concrete Wolf, Diner, Famous Reporter, Green Queen, GW Review, Harlequin, Hermes, Homestead Review, Konfluence, Micropress Oz, Monkey Kettle, Nightingale, Nomad, Paper Wasp, Parting Gifts, Peeks & Valleys, Phoenix, Poetic Licence, Poetry Church, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetry Greece, Poetry Scotland, Promise, Pulsar, Quercus Review, Rattle, Red Lamp, Reflections, Skald, Skyline, South, Spinnings, The Journal, WinterSPIN and Xtant. Dr Maiti has been widely published in electronic journals as well in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. His CD-ROM credit till date is Heist. He of late tends to specialize in monologic prose poetry.
Residence P-8 Beleghata Main Road, Calcutta 700 085, INDIA