Prithvijeet Sinha's Poems

PRITHVIJEET SINHA from Lucknow, India is a post graduate in MPhil from the University of Lucknow, having launched his writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog AN AWADH BOY'S PANORAMA besides having his works published in several varied publications as CAFE DISSENSUS, THE MEDLEY, SCREEN QUEENS, BORDERLESS JOURNAL, ASPIRING WRITERS' SOCIETY, LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL, CHAMBER MAGAZINE, LIVE WIRE, RHETORICA QUARTERLY and in the children's anthology NURSERY RHYMES AND CHILDREN'S POEMS FROM AROUND THE WORLD ( AuthorsPress, February 2021) 

His life force resides in writing.

****

Morning Hour

My eyes wait for that perfect morning hour,

the day dawning with rekindled sparks to spare

and I know I'll be looking at new beauty repossess this haunt of mine.

I choose the river, always,

actually the riverside,

walking along the only serene edges of concrete,

to still feel I'm human,

in love with the forms of these men I see, 

soaking up sweat 

and easing the portent of life and death,

with just a kind look

or a sincere smile, 

held a little longer, yes,

or deflecting a meddling sun's revival as an orb of blinding light at nine.

What they see is a boy in love with these elements,

the changing moods of this eternally stoic river

and a different tinge and hue to these familiar faces,

so in complete love with the way the sky seems to melt,

with their exhaustion;

and the water tempts them with a shared communal ablution,

to wash away their unsavoury birth marks

and egos bigger than that,

designed for them by heretics and bigots.

***

I'm here to say, ' I see you'

like the two of them,

friends or lovers or strangers,

knowing each other for as long as this vista makes them open up to each other,

for these meetings.

Those two men.

They have a heart for feeding birds,

or fishes,

or just being in love with this river;

as those little crumbs trail their fifteen minutes of solitude.

I'm here to say, ' I see you'

for your solidarity,

for your united front,

for the lushness of those everyday spirits.

I'm here to say,

'I see you',

all you lush gardeners pruning nature,

to its nifty, verdant former glory since March

as I see little boys on bicycles wearing smiles under masks,

reflecting eyes of youth

and there are assorted lovers tanning their dry souls on the riverbed.

They call their best friends from the other side of the riverfront,

some daring to swim that short distance of a stone's throw away, 

some saying that the boat rides till the red bridge will be underway.

**

I see you

as you see me.

Weren't we all strangers previously and will remain so?

But these mornings are the best

and we all have our photographic memories to spare,

for each other.

We know our eyes will no longer wait for a kindling spark alone,

as we look at beauty repossess this haunt of ours,

waiting with bated breath for that blessed morning hour.

***

Flowers

I am haunted.

The flowers that I plucked from the garden,

to mark some legacies,

have become garlands,

arranged for the beloved,

fallen bird whom I buried,

his face down under the shrubberies,

entranced by his final sleep and an

eternal dream-hour.

And petals drip and drop,

falling into open mouths

as family names leave with the nip in

the air,

far beyond cosmic dilemmas.

I am haunted

because my departed bird has left his

body

and flown over the tip of the temple,

as I imagine,

uncaged and free among the

evergreens, the river.

In the spot below the dead flowers,

where I buried him,

is where his still wings sleep.

**

There was a garden there,

some unfinished moulds of potteries

lay in a neat column,

with roses meant to fill their round,

filigreed bodies

and we promised to fill them each

with mud

and practice some gardening of our

own.

**

I put some dead flowers pressed together,

in cellophane sheets,

take them home,

wash them clean,

to watch them wither and be blown away,

like charred paper;

and then muse with an elegy in my soul,

for their asphyxiated last breaths

before I saw them hence.

For flowers grow out,

for the decorousness of experience,

the euphoria of youth,

for the silence in which we caressed

each other's bodies with rose petals.

Some grow, shrivel or are inflamed in

electric crematoriums,

with sagging, wrinkled last sighs

and their scents and faint colours

limn bones in the last sounding of the conch.

**

Flowers are the only ones who make

an appearance,

on tables where Grandma kept them,

to adorn her morning tresses,

to use their fragrance to press

together our spirits buoyed by smell.

On that very table are her spectacles,

little, inconspicuous microscopes

that read between the lines,

to find multiple histories embedded within.

Everything haunts me now,

because flowers carry their scents

from twoscore years before,

hidden in cupboards and strangled by

spines of books nobody reads

anymore.

It haunts me

because I have left little flowers

everywhere for clues.

The question is,

what messages will I be leaving

behind with them

as discovery is yearned for now?

My flowers make do with that anticipation.

***

NOTE: both these poems were self-published by the author on his WordPress blog AN AWADH BOY'S PANORAMA around August to September, 2020.