ROCKS: CO_OPERATIVE POEMS

By
KAMALIKA MITRA

RUDRA KINSHUK




ROCKS

a Collection of Co-operative poems collaborated
by Kamalika Mitra and Rudra Kinshuk




Co-operative Discourse: A Password to New Poetry

Joint publication is no new phenomenon in the literary space. Beaumont and Fletcher, two fellow play wrights of the Elizabethan age published their joint play Philaster. Sacville and Norton, other two playwrights of the same age brought out Gorboduck, another instance of collaborative authorship in 1562. Almost all ancient texts of any language, bear the stamp of change and revision by several hands. Beowulf, the Anglo Saxon epic, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the different Mangala Kavyas in Bengali uphold this observation. Critics have observed that Julius Caesar, is a play by several hands, finally revised by Shakespeare, the master craftsman. Such literary admixture come to be depreciated as interpolation in the age of modernity. But brand new in literature is now an obsolete idea. Hybridity is the longed -for character of any kind of product, material and aesthetic.


The space and time we belong to encourage hybridity in discourse. Co-operative authorhip comes to be considered a password to new discourse and new creativity. Many voices of many authros easily co-exist in a single text. The characteristic of this co-existence of mutual respect identifies and characterizes the direction of the New Age. And such direction is reflected in many new texts of our times.

All these texts defy the demands of modern discourse. Homogeneity, organic quality, finished, linear development, logical approach and final conclusion are no longer encouraged in a contemporary discourse of the info-lit of our times. These are texts where logic is substituted with some higher logic of internal becoming. They have created logical cleft, conceive by Wolfgang Powlis, the great physicist. Logical cleft opens a passage to the space of Abheda, the great union, realized by the rishis of ancient India.

Co-operative discourses are the demands of our time and space. Human survival wil gradually depend on co-operation of a great extent. Signs of such future becoming are to be traced in different aspects of life-business, polity, production. Poetry intends to capture of this wave of new consciousness. Web-zine (Urnopatro) and Info-tech are expected to help the growth of such new discourses.








Po ems

1

We’ve planted guava-seedlings,
sown some pomegranate-seeds
and of berries and jack fruits
Days move slowly and they extend
the periphery of our living.

Depth of green light give with us
as our own rivers, leading to the seas.

A choric dance on the green galaxy.
Do our faces look like those of birds?
Are we the beads of a necklace?

That what is personal not always proves
to be sacred. Rivers flow
in the chorus of co-operative aspirations.

2.

A doel’s twitter comes down
from the sun-washed branches of a hibiscus.
Sleep around the old well.
A sky in the mind drizzles on the leaves
where we keep our rashness
false promises and non sense oaths.
Lets us stand near water with some dreams.
Meaning a long race of a water bird,
emerging out of our personal water...

3.

Along this afternoon path we’ll travel long
to pick up berries, stones and fallen leaves.
Then while looking at my eyes you’ll say:
Lo, there’s the moon among flakes of small birds
and I’ll smile a full moon.

A moon stuck male deer,
You’ll board cargo to our small boat of gold
And thus a life ’ll dawn to another day,
another beginning...

4.

To sleep any time anywhere
like the cat of our rhyme is no glory.
So, we practice the choreography of awakening.
Let the miracle-hands add fuel
to the burning brazier of our dreams.

5.

Here I open my palms, as if umbrellas
over your head, still the shower of rains
get you drenched, your hair, your face
mirroring the next incarnations of ours.

yet a wonderful lamp lights up our being.
Aladin knew the secrets of this light
and seeding darkness.

6.

Let the boats go with the waves,
let the kitchens get washed away.
Who goes and who doesn’t like
don’t matter anymore.
How to travel to that
island haunts us. A longing for
that island removes all the
doubts regarding the journey.
Faith is such a growing process,
that widens towards the horizon.

7.

How a woman could paint a landscape
could create the third dimension
if being born in the age of Italian Renaissance.
We think over our tea and lunch
Numerous questions as if rabbits
Glide over the smooth table-cloth.

Is it a little far-fetched,
to fly a kite
in the trimmed jungle of our mind?

We see our mother’s bangles dance
in the eye balls of ours.
Birds fly over the sea like
motherly stitch work,
slowly and slowly

Now it may be recommended that
a few more pages to be added
to the books of Vassari and Buchard

8.

As the evening settles down
on the river Murti,
a small tune creeps
into the spinal tube
and blooms to a water lily.

Golden rices get collected
into the realm of wonders...

9.

Slight wind, emerging out of the rajanigandhas
make all worries fly. Our collected wishes
discover a new home
whose name is love, a down of new consciousness.
Now the rajanigandha flowers glow and we
discover a book having pages made of conch-shells.

10.

I like those, returning home earlier
because I enjoy combing very dearly
before a long mirror...

The brush combs out masks of darkness
from my hair and soothes me.
lost in the clouds.

Not is the Babur’s life, not in Indika
but I wake up in the brink of another history.

11.

Human beings are homo ludenes
because his water
of consciousness playful.
Incomparable water play with sunset waves.
My body a beautiful boat
if churned out, it yields bloomed lotus...

12.

Light the candle, profound darkness,
difficult to endure for my eyes.
The light of your hands,
make it fall on the way, on my eyes,
make butterflies move all-wards.
Darkness is no absence of right...

13.

Dust the books properly
to keep them in the racks, iron clothes,
bed sheets, table clothes, utensils and
dolls to be kept them clean,
The present, out of the past to be nurtured.

Keep the bird call in order
along with your regular sadness
and miseries

14.

Uncertain people walking along the way,
careful silence, but the tied-up jingle bells
displace the forest composure, up to the horizon
passionate love boils, shadows of dead men.

Black rows of cars, roaring rifles, birds
mourning over spoiled eggs...

After a long gap, the music of jingle bells.

Is it a fantasy? Hallucination!

History notes down these wrongs.
Silence follows.

15.

The Thirparappu falls and an evening enter
the mindscape with crimson caju-leaves
memory scented...

Water gradually fades,
caju-leaves lose fragrance.
Inevitable follow-up of fragrance.

The old stones, brought from the falls
whisper this story to the yellow papers.

16.

A coo from the world of fog,
coo-lit space of silence.

We followed the miracle signal
and removed the threads of disbelief
from our eyes and feet.

We reached solitude in the bird songs.

17.

We can make a roof of hands,
festive waiting underneath.

Pages of history get yellow
and boundaries collapse
all on a sudden in the shadow

Remove the wooden horse.
Deception can lead the river nowhere.

Astyanox raises the olive branches high above.

18.

The green of grass, washed in the moon
Squirrels play in the farm house
to take the night for a day.
The farmhouse, adjacent to the home-yard
bridge sleep and awakening.

Should we call it the river of charm...?

19.

Pea-cock feathers cover up the world.
Songs rain
And the sky becomes
the inscriptions of dreams

Rains end
and our bodies open into green twigs.

20.

Blue dolls in the white eyes.
Romabai, Rokeya, Sappho
Aphera Behn and Alice Walker

Mother’s gardens make stars bloom.
Words go beyond the limit of gender.

21.

A dream of golden crops.
Collected hands make a roof,
A bridge runs over the brook.

Collected hands write
fish and grasshoppers

22.

A baby rolling in mother’s lap.

Black cats cross the limit of water,
black shadows make the leaves rustling.

Toys float in our personal river
Walls collapse in our sleep.

23.

A flight of ducks.

Silence makes us reach
the poetry of Nishikanta and Mallarmé

Baking fragrance everywhere...

24.

Expected color of living,
rain washed leaves tremble.

We discover trees stranding
over the culvert of collected wish.

Life celebrates colours of faith...



Kamalika Mitra (born 1975) has authored two books of poetry in Bengali - Alo Amar Alo(2004) & Samobayee Kabita (2004)

Rudra Kinshuk (born 1971) has contributed poems and translations to numerous journals, home and overseas. His poetry, deeply hued in local color intends to explore new territory of poetic expression. His marvelous use of folk-elements to be found in the cultural life of the Totos, the Mahalis and the Santals has added a new dimension to contemporary Indian poetry in English. He has translated several Bengali poets in to English and several Greek poets into Bengali. He has received a Junior Fellowship in literature (M.H.R.D, New Delhi, India)