KANDASAMY, Meena

Cinquains

Morning Song

Wet pink

And dusty grey

The sky begins to blush.

Some sleepy careless charm welcomes

Daybreak.

Even Song

Azure

And pink gold hues

The smug sky at twilight

A final flush of fulfilment

Night falls.

Fuchsia Shock

My bed smells of textbooks

and it is more than a month or so,

since I dreamt of sunlight and the sky's

embrace. Even a woman's lush vanities —

scarlet silk and shining gold — have been lost

on me. I am snared in a world of aqua, fuchsia,

and lime set dangerously against black and white.

Words tightly wrapped,

and imprisoned in a cluster of

highlighter colours, share my slavery.

Rattling loud, the colorized intrusions

have pickled the past, leaving me to savour

saturation. Oh hell, even my treasured dreams

have been bleached away in shades of three, or five.

Save me, from this

unbearable starkness

of fluorescence; where lines

rehash the pages brutally, moving

with sounds of spectacled scrutiny.

For, all that I can bear to comprehend

is the loss of dare: my sheltered cowardice.

And, the sole comfort I crave, through stifled

tears is stolen love beneath stained glass windows.

Dearest, lavish your love

in slender earthtone shades,

in the colours of skin singing —

to shield our renewed dreams,

and to believe, once more, in absolutes.

My poetry

My poetry is naked,

my poetry is in tears,

my poetry screams in anger,

my poetry writhes in pain.

My poetry smells of blood,

my poetry salutes sacrifice.

My poetry speaks like my people,

my poetry speaks for my people.

Their Daughters

Paracetamol legends I know

For rising fevers, as pain relievers –

Of my people – father’s father’s mother’s

Mother, dark lush hair caressing her ankles

Sometimes, sweeping earth, deep-honey skin,

Amber eyes – not beauty alone they say – she

Married a man who murdered thirteen men and one

Lonely summer afternoon her rice-white teeth tore

Through layers of khaki, and golden white skin to spill the

Bloodied guts of a British soldier who tried to colonize her…

Of my land – uniform blue open skies,

Mad-artist palettes of green lands and lily-filled lakes that

Mirror all – not peace & tranquil alone, he shudders – a

Young wife near my father’s home, with a drunken husband

Who never changed; she bore his daily beatings until on one

Stormy night, in fury, she killed him by stomping his seedbags…

We: their daughters.

We: the daughters of their soil.

We, mostly, write.