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Reshma Ramesh: Selected poems



Silence


Silence is a slice of sea,

a wall of soot,

an intimate memory acquiring flesh.

Silence is shallow water resting around your ankles,

is the evening light burying into a swallow's nest.

Silence is a kiss that hovers over a pond,

wet and unfinished.

Silence is an empty wing that hands out hunger

To the mountains

Silence is a door that opens like a book and

closes like a poem.


If You Were Like Me


If you were like me

You would know that

A name is a place that you used to visit long back,

A place where there were no farewells only shadows of fables,

Where a river would flow around us in stillness and listen

To the gentle beat of your heart.


You would know that

A name is a certain night where a sea is drawn from a window,

A night where you would fill my wounds with your poems,

And the wind is made of clay.


If you were like me

You would know that

Some things remain with us and some things float away

And you would fold a river into my palms

So that when you leave they would

Recall your fading footsteps.


Silence


There are many kinds of silences,

the kind that lives between walls brick to brick,

the kind that wakes up every morning

between sheets smelling of yesterday's love making,

ones that run around on their own

between strangers like happy children in a park,

those that walk into suitcases and

stay there for a long time,

the kind that smells like wet earth

breaking into a summer afternoon,

the ones that travel from mountain to the sea

in search of home and the kind of silence

that exist between you and me

like a lonely tree in the backyard

hoping it can be heard with ever

falling leaf.

Good Byes


When you leave a place,

you leave behind its warmth,

you leave behind falling leaves,

empty bus stations

smell of jasmine braids

and watermelon smiles,

children with hands covered in soot,

dogs in the rain,

well-dressed people who no more write letters,

a house with six windows,

a bicycle pressed against a wall,

cafes filled with warm bread

and a few memories

which after a small stroll merge with the crowd to forget,

to touch only those places that the sun touched (slightly slant).

When you leave a place

you are naked in warm clothes,

distance turns into a memory

about a boy in the library and

how you never noticed two little girls

who waved you good bye

and the brooding yellow white milestones

erasing your name.


This Poem


This poem is a house with closed doors

where winter pauses to look into books

for familiar ear marked pages or the absence of it.

This poem is looking out of a window,

swapping cities, split

beginning to draw the sea into its lines, line by line,

like a soldier walking with heavy boots thinking of home.

This poem is a paper boat sailing from you to me,

black and white, wet, carrying children and islands

who dream of waking up beside their mother.

This poem is a street where somewhere someday

we would meet to find myself drawn

to our absence with your hand in my chest.

This poem is a poem that arrives for the second time

a boy covered in soot,

sound of his words, reminding you that

you never left where you started


Things that he left behind


My grandfather has left behind

Falling parijatha with orange stems

A courtyard that opens like the world

With things to be discovered

Yet Familiar like a lover’s skin

A living room where light flows

Like a river every morning touching

The banks of my grandmother’s aching feet

He has left behind mogras that lean

Towards the sun and speak a language

Of togetherness

Mango trees that drop fruits into

Anyone’s hands who open

Their palms into prayers

Broken tiles where a weaver bird

In the roof will build her home

Slithering book worms dwelling

In musty pages with stories that long for closure

He has left behind my grandmother

In a sulking room with open windows that draws

Broken things from the sea to fill her bosom

With heaviness of an empty house

And all the things that he has left behind.


Small Hands of Sivakashi


They say that even birds that do not fly have wings

And Jasmines open like umbrellas in the rain

In such a world in all its fairness tiny hands of sivakasi

Shining in silver like jari on Amma’s pattu sari

Rolling, rubbing, dipping aluminum onto paper

Sulphur filled nostrils, mercury parched scalp

Are building a legacy of blushing cheeks and gun powder

Rotting like a bad fruit in dark windowless factories

The small hands of Sivakasi are busy at work

Tying and untying bijlis of hope,

But these things happen every other day

Somewhere in the corner we know that they exist

And there are people who for money

Scald children with all their consciousness

And yet we drive to the open ground on Diwali

And buy boxes of fire crackers, especially for our

Children so that back home together all of us can

Burn these small hands of sivakasi until the sky lights up

and the earth below is filled with ashes and they

the small hands of sivakasi are buried with their mouth open


As Beautiful As Me


You can’t resist my golden curves,

my haughty angelic reserve;

I am the colors in a painter's palette,

the irresistible Charlotte.


My eyes look like the sun in twilight,

fields of carnations smothered in sunlight.

I am as warm as sand, cool as dewdrops,

skin like the desert sand, making your breath stop.


I am sorry, you can’t take your eyes off me,

Lilly of the valley, coral drops, potpourri

I am as true as a prayer, beautiful as a painting,

pure as mother's milk, ethereal beckoning.


It isn’t my fault you fell in love,

my voice rings like bells, treasure trove,

as hot as a kiln, wet as a paint brush

lustrous hair, satin sheen, poetic hush.


l am as refreshing as water, I bring out the best in you

blazing star, trust me, you have the best view.

l am as plain as vanilla ice cream, crafty labyrinth

as dreamy as bed time stories, merely Jacinth


Don't blame me if you can’t stop the feeling,

you were warned of the bolt of lightning

as bubbly as champagne, truthful as a mirror

I can read your thoughts, sexy conjuror


I am as kind as music, as witty as a child,

I can’t help it if that drives you wild

tough as armour, brittle as ego,

I am one of a kind, only as beautiful as me.


An ode to your kiss


Your kiss is like the tender morning sun unfurling me like a jasmine bud

It is a song that floats from your mouth to mine

Your kiss is the sound of the flute of your heart to mine

It is a whisper my beloved of the new dew to the grass

Your kiss is the twilight setting in my eyes

It is the gale of wind holding my hair in its fist

Your kiss is where memories lose their footing

It is that fleeting touch of a cloud

Your kiss is my name sans words leaving your mouth slowly

It is a distant light house calling my oars

Your kiss is a dream that meanders through my drowsy eye lashes

It is a poem that slips onto the gentle slopes of my neck

Your kiss is the tide of the sea ebbing slowly into me

It is a whisper that lingers on my skin caressing every open pore to steal their wetness

Your kiss is the tiredness of a thousand-foot steps coming to rest in my palms

It is the silence of the hundred years we were apart

Your kisses are the small hands of rain that fills me with love.


Prayer for the night


May this night shine

Its darkness upon you

May it wrap you

In its twilight arms

Until your eyes close

To its stillness

Until everything is quite

And at peace

May you fall asleep unhurried

Not returning to the moon

May your eyes not open

To reverie of the stars

Only to let go of what

You are today or what

You may be tomorrow

Let go of everything

But that breath

Slowly in and out

Until you become

Nothing but an inch

Of the nest where the night

Rests its feet and

Scatters its slumber around


Death Wish


My grandmother announced that

She was ready to die

After my grandfather slipped

And broke his hip while he was

Half sprinting half walking with

White and blue Bata slippers

To turn off the water that was overflowing

He saved the water

But never came back from the hospital.

We listened quietly letting out sighs

Ignoring the frog that appeared at

The doorstep, we tell her that

Death doesn’t come that way

As we choose and it is not her time yet

But she argues and puts her feet down

To die.

The night appears on its hands and knees

Crawling like a baby, grandmother has

Eaten all her dinner and now opens

Her box of medicines, one for arthritis,

One for blood sugar, one for hypertension,

One for her heart, one for pain,

One for calcium, one for iron,

One for loneliness and one for complaining.

She asks for her glasses to check

If she has left out or run out of any

Satisfied she rolls into bed saying

‘’I hope I don’t wake up in the morning’’.



* Reshma Ramesh is a bilingual poet writing in English and Kannada. Her poetry book ‘Reflection of Illusions’ (Writers Workshop) has been presented in the International Read and Share Conference attended by Asian Countries in Malaysia in April 2017. She is a member of World Congress of Poets and has presented her poetry in the 37th World Congress of poets Mongolia and Pulara 7and 8 International Poetry and Folk Song Festival Malaysia. Her poems have been presented in World Poetry Radio Show in Vancouver also have appeared in many international anthologies, journals and have been translated into Bengali, Turkish and Mongolian.She has been a guest lecture at the Narayana Engineering College Nellore for poetry and creative writing and has been a speaker at the Bangalore Literature Festival 2017. A distinction holder in BFA Photography KSOU she practices Dental Surgery in Bangalore.



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