You left at the first flicker of dawn
as the pioneering rays of Sun
diluted the chaotic dark of night
and the morass of words exchanged.
I would have, if not for my dead legs
followed, at least crawled
but you had gone before, and returned.
Dragging my cold body toward the switches
I should have considered you lost,
but time is an endless breeze
that blows over the ghosts of steam
avenging that which our tempers kill,
and leaving in its wake, just the regret
of those two words that needn't have been said.
I should have considered you lost
even as my stomach rumbled in angst,
silenced by the cool dread of the sight
of the idle lemony shade on the doorway
without a singular shadow to break it
nor even your voice to let me know
I shall have you with me tonight.
Categories:
suresh, break up, love hurts,
Form: Free verse
The Banyan Tree
The banyan tree stands tall,
come rain or mighty squall,
it rests, serene,
but never unseen,
its branches guarding us all.
BITE SIZE POEM no29 Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Line Gauthier
Date: 6th December 2021
Categories:
suresh, care, green, nature, tree,
Form: Rhyme
As a bird I am,
blessed with these wings
that have caressed the
winds of wisdom, and
flown me to places far,
and shown me
the ends of the Universe -
a bird indeed, yet one
entombed in a
miserable cage, even as
the whiff of free air
outside my inculpable prison
does fill my nostrils
through the holes in this
rotten mesh.
If those gates are shut
so be they, for they may
keep me from those worlds
which I've cavorted in,
but my eyes, kissed
by a thousand suns do see
beauty even in that which
deprives life of beauty,
and this voice, once subdued
shall speak again, crafting
another world in this
lonely abode.
Categories:
suresh, appreciation, beauty, conflict, endurance,
Form: Free verse
Of infinity
there is much left unsaid,
unfathomable it is to think
of a last frontier for the
purest tongue there is.
Would it not be then,
the limit to our invincible minds,
that search for God inside atoms
and far into the cosmos
but seldom within?
Would it not be a defeat
of pure, sterile science
to uncover a number past which
there is nothing, nowhere,
nobody, none?
To dismiss it outright
sounds unsportsmanlike,
and yet few aim to decipher the
taunting grin of mathematics,
few brave her chastisements.
And so it is now, that
practical minds honor it
with Hebrew letters, and
like God, leave it unfathomed,
but are ever reminded that
it is us that are small in scale
and therefore, irrelevant,
and that beyond us, far beyond,
lies something immense,
bigger than our minds themselves.
Third Place, This or That, Vol 8 Poetry Contest
Dated: 21st November 2021
Categories:
suresh, god, math, science,
Form: Free verse
Through pain you were born,
with love you were raised,
with hope we sent you off,
with pride we watched you
from afar, not realizing
your dawn was our dusk.
Contest: BITE SIZE POEM no27 Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Line Gauthier
Dated: 19th November 2021
Categories:
suresh, children, life, parents, pride,
Form: Free verse
Unforgivable
Night falls on day
these heathen times,
and clouds of gloom mask
even the Sun above.
Miles of water, ever lapping
frantically at our sinking shores,
yet never a pristine drop to drink
piteous is the irony.
Gasp for breath, ye who
choked this planet, intoxicated
by parochial pleasures.
In your dying breaths, beg
for a panacea that the meek soil
begged you for, so long.
And be warned,
for the sins of the father are immortal.
There shall come a day when
courts shall arise on your graves,
no hellish miasma can fog the
injustices you owe to your children,
and, before all the hell you've bequeathed,
you shall be sentenced for your sins.
Paradise is truly lost in our midst,
and in our fleeting wake, what lays
but a sodden wasteland for they
upon whom our greed has thrust
the greatest atrocity ever,
to live in inferno with no respite.
4th Place, "U" Poetry Contest
Dated: 15th November 2021
Categories:
suresh, environment, future, pollution,
Form: Free verse
My Son, Far Away
In the sunny gloom of this
ocean of burning Earth,
the scythe of time hovers like
a hungry vulture above us
men of "honorable" duty, but thankfully,
for my weary heart, this
graveyard of sand is never too far
from my son, far away.
We are but men, not Gods,
for every death my hands effect
I kneel closer to my own.
Only the bespoke hands that
signed neat, dotted lines can
explain this infernal farce that
donned in warrior's attire the
father of my son, far away.
He's a fine gentleman for sure,
in him I see the man I never got to be,
I fear now I may never see
again that little boy whose big feet
long outgrew his father's shoes.
If my death blocks an evil bullet, be it so.
Let no bullet fly past me,
and reach my son, far away.
So when I die, oh brother,
rest me not amid these sinners,
in this bed of metal thorns and
aged blood.
I beseech you to, instead,
lay me to rest in
the soil that sculpted me, and
take me home to my son, far away.
War Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Date: November 12, 2021
Categories:
suresh, death, father, father son,
Form: Free verse
In Memory of You
So that even if my moribund mind fails
to show your fading beautiful face again,
you shall glow eternally in these trembling words.
By no means hollow are the choicest crowns
this dying poet does bestow on his cherished lover.
1st Prize, Something Beautiful 5 line rhyme Contest
Date: November 5 2021
Categories:
suresh, love, memory, poets,
Form: Rhyme
The Shopping Cart
Upon my veritable throne I survey
subjects of sundry colors,
cans and jars, packets and bags
arrayed in reverent order before me.
I am appointed, by natural virtue
captain of this mighty ship
past denizens of the white-tiled, polished sea
steered through (a)isles by two sturdy hands.
Before me lies, in mangled letters,
a royal sanction, listing treasures from far and wide
my trained eyes decipher the cryptic codes
rendered in smudged ink,
and by my direction, mine alone
we cruise past other ships, on their missions,
seeking loot to plunder off soaring towers
like panels painted in the same color.
When at last, our voyage concludes,
our ship, weary but worthy
languidly does sail over to the fine,
bespectacled statue behind a glowing screen.
Our treasures they measure with
that beeping baton, when at last,
in the name of the King, we are charged
royal customs, each one of us a tributary.
And off we go, onto terra firma
where I shall become a child again,
and my subjects, most ungraciously packed
into suffocating little plastic bags.
Dated - 29th October 2021
Categories:
suresh, child, imagination, sea,
Form: Free verse
Legacy
Inheritors we are of depravity,
yet blame do we the ignorance of
those whom graves stolidly invoke,
or pity do we the oblivion of
the unborn, who, in our dirty shoes
shall sordidly rule the seven seas?
BITE SIZE POEM no24 Poetry Contest
Date: 27th October 2021
Categories:
suresh, evil, future,
Form: Free verse
Rain
I hear the pitter-patter of rain,
greedily savor the whiff of bathed Earth
and I see, yet again, that palace frozen in time
my home, far, far away.
The misty memories of a blissful past
lay interred in those walls of faded pink,
the heaving groan of the rusted gate sounds
as melodic as the chirp of the bulbul.
The rain smelt sweeter then, in those bygone days
when I'd hold my grandfather's large hand, and
my little feet would splash puddles all about.
How I feel sometimes, as if only yesterday
that large umbrella towered over me amid
the incessant drip-drop and that man's
booming laughter as we'd walk!
And it reminds me then, of that day,
embellished eternally in my mind,
when even that man, larger than life itself
was united with Earth's welcoming bosom.
It rained even then, upon the both of us,
and trickled down my moistened cheeks,
for there was no umbrella over my head.
Date: October 26, 2021
6th Place, Onomatopoeia Poetry Contest
Categories:
suresh, death, farewell, grandfather, rain,
Form: Free verse
Did time stop to ask
if it broke your gentle heart,
to depart so soon?
Date: 24th October 2021
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
Title: Skullduggery
Categories:
suresh, heartbroken,
Form: Haiku