Three : prose-poem, sestina, free verse
Resurrection
Light
Scene 1.
The ashen sky looked on as soldiers nailed him to the cross. It took hours, but they were in no hurry. Sometimes the soldiers sat around for days after crucifixion, waiting for the ‘culprit’ to die. They sat gambling. This day they cut up his clothes.
The cross shuddered, falling forward and backward in the howling winds.
Out of the deathly scene, a voice at once unexpected and full of a strange sweet force, said “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The sky blazed lightening, thunder roared, and the soldiers sat back shaking, agape.
Darkness descended and everything turned black soon enough. The wind kept howling, helpless in the face of such destruction.
Scene 2.
The tomb was in a garden full of flowers and gracious trees, abuzz with life. Bees hummed and the song of birds carried all over. Earthworms and animals, fireflies and insects still revelling in spring fever, brought the garden to exuberant life.
Precious breath and song passed between earth and sky, in an incandescent celebration of life, to which nothing was immune. Not the grateful dead, nor the divine lover of humanity healing with his own wounds.
Not the one who had died so that others could be free.
In a slow marshalling of energies, as Earth activated and little beings gathered together, the body in the dark tomb infused itself with new life. The most ancient wisdom of the universe – all beings are connected with the same life force, played itself out in enthralling slow motion.
After three days, the stone sealing the mouth of the tomb burst open, in a blaze of light.
Scene 3.
Three women came to the garden in the morning. They saw the empty tomb, the missing stone and went back speaking of the Resurrection.
The Shape of New
Is Diamond Language is rough-cut stone Heaving the glitter of emotions. The heft of our words fly out In spiraling echoes, never returning To where it boomeranged! Our worlds too Scatter away On elegiac emotions... Lamenting the past. But hear now : A baby lotus Screams in a murky pond "Maybe you love me Maybe you love me No more" (Haddaway plays in the background) Eagle eyed People stand Their shaky steps trembling on Uneven rocks all the way to neon land And unseen untrammelled Green, diverse, Rich euphoric bursts Of creation May soon be gone For a pocketful of Promises Such are Coveted Progressive Desires, To wash away the scent Of existence... And within this roaring sound of emptiness A new world will be Born! Mark my words The rich will share The scholarly care (For even what's not their own), The give and take of decency Will be a new universal currency (like Peter the author said about kindness) Skin will be skin Not something to compare or rule, And countries will have provision For all citizens Not just a chosen few. The sun will shine brightly The moon reinstate romance Old songs will be back In vogue It'll be dinosaurs over The dreaded Virus, (And a very visible war Getting people killed). In the new world, Minds will be set to Original intentions - Ruled by rainbows Of reciprocity Waterfalls of wisdom The love of all Gods.
Of fuschia guns and heartbreak wisteria (sestina)
I bet you didn't see this coming, of All things a sestina, roaring fuschia Between the eyes, a fluency of guns In its measured tread; and Just when heartbreak Touched even the blooming wisteria! For, imitating hazy waves of wisteria A world turning purple with rage, of Course hides its pain, its heartbreak In smokescreens blazing grey-fuschia North to South and East to West, and Goes down firing a thousand guns! Where are women in all this- the guns & scores, you wonder,the wisteria Taking you back ...way back...and A child appears on a nostalgic street of Beginnings, cheeks all pink-fuschia! All this way, for such heartbreak? Ways other than war and heartbreak Exist in a world given to guns? Surely women have a say- a fuschia Touch like dawn's, pink wisteria Blossoming in thoughts of A world at peace, and Serene landscapes that nurture and Offer solace, instead of the heartbreak Going round in unending circles of Suffering. Call off the guns Smash the tanks, let wisteria Blossom in glorious pink,fuschia... This is her dream set in fuschia, She sees a world made of love and Set to music, boughs of wisteria Over doorways where heartbreak Never enters, no way. Guns? That's so primitive! Oh, of Raging fuschia guns she has a use - Fire them with heartbreak And let the earth bloom forth wisteria...
Smeetha Bhoumik is an artist, editor, poet, founder- WE Literary Community, 2016, founding editor Yugen Quest Review, 2021, Chief Editor of a WE anthology. and author of two poetry collections :Where I Belong – Moments, Mist & Song (2019), Return to Love – The Point of Poetry (2021). As founder- WE, she is instrumental in establishing the Kamala Das Poetry Award (2018), Eunice de Souza Award (2020), The WE Trailblazer Teacher Poet Award, WE Gifted Poet Award, and Special Recognition Book Prizes. Her poems feature in national/ international journals, anthologies including Oxygen – Parables of the Pandemic 2022, Quesadilla & Other Adventures 2019, Muse India 2017, 2018, Life and Legends 2018, Modern Indian Poetry – a Sahitya Akademi anthology, 2019, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Open Your Eyes – A Climate Change Anthology, Freedom Raga, Poetry & Covid project – Universities of Plymouth, and Nottingham Trent, Writing Language, Culture – Asia vs Africa, Mwanaka, among others.
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