A Butterfly in Konark
Hovering lazily
over
the filigreed
gyrating bodies on the walls
of Konark, a vagrant
polka-dotted
butterfly sits awestruck
on the taut nipple
of a voluptuous nautch girl
wondering
when exactly the flower
turned so hard!
Hand
Like a hungry serpent
this hand
slithers around
the dense wilderness
of your body
looking for prey.
Could this hand
be mine?
After all, it's hard to believe
that this slender, pink skinned,
petal soft hand
that has never hurt a fly in the day light
could easily turn
so beastly in the dark!
Like the cat's burning eyes,
perhaps, the secret truths
of the body are revealed
only in the darkness!
Eyes
No less phallic
are the gazing eyes.
They penetrate
without even bothering
to undress;
pretending all the while
a child-like innocence.
My Assassin and I
My assassin
and I,
We look for each other
everywhere.
Knife in hand,
he is on the prowl
around the world
baying for my warm blood.
I play truant, camouflage, devise
ways to escape his hawk eyes.
Wear wigs, moustache
even salwars and padded bras.
My assassin and I,
We spent an entire lifetime
playing hide-n-seek
Exhausted, one day, I looked within
went deep down the spiralling
staircase of my own being.
And found him sitting hunched
in the dark corner
of my heart
with his blood shot eyes
like an angry kid wearing a long face;
Sharpening his knife
on the hard stone
of my sad, white bones.
Sita
Hacked
Flawlessly neat from below
A woman
is a continuous rupture
searing deep
through her body and soul
Rupture is her home
She carries inside the bag
of her skin
She lives inside it
her entire life
Whenever I see the earth
cracked I peep into
the dark crater
to look for the woman
lost inside it
The City Rises Like Needles
(For Chinki Sinha)
The city rises like needles
piercing into the azure
limbs of the sky.
Even its gaseous blue skin,
when poked thus, bleeds.
Splattering it red
across the realm, evening falls
like an exhausted pair of hands.
Petal-soft hands
turn into tightly clenched
fists in the thicket
of darkness.
Tired feet falter back to home.
False starts reach nowhere.
Broken hearts go haywire.
The city is a giant serpent
slowly uncoiling itself
standing firm on its own tail
flicking its forked tongue
licking people
under its hypnotic spell.
At night, tall buildings
look like lighted post-boxes.
People fold themselves
like paper into envelopes
dropping dead
on their beds
only to resurrect and run amok
just to remain
in the same exact place.
Snakes in the City
(For Poet Aswani Kumar)
I live in the city
of snakes.
In my courtyard lies a snake.
From above the door hangs a snake.
On my bed stretches flat a snake.
On my rooftop sunbathes a snake.
From within the skull's eye sockets
winks a snake.
In gay abandon
they move around flicking their forked
tongues, winding their way
through the narrow streets, gardens,
graveyards, offices, bus stops,
markets and playgrounds.
One can see
the black and white crates
scurrying past the courtrooms,
copper-coloured cobras hissing
from within the temples and shrines,
dark brown pythons in police stations
sit erect craning their necks
ready to pounce.
The snakes have taken over
the entire city:
its nooks, corners and crossings.
In some dark nights
a glistening serpent makes its way
surreptitiously into my bedroom
and snuggles around my frail body
coiling me tight.
These days, I too crawl around
carrying its lethal ruse
in my arteries and dark blue veins.
Durga Prasad Panda is an accomplished bilingual Odia poet and critic whose works have appeared in prestigious journals like ‘Debonair’, ‘Indian Literature’, ‘The Little Magazine’, ‘Gentleman’, ‘Outlook’ among so many others. His poems have been included in significant anthologies like ‘Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020-21’, ‘Shape of a Poem: Red River Book of Contemporary Erotic Poetry’, ‘Witness: A Red River Anthology of Dissent’. He edited a Reader on Jayanta Mahapatra for Sahitya Akademi.
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