Poetry

By

Nivedita Dey

Metropolis – Metrorail – Mind

Day after sunless day

We the sea of humanity

Walk into the cage

Of an iron snake

We wait

For the king cobra to crawl up

As we walk into its open mouth

Like sacred offering to some king

Of a kingdom without hope

The bowel of the iron cobra

Is a market place – multitudes

Teeming – each with a hidden face

One to show the snake – another

Only for the inner snake

In each of us

Tears sting my eyes

I quickly pull up my mask

Eye a few other

Vast array of offerings

To the serpent king

I now see

So many hunger without hope

Some morning nerves gone cold

Some their previous night’s tears

Seeking a sun-scorched oblivion

Here and there an escapist’s prayer

From striking monotone

Of four walls or familiar violence

To unfamiliar fatalism

Each face a trough to hold

Offerings of a different tale

And yet the lostness so same

Last ride I brought with me

An offering of discontent

Today I bring myself –

The squelching hunger of morning rush

The burning pain of a bad feet rash

Wristwatch gone mad with speed

Questions, confusions, needs

All fair, all squared off

I bring an offering of peace

Boiling in the belly of the Serpent God I sing –

It is what it Is.

What’s in a Name?

— Aladin of our infancy

   With magic lamp lit

   In his heart and ours

   Traversed miles of dreams

   To meet

          — Allan Dean of Wall Street

             Wolfish pride and grin

             Of youthful wine

             Drowned his soul until

             The Great Depression

             Would see

                   –  Gangadin grey haired son

                      Of Mother Earth deadly

                      Distraught by draughts

                      Decried his destiny until

                      We saw him hanging

                      From the tree

Nivedita Dey

Nivedita Dey is a full-time poet holding a postgraduate degree from Stella Maris College, Chennai, India. Born in a middle class Bengali family she calls herself as a Cosmopolitan with her heart rooted in several cities Pan-India, thus belonging to none and yet to multicultures. She began writing from the tender age of eight. In 2006 she won the Best Student Paper Award in Katha Asia International Utsav, Delhi, competing among University students from all over Asia. Through the years have been published nationally and internationally. Her poems have recently been widely featured in reputed literary magazines.

Nivedita’s poetic philosophy is one of Hope and Humanism, seeking not to deny the stark realism of post-WWs, rather to transcend and alter this postmodern gloom. She writes to express the Personal as Political with a burning passion to make positive difference to the metamodern world through her art. Her works can be further read on her blog existential-anguish.blogspot.com.