POETRY BY SHRMILA MITRA
Sharmila Mitra lives with her mother, and her family of rescued and adopted dogs and cats, at her old ancestral home, in Kolkata, India.
She has enjoyed her journey of life, and the best years as a high school teacher. The small challenges life has thrown her, and a few minuscule tragic experiences, have made her what she is: a single answer solitary person who expresses herself, as many people do, via her words, at once flawed and perfectly suited to her.
HOW THEY DIED
The land was one of beautiful people.
One strange thing about the land
Was that the trees were all maple,
As far as you could see, across the sand!
A desert land it was, where maple leaves
Never reddened the whole year round.
The people, beautiful, but with pet peeves,
Which kept them apart, and there was no sound
Of voices talking, laughing, crying,
As if everyone was a living creature
That was, without denying,
Nothing but a strange, silent preacher...
Swarthy men and women, shining like gold,
And they were all so young, ah, so heart-warming!
They were—no one knew—were never to grow old;
It was a curse on the land that took no time in forming.
Years after years went rolling by,
As if the caravan of time was on the move.
Those beautiful people learnt to fly,
Somehow feeling the need of another route.
Enemies they didn’t expect, but still,
They wanted for an escape to be prepared;
They could hear rumors that their enemies were out to kill…
For keeping their lives safe, they cared.
The day it came, the apocalypse,
They were not practicing flight.
Dropped the monstrous flying machines
Right on the land—it was a horrendous sight.
The maples were felled and crushed,
The sands were turned to tiny, sharp rocks;
The beautiful people’s thick blood was sloshed
All over the destroyed land, in waves and shocks.
It was a day of complete devastation,
And neither land nor people had an escape;
It was an act of Evil, a cruel castration
O, how they died!
A nation's magical beauty finished—even aliens gaped.
A keening seemed to fill the air,
As night fell, amidst bloodshed and despair…
THOSE FOUL MATES
Where was I? At what?
Evil mated with evil.
I was not looking. Not all there.
The sudden assault came
In a tsunami wave of horrors.
A long dark line at the distant horizon.
The water was fast pulling away leaving naked rock and gravel, sand, ribs of that horrific thing…civilization…
My days, deadly bore, same after same after same,
Plodded on. One foot in front of another.
Then the foul smell of mating evils started attacks on my senses.
Missiles, destruction, fire-engulfed homes; children running they didn’t know where.
Cats, dogs, birds, cows, pigs, abandoned, some not may be, but mostly…sudden terror on streets never known to their sense of smell. Horror…
The foul consensual matings of evil with evil. The foul mating of evils.
The rotting smell is overpowering, while eyes pop out leaving empty sockets.
Tears gathered like dead pools.
POISON
No kiss for me
When I was dying for one.
From you.
All my wiles went waste…
Eventually my lips lost the lush color. A dry old maid I became.
Round, smooth voices I heard,
“How horrible; paints her wrinkled mouth strawberry red, yuck!”
Old Hag. I could clearly hear those wives and mothers.
The pool players.
When I slump in a corner chair at the Golden Brew,
Cool guys hitting straight.
Voices, again voices, mocking.
“Hey old mother, up for a quickie?”
I stumble out.
POISON. So much…Poison.
My blue hands push the air before my face.
I find the River Poison.
The cool face of it wants my whole skin to kiss it. Brave.