A Compromise
a letter to my mother
I ascend the night to
hold the stretched hand of
a hunger where her eyes,
my need half shuts,
blind my conscience’
from the loneliness that
waits for me in your
half mooned eyes that try
to reach those of my father's
in the aging portrait before,
mine search the secrets of
youth in the hunger's here
sneaking a man's room
behind it's naked bosom
it stole for me
the door of which
I shut on your sad face left behind
this jasmine-scented darkness.
Dreaming Against Clock
A burning dream,
pounds within my bony canoe
that floats on the red sea
wrapped in the dusty earth,
moves off the orbit,
stares at the toddler within,
who chuckles at my image
greying with alluring dreams
of his fluid cognizance
spilled in the pencil scribbles
that flicker on the crumpled pages
of a ripped off notebook
a torn calendar dates
with the naked dreams, still,
rocking in the paper cradle
un-torn by the weight of stilled infancy.
If I could re-rock in and out
along the decreed space of time
in the borrowed cradle
of sacred wood
against the brandished swords of clock!
_______________
Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian poet from Machilipatnam, currently poetry editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine. He has recited his poetry at the University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, Heinrich Heine University and many others. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of Golden Book of the year 2022. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.
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