MOHIT MITRA Poet Rhyme

The Stoner

I was sitting on the corner, stoned
When out of the blue, my dead aunt phoned 
How could this be, she rests in peace 
Right beside my loving niece 

I answered the phone, and my auntie said 
"I know you think that I am dead" 
"I'm alive"- my auntie moaned 
Or- could it be that you're just- "Stoned"

I laughed through the receiver — “Still scolding from the night,
Still chasing my foolish shadows with your old familiar light;
You left your bones to silence, yet your sharp tongue remains,
A flame that outlives the ashes and remembers all my names.

She whispered, “You seek the dead where the cold earth has grown,
But graves keep only silence; they cannot keep what we have known;
The voice you thought was calling from some forgotten shore—
Was the tree beneath your footsteps, remembering the seed it bore.”



Collaborative Poetry Note
The Stoner Collaboration Contest

Sponsored by Charles Messina

The opening two stanzas of this poem were originally written by Charles Messina as the foundation of the collaborative piece. The subsequent stanzas were composed as a continuation and reinterpretation of the original narrative, expanding the encounter into a meditation on memory, mortality, love, and the unseen connections that endure beyond physical existence.

This poem represents a creative dialogue between voices — where humour, personal experience, and visionary reflection merge into a shared exploration of what remains when the boundaries between life and death begin to dissolve.

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Charles Messina August 9, 2026 at 5:35 PM Nicely done, Mohit! Great ending too! Congratulations on your winning placement in my contest! MOHIT MITRA August 10, 2026 at 4:16 AM Thank you most heartily, Charles. Your generous words mean a great deal to me, and I am deeply honoured that you found merit in my continuation. The true pleasure was in entering the imaginative doorway your opening stanzas so deftly created, and discovering what might still be whispered between the living and the dead. I am especially grateful for the contest and for the freedom it gave us to let humour wander into mystery, and memory into something almost mythic. If the ending found its light, it was because your beginning gave it such fertile ground in which to take root. My sincerest thanks, and congratulations to you as well—for the wonderful seed of a poem from which this shared vision grew. To brighter pages, Mohit Mitra