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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