BALM

by Pitambar Naik

Balm
Pitambar Naik

Remember the havoc in your thick apple-red heart
your journey finishes in the middle of the rainy kisses   
how to coin a new emotive reaction in the autumn season 
your solitude is a bony whirlpool with disproportionate gravitation
the need of wrapping the name of the past can be realized.

A courier in a pensive parcel unravels the thirsty anxiety      
you bring the tepid hope very close to your discretion    
somehow we had a deal even with an earthquake 
it erupts the old melic of solace and that’s a healing touch.

May be a few drops of nectar from our forgotten story is a balm   
—bear the magic of an upsurge: blessing and moksha    
there’s a constellation of a hot fountain that wears decadence 
in the hot porcelain coffee cup the coffin of a lonely moon rests
what language does it speak?
It’s the spring’s love season on the balcony  
which economic trick does it offer to sink with the world?

I Can’t Stop Drinking Your Shadow Songs

You are clothed in ghee colour sensation of jazz   
my childhood was a flowery plateau to snugly play with 
this time I can’t stop drinking your shadow songs.

Still I remember the gift you parceled form Santiago
on my 18th birthday missing the last letter of my name
and the 6th zero of the postal index numbers    
many a time I remember the gnome and gorgeousness  
how we engineered trains of matchboxes of contractions.

A factory chimney smudges the rosy lips of the sky
in a cloudy day with no electricity inside;  it’s like hatred
and the softest illusions allure the fragile apocalypse      
the piece of land we live in hisses with heinousness
but, I can’t stop drinking your shadow songs even in a fury!

Love is a Lonely Territory

It’s tensed with a hyphen; the stardust of mahua plateau
home to your laughter; have you ever noted it?

Down your poliomyelitis, in the civil war era, my peace is a refugee
it strands desperately just as a few wingless waves.

Love is a lonely territory fenced by dots and garnished in brackets
the endocrine bliss of the holy hymns clot in your appendix.

The semi razzmatazz of a gloomy evening peeps as an enigma 
frankly speaking that’s a coffin of the bronze age 
the creamy hymn on your lips
at bedtime the familiar rhapsodies ooze from Radha’s Vrindavan.

Does peace wear the new costumes to sit across the table warmly?
Letting the kisses touch the tears of love and barbed fear  
at last we ask each other to water our righteousness to blossom
around 300 kilometers now to go further the borders.   

A Thousand Other Sins

Mesopotamia is a flat valley of hibernation with tulips   
glasses of whisper and pints full of tequila gossip till late nights    
a haphazard infatuation that encircles your solitude 
the aftermath of the first pregnancy was an architecture
of peace, prima facie and pointillism     
can you see heaven’s thousand other sins?

We’re some of the desiccated pronouns of the antiquity 
and our integral self is outrageously eclipsed and fallen off  
the creak of the mars’ axis sends a telegram   
when a war ceases our emotive speculation
it becomes the ceremony of half past 10     
while frolicking with depression; the moon washes its semen stains
rain is a mirror of poetry and drumstick flowers  
enough is the less of the rhythms of rasarkeli.

Often caesuras of our blood shells turn rectangle  
gluing with syntaxes to drink a few more pegs of those other sins 
the curve burns a camphor and smells the brevity of the vocabulary
however, smiles of this city germinate less camouflaged duplicity
depression is often a harmony of this part of the world 
crowded intimacy is the new solitude of a joyful sabbatical. 

Glossary:
Rasarkeli is a word used to connote an ecstatic
love affair in Sambalpuri folk songs in Odisha.

Half Life

The brief hiatus of your salvation
paints an acrylic garden of skins, veins and pulses    
you stir a glass of milk like the storm of sins
when summer is around the corner
you cheer to a mug of palm juice
after a nice meal, the chronic complaint
is your invertebrate pain    
why you don’t forget to reminisce
how shy you were
after the first HCG and BCG tests  
those syllables intentionally slipped to your midriff  
you winked like polyphonic poetry of Gulzar    
this afternoon’s mail is a great solace
to eliminate any disaster in between us
yet you feel it’s an epitaph of a half life!

About the Author:

Pitambar Naik is a poet and writer from India and the author of The Anatomy of Solitude, a collection of poetry (Hawakal Publishers, Kolkata). His work is forthcoming in Queer Poetry of South Asia: HarperCollins India, Stag Hill Literary Journal and has appeared in Glass: A Journal of PoetryCha: An Asian Literary Journal, Voice and Verse Poetry MagazineVayavya, Literary Orphans, Mad Swirl, Occulum, The Mark Literary Review, Mojave Heart Review, Best Indian Poetryamong others.