existential poetry

conversation at the end of a time loop

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the coffee-stain looks devilish in its laughter,
while the muslin tablecloth tumbles over itself
in the roaring delight of an invisible audience.

i am embroidered in red and deep cerulean,
looking at the passage of time through a key-
-hole, which is jammed with promises never
made. i know that my nerves pale and dilute
in comparison to your word-while capillaries
that shout & shout against my walled silences.

“it isn’t really that hard to hide,” you say briefly,
you smirk to the quivering of my voice,
(the throat-bell still ringing in the wind).

i will pick up the plotholes and yield to your words,
if you would only promise that this was never
a dream or a pigeon’s hope, cut by the Chinese string
of a wayward kite.

i am a diffused lamp-light, figuring & disfiguring
every stitch and flip like an old game of playing cards,
that i still cannot begin to envisage or win.

i still grin like the Joker to your objection.
i can still bury my head to hide my sins,
all that i’ve got to lose when it is dark.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 5
(Inter)National Poetry Month

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the narrative of a wall-hung terracotta mask

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the plaster falls gradually at the bewitching hour
when the lifelines are ebbing in their flow of talks
and resurgent activities, with the rising night —

i see dust motes, i feel them and i eat them for
sustaining my displeasure to be an object (seemingly)
of permanence, in this temporal space of existence,

the shadow falls gradually at the wandering wall
where i hang my colours (gold, blood, darkness)
to dry & resemble the sorrows of this room — its
temperature fast, its time-waves going cold,

i see dreams with (always) open eyes, of the forests
deep&rich&lost, of the s(p)oils of my ancestors,
as i realize this curse of seeing and feeling (with-
out telling), despite this anguish and reproach
at my solitary (op)position, in the fabric
of the universe (four-walled, with a ceiling).

.
© Anmol Arora

2 April 2019
(Inter)National Poetry Month

Linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at WRT, where I am hosting this week and I have given an optional challenge (in the spirit of the poetry month) to write from the perspective of an inanimate object.