A Decrepit Map
Callused skin on my body
Ruptured by the cruel nature
Like a deserted and dry riverbed
In a summer
Is the native soil, my Rolpa and Rukum
My mutilated soil
Maimed by landmines
This callus on my soil
Cannot be cut away by surgery
And then be tossed away,
Like lifeless hairs
Stuck on the sinkhole rim.
Ghostly lizard crawls
On the dusty mirror
Hanging in the dirty wall
Of a dilapidated room
Where only emptiness
Catapults the carnal beauty
Of the mute image
Hidden under the layers of dust
Reveal my wounded Rolpa and Rukum
Like a decrepit map
Ripped by too many folds
Scratched and perforated by the worms.
The awful pain has butterflies
In my eyes
Of sullen
And morose sky.
April 30, 2004
(Rolpa and Rukum, the two remote districts
in Far Western Nepal, affected by the
Maoist’s People War)
Quintessence of Quiescent
Up the polished ceiling above my bed
In my bedroom resting for a while,
A camouflaged lizard crawls his webbed feet
With dead silence in his spider tongue
Hunting a fly nearby in languorous mood
So unconscious of to-be catastrophe
Bony spine of mine chills enough
To freeze my whole body like an ice
For the certainty of yet another calamities
Befalling on my quiet turbid heart
At any moments of my present life.
My desire to rest for a while with
My frightened and horror-stricken mind
Strives to take up its clothes of fright and horror
As if torched with mother of bomb
Runs naked towards the camera lens
With my screams frozen in frame
That unknowingly and unconsciously adheres
To the severe fading wall of my bedroom.
That portrait of mine destined to hide its reality
Sinks in time warped depth of ocean
Damped with futuristic dirt and dust
Wailing a digger to reveal the quintessence of
An embryonic present matured to rare earth
Out of an ovary of pregnant futurity.
June 28, 2003
The Hollow
Through the broken windowpane
Set my beholding eyes
On an empty room like a wanton whore
In naked beauty more adorned bushy cunt
Lying duped and beguiled on the floor,
Sighing desperately for her heart’s desire
That’s canvassed on the fading wall.
A spider spits and spins his web
In silken and golden fibers so close and tight
As the fabric length tranquilized her sleek satin gown
Bidding to hide her shameful nudity.
Lizards’ crawling up faded steps of walls
Crying tender fervour in spider tongues
Swallowing all insects and beings in thirst throats
Moves out his tongue fiercely passionate watered,
Wishes to copulate with emptiness of the room
Pisses and passes turd spotting
Fierce scars and malodorous stains
All over the walls and grounds
Like the field after the war
Indeed the certainty of yet another war
The spider faces in planet Earth
Living in a home at war,
Lies motionless and breathless
As if dead in other’s eyes
Waiting to track him in silken golden web.
In the tug of war between them,
The webbed room turns ghostly
By the horror of the vampire
Creeping its feet
Through the broken windowpane
Sucking blood in darkness of the sky
That grows fierce with clouds
As curdled as the milk from a whore’s teat
The doors throw bolts into locks
Keeping the withered souls inside
To decay till darkness
Sighing in vain to feel the emptiness.
2003 August 18
About the Author:
Pushpa Ratna Tuladhar, born on 19458, in Kathmandu,
Nepal, is a poet and editor of Layalama Online
Magazine. His poems are published in Rearview
quarterly, Poetry Sharing Journal, Some Words, Ascent,
Escritoire, Words Words Words, Zygote in My Coffee,
James River Poetry Review, Sidereality and other
printed and online magazines and also in anthologies
published in USA, UK, Canada and India.
Contact: pushpatuladhar@yahoo.com