Antariksha Chatterjee

English Poetry / West Bengal State

The Beginning of Conflict

Diminutive hopes they fasten their hearts to

Everlasting trepidation

Often lose whatever they earn

Hard to console

Wandering all over seeking glee

Stagger in vain.

As kids,

How often did thoughts traverse

Of comparison and competition?

Then fell the jurisdiction of societal norms.

In the qualm of chasing illusions,

Frittered all innocence.

Clamouring at the splendour of the victory-altars

Who speaks of the catastrophe?

The plundered childhood?

Conversations with arrière-pensée

Behold and look around-

Talks of calumny spread in hushed voices

The sham of happiness

Curtains the heart lost in the dark abyss

Engulfed over soon

Wading the ocean of life

Unable to drudge the weight of anticipation

Before reaching the shore

Hard-found this life

Is all wasted in contemplating the mundane calculations.

The Allure Takes Over

Endless strain of melancholy

Alluring to charming pretence

Captive to quotidian chicanery.

In keeping up with the Joneses

Experience of the wonder called “Life”

Slips into abeyance.

Strangulating in this materialistic cobweb

What is achieved at the end?

A success that always feels less

Can never be owned.

Enticed we chase

But realize it is never enough.

The more we get the more we want

The quench of thirst is never satiated

Every time the guards are let off,

 It is lost!

Befuddled and astray

We stand again

Sojourn in others validation,

A desire to sketch an image of one’s own self

In the ink of others.

Fugacious remarks

Needless one thinks

Is that an appropriation of you?

Or, a mirror to what life

Meant to them?

Only if one bothers to mull over it.

Is It Better on the Other Side?

Standing ashore

I asked the ocean of life-

Life?

Does the sun rise on the other side?

I do not see

I see darkness brimming all over

Penetrating deep in my skin

My flesh shrivels

Deciduous memories of the bright blue canvas

Eyes stare in lachrymose

Woebegone

Do words stay bound only in the trellis of sentences

Do they not reach the ears of people?

Life, are you listening?

Oh! It feels so wrathful finding my voice choking.

All my lifelong squander

The string of hope I wreathed

All scatter here and there

Splitting into infinitesimal bits.

Quests fail to trace the trail of the dreams I fancied.

The idol I create is made of ashes of despair.

The assaults recoil on me.

My world comes down crumbling

The sounds of destruction

They haunt me!

I can’t breathe!

Where shall I find an ointment to soothe my ached spirit?

Tell me!

In This Deserted Land

The ambient is obscure

The phoebe is delitescence.

All the nightmares in my somnolence bare

Meander in silence.

I sit alone in my abode

The ruins of past wrap me around

The flute plays the tune of sorrow

Casting a spell beguile.

My lone soliloquies

Reminisce the buds that fell before they could blossom

The blight that consumed the sprightly green.

As my world sunder into obscure darkness

It masticates my heart.

I take recourse to blasphemy

No God resides here,

No good does either.

The world is gloomy, dingy

In this deserted land

Only the debris of my aspirations lay

No one says a word here

Only silence speaks

Speaks gigantic volumes

Hushhh...

No person can reach here

This is my quiet haven.

I like this solitude.

It is all good now.