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Best Poems Written by Priyanka Kumar

Below are the all-time best Priyanka Kumar poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Surprise Ending

There was once a man.
He’d always wanted to write,
But his biggest failing was
That he wasn’t very bright.

Whenever he started 
On a story or a plot,
Before he could pen it
He simply forgot

What he had thought earlier
And he wasn’t very wise
So all he wanted was that
The end be a surprise.

And he made up plots and tales
Funny, sad and intense
But in the end he found that
None of them made any sense

For follow as he might all grammar
He could never be concise
And what is more, the ending
Was never a surprise.

Yet he cherished dreams
Of becoming famous and great
Of writing beautiful stories
Of defying his impending fate

But, for all his boldness
He could never roll the dice
And his stories never ended
In a nail-biting surprise.

He told his tales to children
He tried them on every friend
But they never gasped at 
The crucial part, the end.

He sent them off to editors
Of magazines of acclaim
But they all sent the stories back 
Saying the ending was all the same.

He tried to write a book too
But in the middle he got stuck
And he wasn’t very clever
So he simply cursed his luck

Then finally he gave up
And wallowed in self-despair
He felt life was being hard on him
He felt it wasn’t fair.

Then one of his friends suggested 
That if he really had to write
He needn’t just write stories
To prove his wit and might.

He could simply write a cookbook
Or an instruction manual too
Or a traveller’s guide to touring 
A place like Timbuktu

Now the man wasn’t very brilliant
But he could recognise good advice
When he saw it, so he took it
Though he wasn’t very wise

And he wrote a self-help book on
Coping with writer’s block
It became  a national bestseller
Every bookstore ran out of stock.

And he made pots of money
Because it was reprinted thrice
And he was always very glad
He took his friend’s advice

So now if you ask his opinion
He looks very condescending
And smiles, and says, “to write a book
Who needs a surprise ending?”

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

A Window By the Sea

I want to escape to some place 
For the whole of eternity,
And I know my mind tells me to find 
A window by the sea.

Protected by a solid wall
Of mother-rock from the storm outside.
But I can’t fight curiosity,
Hence the window – so I can know
And yet have a place to hide.

I want to free my mind and soar,
So what if I can’t flee?
Watch the tide and the heavens collide
Through my window by the sea.

Send my eyes out to the sky
Like a gull with a foam-tipped wing.
Glide over curved blue waves.
Return at noon, by the light of the moon
Hear the sleepy old ocean sing.

I want to watch the sun sink into space
In my mind, my territory.
Disruptions are few when I look through
The window by the sea.

Watch the horizon doze in the day,
Turn dark and sinister by night,
Feel the loneliness around
See the stars shine, know that all of it is mine,
Wake up in the brine-soaked light.

I want a boat to take me away
Go back to my identity
Yet come back from the shore, be nobody once more,
By my window by the sea.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Abolish Table Manners!!

Who cares about table manners? Why do you have to have any?
I think being mannerless makes you a better person than many.
Why can’t you hold your fork in the other hand?
And bang your spoon on the glass? I just don’t understand.
What’s all the scandal about using your knife to eat peas?
The peas taste the same – why can’t you do as you please?
Why do you have to spread a clean napkin out?
To get it all dirty and have it cleaned again, no doubt.
It’s just the sort of rule a stuffy grown-up makes up,
To give us all a bad time, instead of pleasure, while we sup. 
Why can’t you slurp your soup and splash it all around?
I think slurping and splashing make rather a nice sound.
They block all the snobbish conversation out,
And give you something to be delighted about.
Why do you have to eat with your mouth shut tight?
And chew every bit of food thirty times day and night?
It just gives you jaw ache, nothing happens to the food!
Once I chewed just fifteen times, and boy, did it feel good!
Why can’t you talk when you’re eating, tell me,
We’ve been blessed with a voice box, haven’t we?
Why does burping or belching nearly give everyone a fit?
It just shows you’re enjoying your food, doesn’t it?
When you get up, why do you have to say, “Excuse me”?
You don’t need to make excuses for washing your hands, you see.
You’re supposed to enjoy what you eat,
Not act like you’ve got cold clammy feet.
How can you really feel the taste,
If you’ve got to sit still like your pants are full of paste?
Table manners were surely invented by someone
Who wanted us kids to stop having fun.
It’s probably a kind of training to turn us boring too,
A crash course in becoming an adult, something our parents went through!
To turn us dull and uninteresting, decidedly stuffy,
Imposing and conceited, haughty and huffy.
So come on, start rebelling! What are you waiting for?
Gulp your water, start food fights, have an ice cream war!
Forget about rules; bend every law that can be bent,
Life’s too short, so start an eternal trend!
But even then you’ll probably be well and truly grounded,
And your lifelong punishment will definitely be sounded.
It’s a way of the world, so you can’t make a fuss,
But eventually table manners will get the better of us.
So have a grand time till you’re grown up for good, 
And then remember not to throw about your food.
Some people like being clean, even if they are few,
But don’t let table manners triumph over you!

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Walking With My Shadow

Yesterday was nothing different
Another day passing into anonymity
But I went walking under the trees 
And my shadow went walking with me
And we walked away from reality…

And you’d probably think me crazy
If you saw me walking under the pines
Their shadows swaying with an unseen breeze
Pierced with shafts of crooked sunshine
And my shadow blending in with them
Giving me all the company I wanted
Making me fell like a shadow myself
Walking through a path that silence haunted.

And it comforted me to know it was there
That secretive, elusive shadow of mine,
That shadow that would never leave my side
My mysterious shadow, so hard to define
That talked to me in its silent voice
As it stole behind me with soft footfalls
So different from the sound of my shoes
On the dusty road where the songbird calls

Under the towering crowns of the trees
With distant mists curling at the far bend
Of the road through which my shadow moved
Waiting to listen like an eternal friend.
The breeze played about with the grass
While I talked like I never had done before
Enjoying my escape from the mundane 
Till again I came upon my old worn door.

And yesterday you’d have thought me crazy,
Believed I had a touch of eccentricity
If you could see me walking in that little lane
But I wouldn’t have cared, because I know 
That I was different then, though now I’m sane.
And such walks won’t come so often anymore

Because yesterday was nothing different
Another day passing into anonymity
But I went walking under the trees 
And my shadow went walking with me
And we walked away from reality.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Skin Deep

I have often wondered 
What it is like to be
Beautiful
To have a face that would launch 
A thousand ships 
Into the distant sea,
In old forgotten times.

What is it like?
To have people look at your face
And smile
To know that you have made
Their day
Helped them send their worries 
To a faraway place…

How does it feel?
To wear a nice dress
And not doubt that it really 
Becomes you;
To look into a mirror
And not have to flinch
To see a face that stuns you…

And then people say
Beauty is only skin deep
And a crooner sings 
That you are beautiful inside
And these two contradictions force a film star
To catch some beauty sleep
While normal people like me sigh
And write poems about wanting to fly
And look around 
Desperately
For a place to hide.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Being My Own Divorce Lawyer

This is how it is
To be torn between two options
And not know I am facing them.
How can I?

They say I’m too young.

It’s hard
To interpret the look in those eyes,
To hear those unspoken thoughts.
Yet I feel I know
Even if they are keeping it from me.
Hurried meetings,
Tears and promises,
Yet no sign of
What I hope they will say.

They say I’m too young.

If they wonder why I’m not
As cheerful, as bright as I am usually,
Do they know
That they are responsible?
How can I understand
Things they never show,
Things they never talk of?
And still those two options,
Those two ways
And being implored to choose,
When I don’t know what I’m choosing
When I don’t know why I’m choosing
When I don’t know where it’ll lead me…
I still don’t know I’m facing them,
Facing those two choices.

This is how it is,
Because they say I’m too young.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Voyeur

There are so many types
That I have seen – 
Would you call me tired?
But then, it does make me tired....
They think they are safe 
And that no one is watching.
So the quiet ones turn boisterous;
The boisterous burst into tears,
The angry smile indulgently,
And the kind metamorphosise 
Into vicious animals.
I see quirks in unobjectionable characters,
And in the shady types
A quiet respectability.
But then, the variety – 
The hundreds and thousands
And more, of strange faces,
Make me feel lost at times.
You might say I’m a quiet observer 
Of my fellow people.
But everyday I see a face
More terrible than anyone else’s
Disillusion and fear
Revulsion and weariness
Jostle each other, and hollow eyes
Scare me, until I realise
I am looking into a mirror.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Anatomy of Poetry By An Imbecile

Do I refer to a note?
How do I know what to say?
And then, do they expect me to quote
From some obscure latin text
Which no one would understand anyway?

I should have been a giant chainsaw
Cutting through the trunk of a thousand trees.

How do you interpret the fall of an empire?
The end of an age? Or the beginning of one?
How do you prove there’s a third side to things
Flitting between rhyme and reason
On filigree wings?

Do they think single mothers never dote? 
Do they think blind politicians do not vote?

What should I say? What goes unsaid?
At the next auction I’ll put down a price for my head.

Abstract abstract poetry
And blank blank verse
An angel’s blessing
A gypsy’s curse.

Rhymes and ramblings go hand in hand
While non-existent footprints get erased from the sand
The night is always creepy, the day sublime.
In the patio old ladies chime
Talking of doctors and smelling of lime.

Hearts ache, drowsy numbnesses pain
And promises fly over miles to be kept.
Out flow webs and float far and wide
And woods just wait to be swept.

Will they criticize it? Will they ostracize it?
Will it be written up or written down?
I’m fortunate: there’s a year - long waiting list
For the only mental hospital in town.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Making of a Storyteller

Story time.
Start at the beginning, please,
And tuck me in well.
Put out the lights,
Put on the bedside lamp.
Now, if you please,
Start.

The beginning– 
It should have been better…
I’ll invent a new one.
The characters –
But I don’t like them the way they are.
So I’ll improvise.
The hero’s more interesting now,
The villain more menacing.
The story continues,
I continue improvising.
The plot thickens…
I make it better, I make it thicker.
Then the nail-biting finish – 
My nails are intact, though.
I’ll add some more details
And end it the way I want to.
It’s better that way, I think.

It’s time for me to close my eyes.
I can hear you putting out the light.
Then the door closes softly.
You think I’m asleep
But I’m lying still,
Thinking about that story.
And I’m thinking,
When I’m grown up,
Whenever that will be,
I think I’ll write a new story…
Write it my way,
Just to show them all
The way it’s really done.

Details | Priyanka Kumar Poem

Writing

Why do I write
The things I do? 
Pick up a pen
And paper too,
Put down my thoughts
Flitting like birds
Across my brain,
It seems absurd 
To want to write – 
To let it all out,
To watch my work
Leave me in doubt
As to whether I could
Have written it all,
These strings of words
In the dirty scrawl
Saying things 
I never knew I thought,
Painting a picture 
In ink and blot.
Telling a story,
Recounting a tale,
Laughter and tears
So strong, so frail.
Everything done, 
Yet I don’t know
Why I write,
Let my feelings flow.
It is not for wealth,
For then I would sell
For as much as I could
These stories I tell.
But then, I think,
Its surely not fame:
I am content if
No one knows my name.
Is it what some
Awful people call
“Aesthetic exercise”?
Oh no, not at all…
I’m not trying to help
Woman, child or man,
And I’m not writing 
Just because I can.
But I think I can cast
Some much needed light-
I think the answer is
That I love to write.
To feel my thoughts
Forming a line,
Interpreting emotions
So hard to define,
Gives me assurance
That I can narrate,
Invent and concoct,
Compose and create,
A story that gives 
Me an identity,
That story is special 
For it defines me.