Short Cistern Poems

The Cistern awaited,
Annual liquid prism fill,
Rain was slow coming....

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Intuition is to reason
 as a black hole is to space

A cistern of discovery
 —void of distance, time, and place

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2018)...

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Seven white fishes
                                         A tabby cat washes his claws
                                                    Water cistern chuckles














© RAJAT KANTI CHAKRABARTY
17th October, 2014...

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~

coral sunset warm
mother's fish curry

~

attic
childhood memories dusted

~

if petrichor were petaled 
jasmine-scented night 

~

broken cistern
wafer-thin heart

~

fast city life
smoky haze

~


23rd March 2023...

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Love is just another cause for sorrow
Leaves you like an empty well
Needing to be filled up
But, instead you are devoid of all joy and happiness
Overwhelmed of feelings of lonliness
You cynical because you are utterly alone
At this table set for one
For now you are in my cistern of apathy...

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Huge worn stone lid removed

--- dragged to one side -

centuries ago, and not moved since ---

nestled in grassy pasture land;

cistern filled -

w/ cool rippling water -

brilliant and overflowing:

big open sky above,

azure, brighter, deepest:

one last dark cloud

dejectedly drifts away....

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Come back
From slipping,
drip,
drop,
dropped
Into the distance in
your eyes
Fixed on some
one-where-time
ago
and I can’t see all
you see
the wreck
the destruction 
the reflection
in the water
someone-where-time
left behind
where you are
I try
I want 
To go with you
A cistern holds just this much....

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Airy cistern reserves now spent
Each billowing mast folds its tent
Helios hurls his flaming trident
Through singed porthole flittering glint
Fiery sparks stream through each stent
Refracted waves in mercurial columns bent
Misty water colors shroud each gilded vent
Burnt orange truffles, golden ridges resplendent...

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Itched memories never fade—
Keloids of time—ballooned 
scares of history: swollen selves.

As time runs on, so
must we.
As awareness ripens
and burst, escaping truths
empty into the cistern.

Full, the cistern overflows
the cup of mind—memories
running into the saucer of life:
Come, let us sip the nourishment....

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He told me his story, how much he loved her
And all his dreams were rainbow stairs to gold
In their little village their hopes on his shoulder
He thought she knew he was fit man of the fold
For always she pursued him, and ever told him
She would love him forever, and share what wage
Life may offer, she was muscled for good and grim
But ever so often he fled the frank fire of her rage

(incomplete)...

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A wife’s love is like the water from a cistern 
from your own well, that no one else can drink in turn.
Should the waters from the springs ever overflow;
their private source no other man should ever know
May your fountain be blessed for the rest of your life;
the woman chosen in youth always be a wife
May she please you forever like a graceful deer;
A loving doe, may she satisfy and be near.

Proverbs 31:9-12...

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The sacred temple is a
exclusive design body.
Created by God Almighty.
It's a solitary place thats
contains a threshing
floor.

To the carnal eye it's 
just a earthly cistern.
Or a contamination
made by sinful hands.
The sacred temple
contains so much
more than just a 
threshing floor.

It's a place not made 
by mortal hands.It's a
spiritually place of 
tranquillity connecting
with the God that made
me....

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Love has no boundaries
and can’t be quarantined.
No, love knows no distancing
of hearts but only the oneness of,
and no matter where we are—
one from the other—we are one in love
in the loving of God and our being.
For love not only brings but gives hope
and this hope becomes love’s anointing
liberation flowing from her ever full cistern.
May we forever are placed, kept and sheltered
in the throbbing endlessness of our sated love....

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they live in an iron nest
under a back window

they have begun to dream
the way threadbare drapes will
in too much sunlight

scorched by sky
blooms crumple like straw hats
reach up bent by an internal smolder
as if the air were a cistern

but the sky is a dry bed today

sprinkled water has no effect
i expect to see stringy stems
swell into firm aqueducts

but the newly doused droop the more
as if water were a flame
in a beached throat...

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when 
 I still myself
   and just be...
    an overwhelming
        sadness swells
         seemingly from
           an endless cistern of grief
             It wells and billows
               I accept it
                  not fully understanding 
                    but knowing this sorrow
                         must have a voice
                             be heard
                                embraced
                                  I am "barefaced"...

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Suzy Baker was genuine white trash
Scorning fiercely, her teeth ready to flash.
Fending her homemade trailer park jungle
Dodging her dark and imminent funeral!

Lucy Walker was a pretty lady
Smiling friendly her lips always ready,
Living quiet in lovely suburbia
Meeting non-whites with xenophobia.

Why did the potter create them this way?
Was it because there were two types of clay?
One forged as a Cistern the next as an Urn
And exactly whom should this mess concern?...

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