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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
The Cartographer of Maybe
© Ashok Jahagirdar
The map I was given is fading now,
Its borders, drawn in another’s hand,
Are bleeding at the edges.
The roads, so straight and promised,
End abruptly at a cliff
Overlooking a sea of questions.
The legend’s key—a child’s sure script
Of “always,” “never,” “wrong,” and “right”—
Dissolves like mist in morning air,
A topology of borrowed light.
A Dizzying Freedom
I am drawing my own coastlines,
Tracing the capes and inlets of my becoming.
The compass spins, a dizzying freedom,
And north is wherever I plant my feet,
A little lost, a little wild,
Charting the wilderness of maybe.
The Shedding
This new parchment is my own skin,
Stretched taut across the ribs of hope,
The ink, a blend of scar and dream.
I sketch a bay of Solitude,
Where tides of thought can ebb and flow;
I dare to mark a mountain, Failure,
Its height now something I must know.
The Equinox
Let the old chart curl and blacken,
The map I was given is fading now,
Its borders, drawn in another’s hand,
Are bleeding at the edges.
The roads, so straight and promised,
End abruptly at a cliff
Overlooking a sea of questions.
I am drawing my own coastlines,
Tracing the capes and inlets of my becoming.
The compass spins, a dizzying freedom,
And north is wherever I plant my feet,
A little lost, a little wild,
Charting the wilderness of maybe.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2025
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
The Invocation
Beneath the pallid moon’s unblinking stare,
Where shadows coil like serpents in the air,
I dip my quill in ink of midnight hue,
And summon verse as Poe himself once knew.
Oh, Muse of Murmurs, wraith of woeful song,
Who guides lost poets through the dark too long,
Lend me your ear—this chant of woe and wit,
A thousand words where spectral meanings sit.
The Descent
The cellar door creaks on its rusted hinge,
A sound that lingers like a whispered cringe.
Down, down I step, where candlelight is weak,
And every sigh becomes a phantom’s shriek.
The walls are lined with books of tattered skin,
Their leather cracked, their secrets locked within.
Each title glows in gilt now worn with age—
The Ghoul’s Lament, The Madman’s Rage.
A raven perches on a bust of yore,
Its beak agape as though it craves one more
Dark stanza spun from nightmares half-remembered,
Or sins too foul for daylight to surrender.
The Workshop
Here, spectres gather in a ghastly throng,
Their hollow eyes demanding mournful song.
A woman wreathed in mist recites her verse,
Her voice a knell, her cadence like a curse:
“The clock struck twelve, `yet time stood still,
Upon the hill where blood did spill.
The dead arose in lace and bone,
To claim the hearts they once had known.”
A gentleman in rot-stitched velvet bows,
Then reads his lines with voice like scraping ploughs:
"The mirror shows not what is there,
But vacant eyes and matted hair.
A face not mine—yet oh, too true—
It grins and mouths, ‘I remember you.’”
The Craft
The Raven croaks, “Never more the lie,
That poetry must soothe or beautify.
True verse should haunt, should twist, should cling,
Like ivy slow-throttling a king.”
I take my pen—its nib a dagger’s edge—
And carve my soul upon the parchment’s ledge.
Each metaphor a razor’s kiss,
Each rhyme a footfall in the abyss.
“The lover’s touch was cold as snow,
Her lips the shade of mistletoe.
Yet when she spoke, her breath was flame -
And thus I learned to love the pain.”
The spectres nod; the air grows thick.
The Raven’s eyes are candlewick—
Two burning coals that sear my sight,
As shadows coil in verse and bite.
The Revelation
A thousand words? A paltry sum,
When weighed against the deafening hum
Of voices lost, of souls undone,
Who trade their peace for parlous pun.
Yet as I write, the walls dissolve,
The workshop fades, the ghosts absolve
Their debts to time—and one by one,
They vanish where the moon has shone.
The Raven spreads his wings so wide,
They blot the stars, then subside.
“The poem’s done,” he bids me know,
“Yet still its echoes fester… Go.”
The Farewell
I close the book. The cellar’s cold.
The candle’s dead. The tale is told.
Yet in my ears, the whispers play -
The workshop’s chant won’t fade away.
And so I leave this crypt of thought,
With every line in shadow wrought.
A thousand words? Perhaps. But more—
For poetry knocks at Death’s dark door.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2025
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
<>>The Unseen Clock
This is not the struggle of a single, glorious fight,
Not a dragon to be slain upon a cliff at night.
This is the struggle of the gutters, slow and deep,
Where promises and paychecks are a bargain you must keep.
It’s the alarm clock’s verdict, a sentence you can’t pleacenterThe 9-to-5, the 9-to-7, the 24/7 plea.
It’s the bus that sighs and shudders, breathing metallic breath,
A chariot for the weary, on a road that smells of death
By a thousand paper cuts, by a million silent screams,
And the flickering of office lights on forgotten, tired dreams.
It’s the everyday people, with their everyday scars,
Pushing carts through supermarkets, polishing the bars,
Fixing someone else's engine, staring at a screen of code,
Carrying the unseeable, but ever-present load.
It’s the gutters of the spirit, where ambition goes to drain,
In the gentle, constant drizzle of the monotonous rain.
It’s the coffee cup that trembles in a hand that’s going numb,
The calculation of the days until the weekend will have come.
It’s the struggle in the shoulders, in the small of the back,
The fear that if you stop, you’ll never get the rhythm back.
But in the gutters, look again, a different kind of fire,
The stubborn will to build a life, is all the soul’s desire.
The courage in the lunch pail, the love packed neat inside,
The second wind you catch for kids who run to you, eyes wide.
This is the daily battle, fought with time and weary bones,
On the factory floors, the call centers, the telephones.
A war waged for the simple things, a roof, a meal, a song,
The struggle makes the everyday people mighty, proud, and strong.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2025
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
The growth was not in the ring,
but in the rot.
It began with a refusal: the pot, a tyranny of ceramic.
The roots, pale serpents, began to press.
A fine, hairline crack, a fracture in the logic of containment.
This was the first transgression.
Then, the soil itself grew tired of being soil.
It dreamed of being air, of being skin.
It fell away in a slow, granular sigh,
exposing the pale, pulsing truth of the anchor.
The growth was not a reaching, but an un-becoming.
Leaves inverted, photosynthesis in reverse.
They drank the shadow, excreted a thin, bitter light.
The stem, a gnarled question mark, twisted back upon itself,
learning the syntax of its own distortion.
It did not seek the sun. It became a sun,
a small, cold, black-dwarf star of a thing,
pulling the light into its own peculiar gravity.
The growth was in the rupture.
A petal, sharp as a scalpel, sliced the humid air.
The scent was not of perfume, but of ozone and rust,
the smell of a new law being written.
It outgrew the category of "flower,"
outgrew the word "bloom."
It was a system of tensions, a beautiful error replicating.
The gardener, with his water and his stakes, wept.
He called it a malignancy, a failure to thrive.
But the plant was thriving in a language he could not hear—
the loud, silent frequency of a thing that has broken its vessel
and found itself larger, stranger, and more complete
in the open air of its own making.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2025
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
Start with the fracture -
the splintered thing lodged in your ribs
that no cough can dislodge.
Call it "inspiration" if you must,
but know it is just hunger
with a prettier name.
Next, the bones:
a rhythm tapped absentmindedly
on a diner table,
the half-heard melody
of a stranger’s laugh,
the way your childhood home
still hums in your teeth
when you say its name.
Now, the bloodwork -
verbs writhing like minnows in your palms,
adjectives that stick like burrs to your sleeves.
(Here is where you’ll bleed.
A poem is not a wound,
but the salt rubbed into one.)
Arrange the fragments on the page.
Watch them refuse to fit.
This is the part where you learn:
a poem is not a puzzle,
but the hand that shakes
as it forces the pieces together.
Finally, the lie -
the smoothing, the sanding,
the pretense that this
was always the shape
you intended.
Sign your name at the bottom.
Walk away before it cracks.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2026
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
The mists arise at my command,
To cloak this sad and stinging land.
The burgomaster’s bell has tolled
For centuries of blood and gold.
These gothic peaks, this cycled moon,
Are verses in my endless tune.
I am the ancient, I the storm,
The architect of every form
Of dread that treads my mountain pass—
The wolf, the wraith, the shivering glass.
My throne is wrought of bone and pride,
Where tender memories have died.
I drink the vintage of your fear,
And hold your fleeting beauty near.
Her face, in every age, I see
Refracted back, but never free.
A portrait on a dusty wall,
A whisper in a darkened hall.
This curse is not the fangs, the night,
But being robbed of mortal light.
Come, heroes, brave and brightly brief,
Whose courage feeds my ancient grief.
Lay out your symbols, sharp and blessed,
And put my torment to the test.
You’ll walk my corridors of spite,
Where every shadow holds a bite.
You’ll fight my brides, my stone-born beast,
Until your hope has been decreased.
For all your vows and fervent prayers
Are merely perfume on the airs.
The heart of sorrow, dark and old,
Cannot be slain, or bought, or sold.
I am the land, its breath and blight,
The master of the endless night.
So join the dance, my precious guest—
Your fear and fury suit me best.
And when you fail, as all before,
You’ll swell my legend evermore.
This is my play, my paused lament…
Come in.The door is always bent.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2025
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
No one told me what to write.
No box to check, no borrowed light.
They just said: *You. Your words. Your way.*
And I paused. Then laughed. Then started to pray—
not to gods, but to the ache in my chest,
to the half-finished line I buried last fest,
to the poem I tore up for sounding too strange,
to the voice I muted to fit in their range.
I remember the years I wrote for applause,
trimming my wildness, filing my claws.
I wrote what they wanted. Polite. Small. Tame.
Every poem a whisper. Never a flame.
But something kept cracking the floor of that cage—
a rhythm, a rupture, a slow-building rage.
Not anger. Just truth that refused to stay down.
A need to be heard without wearing a crown.
So here I am, messy, loud, and slow,
not sure where I’m going, but willing to go.
I write about rain that tastes like goodbye,
about joy so sharp it makes me cry.
I write about silence my father kept,
about dreams I’ve kissed and never slept.
I write about shame like a coat I outgrew,
about people I loved who outgrew me too.
I write about the word *enough*—
how it hunted me, how it got rough,
how one day I stopped running its race
and found it already living in my face.
I write about mornings that taste like rust,
about learning to trust when trust felt unjust.
I write about the version of me who froze,
about the door she finally chose.
I don't know if they'll call it "best."
But this time, I refuse to second-guess.
I'm not sending a masterpiece carved from dread—
I'm sending the words from my own table instead.
The ones I scribbled in the dark.
The ones that left a visible mark.
The ones that made my hands shake.
The ones I stayed up too late to make.
Let the judges read. Let the world applaud.
I've already received the strangest reward:
the moment I stopped performing my worth,
I remembered why I came to earth.
Because being myself?
That's the whole damn theme.
The contest began when I stopped chasing esteem.
No trophy, no title, no numbered place
could match the relief of showing my face—
unfiltered, unpolished, uncaged, unkind
only to the lies I left behind.
So here it is. My offering. My flight.
Not perfect. But mine.
And finally light.
I’m already free.
I already wrote.
This poem already gave me back my throat.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2026
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
The invitation lands, a creased and coffee-stained
rectangle of possibility.
*Sure, why not?* you murmur, and the door swings in
on unoiled hinges, a sound like a swallowed scream.
Inside, the air tastes of rust and forgotten punchlines.
The walls are papered with yellowing headlines:
*LOCAL MAN FINDS HAPPINESS, MISPLACES KEYS*
*WOMAN WELL-KNOWN FOR SMILE DROWNS IN TEACUP*
*PROPHET LAUGHS SO HARD AT OWN JOKE, HE VANISHES.*
You came for poetry, for the blade’s clean edge.
But here, the blade is a prop.
A rubber knife in a magician's trick,
that, when plunged into the chest of a memory,
squirts a crimson flower into your face.
The audience of shadows howls.
You try to craft a verse from the absurd:
the keys you found, but not the door they fit,
the profound truth you whispered to a stranger,
who replied, *"That's what she said,"*
the god you prayed to who sent a meme back,
a laughing emoji crying tears of joy.
The grin isn't on a face. It’s in the cut.
It’s the fine, red line that appears on your finger
as you reach for the rose in the magician's trick,
the one that bleeds to a rhythm, a clumsy iambic pentameter.
You realize the blood is just ink.
And the pain is just the prick of a punchline.
You came to write. To make the darkness sing.
But the darkness is already here, in the empty chair,
telling a shaggy dog story about a star that burned out,
a story so long and pointless, the punchline is the silence
when it finally ends, a silence so deep
you hear the echo of your own *sure, why not*
still bouncing off the walls.
So you sit. You listen.
And in the hollow, ha-ha of the void,
you find the only poem you were ever meant to write:
a list of things you've lost,
written on a napkin,
with a pen that doesn't work.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2026
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
They gather in gilded rooms to plan our fate,
With jovial hands that legislate our plate.
They speak of "sacrifice" and "common need,"
A noble, crisp, entirely costless creed.
We’d pay a princely sum, should scales be just,
To hear the truth behind the noble crust—
The private chuckle, the relieved "Thank God
Those eager fools will bear the goad and nod."
But we’re not there. We watch from down the hall.
How sharp the teeth that grin to see us fall.
How sweet the honey when the powerless call.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2025
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Ashok Jahagirdar Poem
A question was asked by **Naomi,**
Of "**Was it a car or a cat I saw**?" She'd see
A vehicular shape,
Or a feline escape,
A palindrome mystery.
Copyright © Ashok Jahagirdar | Year Posted 2026
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