october harvest

full — filling
almost,

the kettle boils over, steam
wafts over the pressure cooker,
lights blooming against
an old, knowing darkness,

i pick the depth of my bones,
figure the way around this garden
— a home – complete – almost —

cornucopia days and directions
bursting free, the breaking of an abundant
repository of tradition and belief —

individual,
irrational,
institutionalized.

so i pick the other half —
a bottomless vessel, pitless fruit,
spilled over milk,
dried-up leaves,
and a toothpick-sized
awareness, of all that is.

© Anmol Arora 2018

Image source (Cornucopia#1 by Lidia Kaminski)
For Midweek Motif at PU
Edit: Also linking it up with dVerse OLN

***
I have been working on a new Insta handle for about 2 months 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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but I am wicked

“but I am wicked”: I tell him and he roars
in laughter, the sky sheds silver lights
and marigolds sweep away the stench
of my embarrassing gait, I see through
the hysterical haze, to miss the worlds
of yesterday, a remiss creeper binding
me into the shrubbery devoid of sight.

to be able to speak or to be mum, to
file a memory into my eyes like a rich
embroidery woven, or to defile desires
that have a demurring allure to them,
I, he can not feel my pulse, metrical to
the sound of his voice, I repulse him
by the veracity of this hollow heart.

he is the me of days gone, yet to come.

*For With Real Toads.

Image source (“The Good Fight” by Scott Saw)

a dead man in life

“43,099,200 minutes- the freedom that comes with the realization that death is inevitable”, by Dan Mansutti

i saw a grave of a mother and daughter buried side by side

and the dead woman asked me for a dance, I had to oblige,

she saw the living through my eyes, and touched my life line

.

she had her mouth widened into an unabating smile,

a beaming mien that sculpts her into a haunting device,

she susurrates words of the olden times, her garb contrived

from plant vines, her pearl necklace shriveling, her bones cackling

.

she has lived after death, to nurture the venom of her spite,

her dead dreams are where the worlds collide, the living dies

and the dead is alive, she hands me a note engraved on earth,

she buries me in her grave, and I evanish from her sight

.

into the realm of the living, but still dead when I am alive,

or alive only in death, her voice subsides, I decimate my life line

.

Image source

Inspired from dVerse Poetics.

Trespassing all the way|_|As Existence Glistens

trespassing through a body made up of

jungle leaves, water weeds, fossil prints,

I engender a whole history in me, of rock

archives of gullible paints, of guitar riffs

eternally hovering in layers of time, but

.

then I am a trespasser, just passing by

(though sometimes it seems like a very

long distance, and other times, it is

just so short, like an old pair of socks)

today I am, tomorrow someone else

who would make the skin crawl all over

once again, because cowardice is true

and nothing else, in this banana peel

that you slip over as if its your own life,

that you can hitchhike anytime, I do so

in my dreams finding the end in blood

(fearsome.. ain’t it.. what truth beseeches)

.

I crackle my pale nails of toes, of fingers

that wriggle like an alien creature but I am

as well, (remember) a trespasser,  through

life forms, through elements, so to burn

and drown, and ravaged by air, or buried

in the heart of the soil, and still existence

glistens as long as there is a color in me,

as long as I can draw lines, series of circles,

I stay forever, but never when my palette

goes dry, and then I’d whisper goodbye

.

For dVerse Meeting the Bar.

Image source