I TRIED TO STAY AWAY 

I tried to stay away, from poetry,
write not in verse but prose.
Four months I managed to stay cleansed
of verse, four months exactly,
not a day more, nor less 

Then it happened,
the form at least.

I know now that I can’t choose it,
it chooses me.

I write,
I live.

It’s not easy: to live, to write
and then, I need at least one
good thing to live on.

Poetry, I say, is as harmless
as any other addiction,
its price, one life.

WHAT’S THE HARM?

My mobile’s memory stores details, but it’s old.
It’s not smart, my mobile, and old.

I don’t delete some numbers.
They’re dead, I’ve been told.
Not the numbers.  

I thought to call,
once at least,
at least one of them,
then I did not call.

What if I made that call
Tomorrow?
Tonight?
now?
Is it too late now?  
Sometimes I think I should give it a go.
What’s the harm?

ITS TIME HAS NOT COME

This is not the poem I always wanted to write.
Its time has not come, not yet.      
This one is on what I always wanted to write,
but never did. I wanted to write of shiuli flowers in bloom.
No, it’s not English, it rises from the soil: the name, not flower.

What about that strange sounding flower?
Nothing. It’s just a flower, white petals, saffron stalk.
In autumn nights, in the months before and after
the Mother’s puja, this flower fills dark nights
with the light of sweetness. That’s not enough.

There are flowers, bela, rajnigandha: white alright,
that bloom at night and smell as sweet. Yet,
this poem is not on them. They can’t fill time
with their fragrance. I can’t walk under their light
and suddenly get hit by a pleasant wave that goes
for over a meter, and few minutes or hours,
or points its fingers towards ‘a long time ago’. Right?
No? Not you? This flower may not be magic for you.

The poem I want to write bangs fingers clenched
in a fist at mind’s doors at workless nights, with a
leisurely walk under a shiuli tree,  the ingredients
of the poem I always wanted to write for you.
Its time has not come, not yet.

Rajnish Mishra. Varanasi, India