HERITAGE

Rechristened streets or cities

with Hindu names make no history

nor erase the Muslim past

they assault country’s culture:

diversity of lived glory

politics of pain, joy and care

liberatory future

in hate game add to frozen hearts

no discourse would ever heal:

memories may fade but won’t die

like I die every day, yet live

2

OLD FILES

I burn my years and erase

memories that couldn’t be stacked

against the wall of a broken home

I’m too old to hold out long

the fall is certain

and the burden too much

I can’t be a hostage to the past

nobody would buy

the smoke is momentary

and the heat hurts more

let me live life through my self

doing nothing, thinking nothing

just sitting silently and watching

time takes care of the rest and life too

3

FIVE MICROPOEMS

i.

 I knock at your body’s door

 or peep into the room 

through the little crack 

for a bit of love 

squeezing my rise above 

the cynosure and reduce 

to a drop at the labial path

ii.

vagina museum:

painted femininity

jelly fish rising from deep

no good luck, gropers asked

not to touch the cleavage

iii.

icy water

stabs my body in dark:

Mahakumbh

I hold on to the rope

my soul trapped in me

iv.

teary eyes

with sparks and lightning

dried vision

caged existence

seek deliverance

muttering old prayers

v.

I grow wings to become a bird

on bed rising to dream in a room

that couldn’t be church to breed hope:

end up a small hope in grave

no sun reaches to raise me again

Ram Krishna Singh, also known as R.K.Singh, has published poems, articles and book reviews in various magazines and journals over the years and taught English for Science and Technology, Indian Writing in English, and Criticism at IIT-ISM, Dhanbad for nearly four decades. His published poetry collections include Against the Waves: Selected Poems (2021), 白濁:

SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST (English/Japanese, 2022), Poems and Micropoems (2023), and Knocking Vistas And Other Poems (2024). More at https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/R.K._Singh