November 3, 2016

Seven Poems by Goirick Brahmachari: "Now that Winter," "An Ektara," "Love in 1970," "This Anger, this Wrath," "Numb," "The Other Side of the Hill," and "Nervous February"

Goirick Brahmachari lives in Delhi, India, He hails from Silchar, Assam. His first collection of poems ‘For the love of Pork’ have recently been published from Les Editions du Zaporogue, Denmark.











Now that Winter 

Now that winter has finally set upon us, I have lost my speech.
Too many years spent in rage
Resisting summers, light, smiles and sense of direction.
Denying the sun, escaping ornamented conversations,
Hallucinating ice and the chill, breathing-
Smoke rising up with each word,
Dry lips, parched feet, the warm air that blows out of our mouths,
As we walk into the mist.

A cold sun that heals my wounds, falls over our weary faces
And we agree to blanket our insecurities
with a dumb December morning that approaches this old city.




An Ektara 

An Ektara breezes in through my summer afternoons like rivers of clay that float past little memory boats of hope sliding in through the drowsiness that only valleys can bring and it ripples a Baul song, stripping my senses slowly, escaping the humid heat, in a lazy trance when the wind rushes in from the other side of the river and it drenches my skin, singing about wasting a day and how I wasted my days, in sweat and mud, and the smell of cow dung in clay, wet bamboos and hay, and the grass so green, and the water smells of earth and the river drones many villages to sleep, melting my bones, withering away my skin, disappearing the me from myself, within.



 Love in 1970

Two dosas for 50 paisa
and a matinee to feed
their hunger. Love walked
through lamp lit streets
of winter, in search of something
between a song and a dream.
They made paper bags with newspaper
to pay for their supper,
painted their floors with mud together,
sat under the giant umbrella
when it rained. Other times, they bicycled
through crimson lanes of despair to find meaning of life
in each other's weaknesses.




This Anger, this Wrath

This anger, this Wrath
This love, this craving
This knowledge, this ignorance
This life, these rivers,
What a waste, what a waste.




Numb

The dust I have acquired over the years
have hid my eyes from all that is before me
And I rust, disappear a little from your memory
Your vision
It has been a slow ride
And now the hills have turned their back
And I am not exactly sad
Or happy, I can't see very well.




The Other Side of the hill

Losing my grip,
falling into a white space,
causing trouble, asking for more,
I stare at conventions
and grieve at my lack
of understanding,
my lack of rhyme, resistance
my non gentlemen ways.

Sometimes time does get weary
and we must return home
return to the window
that overlooks the hills,
and makes you rethink
if it is all for nothing.




Nervous February

a delicate day
breeze, a calm sun,
new leaves
of February
yet my head aches
in rhythm
of the unrest
that surrounds Dilli
and my heart asks,
"will I be sacked again?"

~Goirick Brahmachari

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