Instances On a Sunday Afternoon
12:25 pm
The road unfurls in tandem with the sky
as parched as a lover
holding the grey void in his arteries
…….–…….smelling first rains
A prisoner awaiting an ambrosial embrace
In this evermore season of deep prolonging
1:10 pm
Clouds are inverted commas
Carrying the weight of unspoken words
Marinated in green
…….–…….her attire for a swollen world
haemorrhaged by loneliness
1:14 pm
The bridges have aligned
Clouds have canopied
Memories hung pole to pole
Like pennants
A uncontained rainbow in every traffic signal
Swinging sideways in the rain
…….–…….Or is it just her silent eyelids awaiting a second spell?
1:30 pm
Eyes collide under heavy breaths
We humour masks which conceal nothing
Not even long forgotten seas and tides of lovemaking
Fish eyed dreams crusted with sand
The chest is an oyster of unplotted stories
…….–…….Endlessness caught in time
2:15 pm
Between two and a half lines
our faces reveal a restrained storm
An evening divided equally in two glasses
…….–…….rum and coke
Every pore, a pendulum oscillating
between forced distances
3:00 pm
It takes a kiss
to unlock her six-month old reluctant skin
Disintegrate like mud cakes in the monsoon
…….–…….Heart beating like trapeze artists
caught in mid-flight somersault
She doesn’t give in full, but, in parts
…….–…….Like a shloka diffusing quietly on new born lips.
3:15 pm
We calculate metamorphosis
bandaging bruised words
with turmeric of our first drafts
4:30 pm
We have to disband
Cut the umbilical cord
Untying tongues and ignited bodies
…….–…….Tiptoe
The purest of moments are the most delicate
And we cannot just disturb the birth of embers
So we head out
Divided by a netted door and maybes of next-times
Keeping forever as a parting gift
on every floor.
_____
63 Days In Arles
The Yellow House had exploded
into a frenzy of colours every time
Like a series of unplanted time bombs
Van Gogh’s 36 burst like wild flames
Like embers on a dying night
A constellation of madness and passion
The crimson thirst of an undying fantasy
Gauguin’s 21 fireworks punched a hole
in the patch of time
Disregarded reality and played
with human forms until his student was blinded with immense light
After a point, they ceased to paint.
They were finding voices in their own
Self-styled chaos.
They couldn’t ever gauge the truth about their love:
even their masterpieces had borrowed a face or two from each other.
Their love was timeless
and violence was only a brush stroke
On a unified canvas of an eternal promise.
They fought like true poets
Who could enter one another
On a summer evening
and dive into their own trenches,
measure their depth.
They could love like two poets love
The skin and smell of their first incomplete book together.
They could celebrate the mirror
in their eyes and smile at their cracks
Their love would never have a date
A time
An address
A sky Or even the sea
Their love would spill out of the canvas
Yet
They fought like true lovers
One with cruel words that broke bones
Other with a razor blade and
an urge to kill
A left cut ear wasn’t a sign
of self-mutilation but helpless love seeking refuge
Surrendering to the whims of
a broken dream
That would end with a gunshot
in a mental asylum.
Pastel silence pervades
above two empty chairs in a museum, after two centuries
while somewhere over Arles
The sky is blooming
with a new burst of colour
the two of them abandoned once.
_____
Fraction
The sleight of a moment beckons
When you stand with pointed toes
On the fulcrum of a golden sunshine
And where the toe touches red earth
Are roots, a thousand years old
Awaiting your entwined mind
No longer are chirps stranger
Neither are smiles,
Eyes that glance with the smooth flutter
of a hummingbird signal illumination
Even the last leaves wave high
Content that their last breath
Could be your first
The other half of a moment
Is a bend that leads to you
Uncertainty turns into thousand
dreamscapes of possibilities
The moment ensconces your feet
When you walk into the day
Awaiting the next turn.
This fraction was always written
on your palm.
_____
BIO
Sanket Mhatre is a well-known bilingual poet writing in English & Marathi. He has curated Crossover Poems – a multilingual poetry recitation sessions that unifies poets from different languages on a single platform. Apart from this, Sanket Mhatre has been invited to read at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Poets Translating Poets, Goa Arts & Literature Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival, Vagdevi Litfest. Besides curation & recitation, Sanket Mhatre has also created Kavita Café – a Youtube Channel that combines cinematic vision with visual poetry.
