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"I have known music to be her timeless reverberation in a forlorn corner of my soul; just when life was closing down upon me with its pangs of haunting silence."
"Hope is the point the 'world within' comes to an equilibrium with the 'world around'."
"The cold that my body feels can be comforted by pullovers of our choices. It is the winter that comes back each year, inevitably; is how we are connected on the face of time. A sweet suffering of forever..."
"My poverty, I know, was glamorous because trading you, my love, for a better life is outright heinous."
"Love was the day when she drank and I felt quenched."
"Life, ever since, had been one gripping tale. Your happening gave it a genre."
"Want is the soul's desire. Need, the mind's crave. Love, thus, I believe, is a bit of both."
"Art is how you lie to the world without ever feeling sinned."
"Sorrow is true and beyond the powers of healing, when you can taste the oceans on your lips."

Forest Fire | Day 11 | #NaPoWriMo

Forest Fire | Day 11 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Monday, April 24, 2017 | |
Forest Fire

Some loves
arrive as quietly
as mornings
in a forest.
Jets of daylight
burst through the
foliage and trickle
down branches,
gulping along
their way the
minty night from
cold leaf-tips.
It then sips into
the ferny bed,
caressing our
fallen leaves with
a rekindled hope.

Now when such
love sets on us,
it is obviously no
regular dusk.
For the receding
light of our
wounded souls,
scatters the sky
with scarlet grief,
as the diving winds
brush our unrequited
ends to stoke a
gouging fire.

© Sobhan

Absolved in Jhelum | Day 10 | #NaPoWriMo

Absolved in Jhelum | Day 10 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Saturday, April 22, 2017 | |

It had been a year
my eyes last met
your wounded glee
in the windy murmur
of thawing snows.

This April sun
wilting the plains,
there tints the
white rivulets of
Jhelum in gold.
As they sigh
down valleys and
jingle past forests,
like the ankled feet
of a gliding woman.

Apple yards of Pahalgam
must be back to flowers.
White buds lacing
shiny green canopies,
gearing for the
September harvest,
when the sweet aroma
of ripened apples
shall mask the acrid
gunpowder odour.

Cable cars like the
oval backs of ladybirds,
sure are treading the
frosty Gulmarg sky.
Taking visitors and skiiers
to Aparwath from Kungdoor,
to sprawling white acres
of frozen sea that was
crimson the last spring.

Winding alleys of Downtown
that flares up Friday noons,
with Tehreek raining stones
at the forces and their
retaliation with toxic bursts
of fire and gases;
all of it culminating in quiet
once the moon stealthily surfaces,
gleaming atop the night's still lake.

Normalcy is somehow always
imposed, restored post a furrore.
It is in the middle of a summer
that I wish to return, when you
won't have snow shawls
to hide your scars.
And unclad we will lie
between the waves of Jhelum,
our sliced backs to the Earth,
seeking luminescence
to our dreaming eyes
beneath the merciful Heaven,
against the blinding pellets
that has become our fate.

© Sobhan

LoC | Day 09 | #NaPoWriMo

LoC | Day 09 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Saturday, April 22, 2017 | |

Betwixt my soul's dire yearning
and a mind that cannot let go,
you preside like the bewitching Kashmir.

This savage battle of possession
though depleting my existence,
it is at the line of conscience
that I contine to bleed for you.

© Sobhan

Pacific of Desire | Day 08 | #NaPoWriMo

Pacific of Desire | Day 08 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Saturday, April 22, 2017 | |

With a wink,
you let the
robe slip from
your shoulders.
And I gape
at a sparkling
bead of water,
furrowing down
your seashore back.

On me you
slowly bend,
inching forward
on toes.
Your oval dunes,
moist in their
silk cups, hang
in my face.

I let my
hand inside
your thong.
In your dark
traingle, my
fingers tip over
a round wet
pearl and make
you pant
with parted lips.

You stick my
face in the
heat of your
breasts;
and urge.
I close my
eyes and come
crashing in
waves on your
naked shore.

© Sobhan

শুভ নববর্ষ | Day 07 | #NaPoWriMo

শুভ নববর্ষ | Day 07 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Saturday, April 22, 2017 | |

The new year
sevai simmers
on the flame.
Sweet aroma
of milk thickening
in the pan, juiced
with raisins and
nuts, overhangs
the house.

A singing
procession of
men and women
drift through
the cypress shadows.
In their chorus
rings Tagore's
songs, welcoming
Boisakh, the first
summer month.

Conch shells
are blown.
Its echo thinned
by a splitting
wind, as Bengal
wakes to merrry
by the banks
of Ganges.

A pink strand of
the rising sun slants
through the skylight.
The milk is now
settled in the pan,
as I look for you.
Wouldn't you come
and check the sugar
in our new beginnings?

© Sobhan

Falling Skies | Day 06 | #NaPoWriMo

Falling Skies | Day 06 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Saturday, April 22, 2017 | |

To my new lodging,
I have finally moved.
And oozing from
the mauve colored
walls is a dank odour
of drying paint.
Wafting invisibly, like
heat from asphalt on
blazing summer days.
Its rancid stench
nooses my breath,
and stirs my guts.
So unlike the easy air
homes always wear.

In my duffel
I have carried the
lavender air-freshener.
Its whiff, I remember,
you loved in our room -
hanging,
textured with light,
where we snuggled
close in a sheet,
and watched
your relaxed eyes
close, sedated by
the perfumed air.

I spray it here
all over again,
into the dark
toxic air.
Its aerosol mist
hangs for a whie,
and then, like a
pensive garden breeze
climbing to rooms,
renders my living
with familiar touches
of a cherished past.

Wait in the air, oh love!
Wait for me to sleep.
Before you part
through the window
into the violet
night sky, and
the constellation crumbles
upon my reverie,
into decayed petals
of a love dead
in my heart.

© Sobhan

To Mothers | Day 05 | #NaPoWriMo

To Mothers | Day 05 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Saturday, April 22, 2017 | |

This era of readymade woollens
easily available in myriads of varieties,
like friendship on the internet one click away,
had put our mother's needles out of use.

Still whenever a button breaks
from the plackets of my new era shirts,
it is to my mother that I retort.
From her old sewing box
she picks out spools of thread
and selects needles,
closing our ripped hearts
with gentleness and affection,
every time our new age loves
turned us to tears.

© Sobhan

Hunters of Night | Day 04 | #NaPoWriMo

Hunters of Night | Day 04 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Wednesday, April 05, 2017 | |
Hunters of Night | Day 04 | #NaPoWriMo

In the grey Kolkata skyline,
Vidyasagar Setu looms broadly
like wings of Harps,
softly played on by the darkness.
A bustling strip of NH 6
arcs over the river,
streaked in blue fading lights,
connecting the twin cities
that make for its heavy shores.
Even with the night at its darkest
and the surrounding roads emptied,
the bridge is strangely never still.
Cars with blue shadows on their boot,
continue to stream both ways,
along the connector,
all night.

I wonder if someone up on
their rooftop late night,
tasting the salty breeze,
would look at us the same way.
And smile and keep vigil,
of our lonely feelings -
yours and mine,
that claws their way out
of our hearts every night,
unable to rest and contain,
to travel to each other's city
across the river,
taking the bridge
we failed to burn.

© Sobhan

Requiem | Day 03 | #NaPoWriMo

Requiem | Day 03 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Monday, April 03, 2017 | |

Requiem | Day 03 | #NaPoWriMo

We have burnt holes in the Ozone,
cleared forest and contaminated the air.
Global warming has made summers worse
and rains seem to have bid us adieu.
The ecosystem is now permanently impaired,
shifted towards an inevitable catastrophe.

In a world that has caught fire
and melting at the poles, here I am –
incompletely complete,
grateful to your damage,
making clouds shift
and winds rove inside my heart
with your thoughts,
springing rain from my vacant eyes.
every time the heat of your absence
surpasses my tolerance.

© Sobhan

Love Like a Bibliophile | Day 02 | #NaPoWriMo

Love Like a Bibliophile | Day 02 | #NaPoWriMo
~ Sobhan Pramanik | Monday, April 03, 2017 | |


Love Like a Bibliophile | Day 02 | #NaPoWriMo

Purest of loves often leave no trails.
Like a Bibliophile’s books,
of titles read over and over again,
starchy still,
between creaseless jackets
and not a speck of dirt at the corners,
gleaming like guns in an armoury.
Unlike someone who reads to kill time
where there will always be
a piece of paper stuck somewhere
containing address or phone number
serving as a frail bookmark,
a brown coffee ring from the
bottom of Styrofoam cup,
a peacock feather in chalk dust,
or uneven lines of blue or black
at the back, scratched hard,
to get a dried pen working.

Loves of the Bibliophiles kind
are hard to find and harder to get rid of.
They leave no signs at the surface.
Their feelings are submarines
wading quietly through deep waters of souls.
Transforming,
conquering,
setting hearts to ravishing ruins.

© Sobhan


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