Poetry at our Time

Shirani Rajapakse ( Sri Lanka )

 

On Deciding to Become a Poet

 

I cannot be
what I want to be.
Social constraints shut me in
frowning
on my extravagances.
Follies, they tell me,
that only fools and madmen
indulge in.
Follies.
They are not for the likes of me.
And since I cannot
be a fool
or madman
I hide myself inside of me and
smile at
society’s follies.

 

Deep Silence

 

We don’t talk
anymore. Words seem lost
all of a sudden.
We drift
away into oblivion
and lose ourselves in the crowd.
It’s easier this way. There is no need of explaining.
No time for reasoning.
Just enough space for a glance of acknowledgement
that here was a person we once knew
not so very long ago.
Distance pulls at the edges
like laundry trying to take wing, but stopped short
by the hold on the clothes line, ballerinas
practicing at the barre, and we help it along.
We drift further
and further away until it all seems like so
much history has piled up, hiding
us beneath its many layers.
We give up on us
because we can’t make the move.
Don’t want to be the first to speak
and break the spell. So we drift further away.
More silently than ships in
the night. We pass. We see. We move on.
So why does it hurt so much?

Somewhere in Myanmar

Contemplating the moment,
silence within, silence without. Suddenly
the splutter, splutter of an old
helicopter slices the air, large wings flapping
a peacock taking flight.
Concentration stops, I smile at
the memory moving out
of the moment.
Cold winter mornings in Delhi
many miles away, walking a lonely road
I paused for a peacock
to take wing in front of me.
Thrusting forward
a burst of speed on the runway
batting wings loud and noisy like a helicopter engine
he moved up, up to the sky, a flash of brilliant
blue to land on a branch at the far end
close his wings and disappear
into the forest cover.
My mind travels in time and space covering
great distances
while my body, a half bloomed lotus,
patiently waits its return.

 

 

Shirani Rajapakse is an internationally published, award winning poet and short story writer from Sri Lanka. She has authored eight books including “Offerings to the Blue God” – winner, 2024 State Literary Awards, Sri Lanka; “Samsara” – winner, Poetry Collection of the Year, 2023 Boao International Poetry Award, China, shortlisted 2023 State Literary Awards, Sri Lanka, shortlisted 2022 Gratiaen Awards, Sri Lanka; “Gods, Nukes and a whole lot of Nonsense” – winner, 2022 State Literary Awards, Sri Lanka; “I Exist. Therefore I Am” –
winner, 2019 State Literary Awards, Sri Lanka, shortlisted, 2019 Rubery Book Awards, UK; “Chant of a Million Women” – winner, 2018 Kindle Book Awards, USA, Official Selection, 2018 New Apple Summer eBook Awards for Excellence in Independent Publishing, USA &
Honorable Mention, 2018 Reader’s Favorite Awards, USA; “Breaking News” – shortlisted, 2010 Gratiaen Awards, and “The Way It Is”, Longlisted, 2025 Gratiaen Awards, Sri Lanka. Rajapakse also won the Panorama International Literary Award 2025, India, the Gran Premio
della Giuria (The Grand Jury Prize) – in the 2025 Ossi di Sepia Award, Italy, the 2013 Cha “Betrayal” Poetry Contest, Hong Kong, came second in the 2024 World Food Day Poetry Competition, Sri Lanka, was a finalist in the 2013 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards,
USA and was highly commended for the 2022 erbacce-prize for poetry, UK. Her work appears in Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry, Litro, Berfrois, Flash Fiction International, Voices Israel, About Place, Mascara, Silver Birch, International Times, Harbinger Asylum, The Write-In and others. Rajapakse read for a BA in English Literature from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka and has a MA in International Relations from JNU, India. You can find her at shiranirajapakse.wordpress.com, and at amazon.com/Shirani-Rajapakse/e/B00IZQRAOA/

 

 

Gopikrishnan Kottoor’s ( Kerala_India)

 

 

Haunt

 

What words must I colour you with

to make you a painting,

You, who are already,

My poetry,

As with petals,

You shred me again?

Undress, and before you,

Let me be your mirror tonight.

I hold your feet, I hold your face

I open me in your eyes

As the sun opens night

What this is I do not know,

What you are, that  without

There’s no more glow

And within, the delight grows

In a  thought of you

Memory is a flower bough.

Once more, in such laughing winter

autumn flowers disappear.

What birds must I

Let fly

To you who have closed your eyes?

I’m lost, and in such wet darkness,

Why do you still light me

With your shadow?

 

2

This Body

 

This body

That I soap

Singing  in the bathroom

With the hope,

That I can make it shine

as ceramic or bronze

And exhibit;

Have a shirt and coat

And walk the streets

Thinking the girls will tweet

Those that make

The heart bleat;

This body,

Michelangelo carved

in the name of beauty,

All that complex symmetry,

That secret desire,

nude all night

Looking for love with peacock heart:

This body

That’ll randomize,

searching everywhere for what is not,

collecting coloured shells

for beauty,

after the flesh rot

It is still beauty

After all is lost;

I must make peace

With this body,

That burned and burned

For a nameless pain;

That chose to embrace

And gift a kiss

To someone with lips

Of moon refrain,

This body,

I filled with flowers,

Gold, precious stones

I must let it

lie alone,

Bereft of  the earth,

by the sea.

 

3

Apple Blossoms

 

Plethoric,   in  sun-soaked iridescence

Spectre  white, with not a green leaf,

blossoms of   fragrant  frozen snow

Turn apple rain upon the bough.

 

Gopikrishnan Kottoor

’s recent works include the translation of  ‘Ramanan’, by Changampuzha ( Kerala Sahitya Akademi), and the poetry collections’ Poems from America’,  and ‘ A Land in the Sun.’ He is presently working on a travel book ‘The Golden Lane’, Travels Across Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snigdha Ganguly

 

Dreambird

 

Where is the lantern burning?

I could only see distant stars

In disguise of lying eyes

Looking at a promised dawn?

Where are the souls on fire?

I look inside the rust clouds

with incensed memories

and cold-blood desire

writhing in pools

of insomnia

Where is the sweet sleep?

I shut my dark to irk bright

Set flight in a distant sky.

Do all birds come back home?

My Pretty Whore

Night lay still

Dog toothed

Fishing for a boneless

Decay

I saw my pretty whore

I touched her thighs

The stained kohl

Of heartbreaks and

Dark less dreams

I didn’t look away

No I did not

Feel her nipples

Oozing with white

Poison

That enshrines

Lovers and the loveless

Alike

I saw my pretty whore

In the calm of shadows

I touched her thighs

The stained kohl

 

Cold Turkey

 

Words, unspoken

Undone

Injested in veins

Mothered by warmth

Of the unicorn

Sullen in its secrets

Oozing through pores

Kept ajar

For the last sunlight

In love with a window

Facing Shangri-La

One fix and the nearer I’m,

To stories untold

 

The Misogynist

 

You stuck like a fishbone

In the blood of throat

Throwing up isn’t an option

Rage too messy for floors

Promises worn like stickers

On tongue fierce and cold

Goodbye is so cliched

I’d rather put it on hold

The blasphemous forgot

God is reborn in hell

The misogynist hates change

Some profanity in exchange

Who’s to love, who’s to hate

Scripted in heaven’s fate

When ending knocks on doors

Find me dancing on the floors.

The road to ecstasy meanders

To a whirlpool of wild alienation

Fallen leaves of autumn, abyss

Sleeping in a bed of deprivation

The dark is still fixing a deal

With the befallen light

Where do the junkies find a home?

 

 

Snigdha  Ganguly
A professional advertising copywriter, Snigdho is a post-grad in Media & Film Studies from the University of Sussex. He’s an avid cinema enthusiast who loves to collect films from all parts of the world. His poetry is deeply influenced by the works of Beat writers like Burroughs and Kerouac. A rebel heart, he dreams of a world where love, peace, and music coexist for a beautiful future.