the pleasure of selfhood

it is falling like a sun-pigment, down
with three-eyed cues to evoke sentiments,
bringing the yellow with orange with brown,
and the toil of ball-clay-modeled laments.
it drinks the warmth and bathes in lasting sin-
full holds of my fine-textured, genteel hands.
it is the hue that pigments my blotched skin,
and reminds me of the last rain’s soaked sand.

it is the sheath to my patterned truths — pain
that rests and rumbles in wakeful sleeping.
it is the ferrous wonder of force — gained
with a compliant resolve for melding
hopes and despairs with an equal measure,
and dreaming of an eve’s ochrous pleasure.

.

© Anmol Arora 2018

A sonnet (Shakespearean rhymes, sans iambs) for With Real Toads’ Weekend Mini Challenge
Image source (Subtle Ochre by Raju Durshettiwar)

***

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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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.

an evening reverie (ii)

signaling the day-end is a light
soft to touch, sweet in its flavor, dark
in its attire, wiping smiles and words
from my ramshackle lips  – empty eyes

carrying in its hold wry remembrance,
it tricks me by wind-woven fingers,
playing with a velvet shadow, blue-green
in color, smooth dew-leaves in temper.

.

Image source
(Anticipation of the evening coolness by Nikolai Taidakov)

Edit: Linking it up with Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads

this imprisoned desire

a touch was sought and received, whence
fingers gouged out the remnants of cold
in the warmth of these props of decency,

hidden – the thumb traces the existence, index
paves the way for further exploration, the middle
is the spine holding the act together,

the little is cushioned, nuzzling its cheek against
its counterpart, the ring wonders what it would entail –

probing and prodding the story of our times, it looks
for answers where there are even more questions. verses
are spoken and heard, there are certain bits of activity
to bring forth those much needed bits of dizziness.

such is the nostalgia for the untouched touch – of lips against lips,
of tongue against the skin.
such is the nostalgia for an unanswered answer – of murmurs within
the ears, of words left undone.

I peek through my naked thoughts and find a glimmer of
hope, nostalgic of an unbridled news item –

yesterday, she read the fate off of my palm,
today, he caressed those solemn lines,
tomorrow, I want to make them both last.

.
Linking this hopeless reverie with Poets United. I hope you all are having a good Sunday.
Mine seems to be pretty dubious of its own existence.

Image source

caved in, I burrow to find a connection

I burrow through the snow to wake my senses
in the flurry of warmth pervading out, I am in
the eye of the hurricane, my skin frosted, it
peels into papier-mâché, rising trees out of
sinew, it is comforting to see a new life form
from the dead extravagance I carry forth.

the chill does not affect the mind of a hermit
cross-legged standing for centuries, the fire
of tapas burns within his heart, and I see it
aglow in my third eye, I shake myself as fog
sheds its feathers, ice thaws in puddles of
a hope, murky and shallow, but rippling yet.

I found someone I do not know ahead of me
he is out, yet in, I am alone, yet I’m not.

.

I am so conflicted about the last line. When I wrote it, I was completely fine with it but after when I came back to edit it, my mood was completely transformed. It irks me to see it there.

For dVerse Poetics.

Image source