THUMBPRINTNE POETRY COLUMN
POETRY EDITOR ANANYA S GUHA'S COMMENTS:
Aman Verma’s poems deviate from Romanticism or emotions to a more modernist tradition. There is a distancing of subject matter and poet. The poet’s voice is one of rationality and rationcination which is a call of modernism. But they are conversations and chattily constructed
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The Surreal Living
Coffee tastes better without sugar,
Yet truth is never served bitter.
Why this sugary snort of lies?
She was dumbfounded with her intellect,
He was the lord with naïveté nice,
That cradle of wisdom is the only
Line to divide and to rule.
Merriment and courting is offered,
What of apathy when a dog dies?
Comfort and warmth all we seek,
turning out tomorrow we run
From all that ties and bind
Our little sorrows in happy trinkets,
Found in happy hours for a scolding rows
We exchange!
If there is no tomorrow,
Then what’s today
That we can’t seek
For tomorrow!
Well my rumoured love told
To be undone and condoled
Till the coffee tastes better.
(Published in- The Shillong Times (Sunday Shillong))
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Climbing the Invisible
Part 1
“I can see the light”, told myself
I small beam up like a point on head.
“I can make it”, I convinced self
It is dark, I’m stuck
yet I can see.
Part 2
I wake up to this every morrow,
Sometimes sleep into!
the question remains,
“Why am I there?”
Not even where I am?
Part 3
I think I moved up,
See the beam getting brighter.
Gravels hurdling down,
Scratching and brushing.
It is growth, nevertheless!
Part 4
My eyes hurt,
Think it is the reading again.
I need to everyday,
Doesn’t matter if I’m close
Or lose my back for this rigour.
Part 5
I can go back as well,
Pit is huge down there.
It’s getting narrower,
suffocating my breathlessness.
I only can see the numb beam.
Part 6
“Wait another day, take a break” my strength tells me,
to be weak itself.
But, I can see the goal
Part 7
Lost the vision,
“Why did I start anyway “
The beam is strong,
Can kill before my body does.
“Will I find something there?”
and what exactly?
Part 8
It is finally over today,
But is it?
where is there cheer?
Full of room yet empty !
Part 9
“I think this is not the right path.”
I see another gorge, a pit or maybe a quarry.
“Where should I go now?”
Woke up to this again,
Or slept into!
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Eclipse of Meaning
I’ve clenched sand in fist,
Coz they asked me to!
It left away like they did,
I saw the process,
Why i did, was told ,
Someone sold the idea,
Ideology!
That great is the work of perseverance,
But where and for what?
I asked again, ‘why is it necessary?’
‘It is not’, they said.
Yet, a conditional choice.
‘Travel the world, meet new people’
The old shared,
Well the stories are all told,
There is nothing I see new,
It is all eclipse,
Yet it appears rare,
Oblivious Is the presence of absence,
Sharp is the truth about lies,
Let it all come once again,
I wish to experience,
Those old songs with new rhythms,
The new tales of existence,
Ahh! Existence, the lost friend.
---------------
The Dry Canvas
I saw the canvas today,
All colours yet unhappy.
The sad smile of happiness,
thrown all over,
the colours were low,
Frowning and agitated,
Looking at me with hope,
Put a shade on, change the tone
‘It’s dry’, they say,
It’s dying in hope for a stroke,
Of brush, that I carried ‘once’!
It’s all over, I see.
It’s all over, they shed
the last drop that’s left
in the soul,
Why complicate it?
Wish to brush is there,
And I saw the canvas with colours,
Should I accept the canvas, as it is
Should accept, I thought as it could be!
Little difference, little lost
In the unhappy colours!
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Confessions of Bedlam
There...
"A storm died and others with it", they said,
There...!
"A human heap garb lay in the dirt", they said.
Laughter in those lanes now,
turned to a cry of blood and sorrow.
Once; the faith asked questions,
'us' answered but,
it’s 'us' that seeketh now,
'God', for some lived and died for others.
"These times aren't worthy enough to die for",
they spoke.
The followers still follow the foul faith,
and what for!
Those heads just moved where they see
signs of horror,
the faith still seeks questions!
questions of our being
which never were real,
then,
'I' came to life and ruins,
'I' won and lost with a blink of an eye,
but, it changed the role,
of faith and 'confessors'!
Now 'I' demands,
"answer, my soul, my world
to what shall live?"
(Taken from The Sisyphean Trench: A Collection, BookLeaf Publishing)
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ABOUT THE POET: Aman Verma holds a PhD in English Language Education and is the author of The Sisyphean Trench (BookLeaf Publishing). Now working as a Learning and Development Lead, he turns to poetry to define their thoughts and make sense of life’s shifting rhythms.
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