phantasmagoria

the last night’s bemoaning touch still speaks
in its streamlined, suggestive tunes, to gather
support for its resonance, while whistling
its siren melody in the dirty swathes of light.

its own nature has taken a toll on its slighted
health with the calming chill of a crestfallen
rain. dreams beside the bulwarks of fantasies

gather all that is left of a tattered peace flag.
the grief is not that the steps were numbered,
but that they weren’t counted, to begin with.

it grows inward – in-in – perhaps to reach its
middle, its beginning, where all becomes one.

the trunk of the old banyan has adhered to
the loss like none other, unlike my eyes that
widen, still, at the prospect of a sting from
the mouth, that speaks of those lived glories.

but how do i strive to remember how to fly,
when i did not know how, to begin with?

~

© Anmol Arora 2018

For Sunday Whirl’s Wordle 367, Camera Flash at With Real Toads, and Poetry Pantry at PU.
Image source

***

I have been working on a new Insta handle for over a month now, for literary and creative posts: @anmol.ha.
For contact, you can reach out to me through my multiple profiles, enlisted here.

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to evanesce

.

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.*
My lips curved to the angle of my contrition; my bones
dry like sandpaper — I refrain from facing the sight
of my slow-breaking; I shade this night, and map it out
on my sea-green scars. Their wig-donned smiles abandon
me, to gawk at my graven loss, paying a hefty load for
the skein of my destiny.

I am somebody; I have something to do with shattering.
My ears bend to the tremor of voices that hearken to
the shell-shore of Calypso — ‘Shame,’ they call out in
my cerulean-blue sequined nerves. ‘Pity’, they resound it
through their cherry-twine jowls. They bury me in stones
and pull at the weight of my guilt, avowing their fealty for
the passing of my duality.

I am nobody || I am somebody
to evanesce — I only need be.

.

*From Sylvia Plath’s Tulips

For With Real Toads’ Wordy Thursday, where we are starting off with a borrowed line from another poet’s work and Wordle 363 at The Sunday Whirl — a very raw third draft (with the closing couplet added to create a semblance of completion).

Diana Copperwhite, Atomic, 2014 (Image source)