Poems | Atri Majumder

Credits: Amrit Ghosal

New Clichés

Rivers of agitated ecstasy
Crawled on the glass pane;
Where was I
In my rehearsed dreams?

The scars on the sky are leaving
In that patient hurry,
Craving for anonymity.

Those who can see me are not me,
They merely know what I can’t see.

New clichés possess me,
Every time I confess,
 I lie.

Finally, I am alone
In my loneliness.
Waiting for numbness,
Waiting, for indifference.
What for?


Insomniac Dreamers

Whispers of the shadow
Crept into the light-
I don’t have a beginning,
I don’t know
How to end.

I am disappearing,
Fading away,
Returning,
Forming,
Nothing
Out of nowhere.

A Curious chiaroscuro-
Like a curtain revealing more,
Much more than the window.

And you thought
You will never go back,
While you were returning?

At some point,
You’ll get back
Good times
Are just
Around the corner;
And all those clichés-
A shameful escapade.
But you never reconciled 
With that omnipotent despair,
You overruled reality
With future-
A happiness weaved
Out of hopelessness.

Perhaps
You were right,
And you knew it.


Chicanery

A crystal ball shattered in the sunlight ;
You just couldn’t keep yourself 
From turning back,
From devouring another glance.

It wasn’t forgotten
It never did it wither away,
It was denied its presence.
Existence can’t be clinched,
Its essence merely submerges.

None of us knew time;
What we were leaving was
What we have lost.  .

I was just reminiscing ,
While you were predicting.   

Missing Diary Complaint

The evening was stoic like the eyes of the lizard;
The old man at the gate wasn’t aware of anything.
The door was closed
But not locked,

Leftovers on the kitchen-sink,
Cold ruffled bed,
Tablets and a whiskey glass
An ashtray of promises.


Uncalculated excuses,
Silently accusing the mirror.

And a note on the refrigerator;
“Come back and leave.”

Beaten Blues

She led me to the place
Where they sell innocence;
She told me what to expect,
And taught me how to forget.

The silence of the insects
Invades the light in the cobweb;
The pebble moon flickers,
Twisting stars in the staircase.

I took her away from there
Where they buy despair;
And I made her realize
She was rolling an empty dice.


White Stains

A half-melted sun sputters,
Restrained to a diseased night,
Like ink dissolves into
The veins of water.

Baffled hands seek the fingers,
In this last of all places-
It’s all about leaving
All that’s left behind.