Silence
And I began to talk to flowers.
What is better, silence or eloquence,
I don’t know.
You preferred silence, but I wanted
to talk.
The difference lingered and ultimately
got immersed in pervasive silence.
And then,
I started talking to vibrant flowers.
Convict
How one gets promoted to crime
from soccer, I don’t know.
A bunch of children was playing soccer
in the big, green, liberal ground
adjacent to the courtroom
A person with a rope tied around
his waist, came in a police van, a few eons ago.
He was hurriedly taken to the court
Proceedings of the court could be seen
from the ground; but could not be heard.
And a child saw the convict
looking to the liberal ground; indifferent;
eagerly watching children play soccer.
He suddenly started playing with children.
He was an incredible, indifferent dribbler.
And he dribbled past a roped convict.
Before Nirvana
When I close my eyes for a ‘nirvana’, —
kind of eternal peace I love to seek,
insects whirl in my mind
& brain, — insects of different
forms & shape & actions.
My id wears a swimsuit and jumps into
the pool of desire. The lady comes out of the
pond of a coffee cup I used to hold in front
of the red attire in Friday evenings,
in the crowded coffee house, before it
melted into the blue.
Weeds surrounding me looked like
innocent leaves and flowers
I dreamed when I visited the garden of
Eden and in that garden, in a lovely lake
you floated in the coffee cup,
without clothes
Blue is my color of desire, blue is
the color of my clouds of thought.
And my id, my untold passion, my ego float
like big insects in swimsuits.
Before any ‘Nirvana’, take me, therefore,
through a phase known as brain death.
Melting Afternoon
Reading your book now,
which I first opened
thousand years ago with
a bit of trepidation.
But I discover soft afternoons
mellowed in caramel ice creams.
Some yellow leaves, some black stones,
some known tunes & many smiles.
I remember the pebbles on the boulevard
& the motorbike that sped past
the Mars in a summer morning.
Celestial bodies, you perhaps know,
are my favorites, always.
I see green grass and orange flowers
on them & all favorite colors here,
on earth.
This book has its blood with the soil
of earth, the smell of rustic iron,
the air of innocent arrogance.
Turning over another page
& a black hole sucking me inside
mellowed ice cream,
in this melting afternoon.
About the Author
Aneek Chatterjee is a poet and academic from Kolkata, India. He has been published in reputed literary magazines and poetry anthologies across the globe. He has authored 14 books including three poetry collections and a novel. His third poetry collection “Of Ashes and Persiflage” (Hawakal Publication) came out in November 2020. Chatterjee has a Ph.d. in International Relations and has been teaching in leading Indian and foreign universities. He was a Fulbright Visiting faculty at the University of Virginia, USA and a recipient of the prestigious ICCR Chair to teach abroad. His poetry has been archived at Yale University.
