EARTH DAY

I am Gaia, your Mother Earth

My greens golds, blues, pure chroma

Sustain your bewildered life

Your darkness throttles me

Your jigsaws pierce me 

Will you never end this strife?

I birthed you as you bloomed

I wrapped you in my lovelorn folds

You breathed in my watery placenta

You danced along my ripples

You lived cosily in my moulds

You ate, drank, slept, rose in songs

All in my silken wreathed sheath

In my shimmering grassy gold ---

You flew from azure to ether

Rejuvenated in my milk and water

Built your castles in airy space

All because I gave you home

And hearth to land here and stay ---

And now you ransack my plenitude

Ravage my gracious wealth and beatitude

Make my loving loam a wilderness

I am almost a weeping bald pate now

Shrivelled and withered living anyhow

Grown old well before my years

My ambrosia now a living hell

You make me limp with your Power-spell

Change before you hear your death knell

Every day is your Mother Earth Day

Preserve my bounty for you to live and stay!

SHORT BIO

Laksmisree Banerjee is a Multi-Award Winning Poet/ Author, Litterateur, practicing Radio & TV Vocalist and a Retd. University Professor of English and a Fmr. Vice Chancellor. An International Sr. Fulbright and Commonwealth Scholar, she is widely anthologised and published with Twelve Books of Poetry and several Academic and Research Publications.

You don’t see me?

I am here!

I am here!

You don’t seem to listen?

You don’t see what I wear!

You don’t see me?

I am here!

On my way,

I met a shivering stick.

Frailty marshalled in an old rebel.

On my way,

I met a blind wheelchair.

I saw more blindness around it.

On my way,

the conch shell waved

in my ears…

Those waves travelled through

my throat, my chest,

to my stomach.

You don’t see me?

You don’t hear me?

Forgive my audacity!

But, I want to ask…

My thin voice lingers and disappears

into the sand

of leisurely slithering vacuum;

I try to run.

My extremities do not reach…

The western-most, the eastern-most...

Ugh…

and, there’s no one in the glass!

I hold the mirror.

I often sang those to you

I often sang those to you…

Fissures and faults on the sides of the wall,

and the pillars tall,

alongside the mountain vault

protrude

the smell.

The burial and the ashes

have seen the ceremonious nights -

as the sturdy raindrops

pit-pat,

pit-pat…

Songs.

Stories.

Memories.

I often sang those to you…

Soft fire binds the hard threads

but, embers know no rites.

Burnt. Rusted. Broken.

Flames burn the musical notes.

The ancient rock is a witness.

And…

and, the moon sank into waters

without a word.

Life song reaches a gradual halt.

Blazing high,

they swirl and swathe around the rock.

The plough is rusted.

The rock has garnered

wet moss.

Feet have crossed seas,

and worn crimson beads.

Yet, eyes can’t see the distant mead –

the archer’s arrow couldn’t split apart

the crawling darkness.

Flames across the window bars

won’t stop.

Rusted ploughs die;

charred music

rains carbon.

Broken homes,

expired balms

do not heal.

Dr Shweta Mishra ‘shawryaa’ is Associate Professor in the Department of English at

Maharaja Bijli Pasi Government P.G. College, Lucknow, India. A gold medalist in M.A.

In English, she has authored several research papers and edited three books. Creative writing

is what she passionately loves to do. Her notable works include What is a Woman, The

Most Orange, and Lucknow Imprints. Her poems have been published in Kavya Bharati

and Muse India. Internationally, she contributes her poems in the Australasian Center for

Human Rights and Health (ACHRH) Newsletter, Melbourne, Australia.

Identities in a mirage

Identities in a mirage

And the identity,

to identities

changing the guards.

Bartering self to others,

feinding messages erupt

yet in wane, as the

target set, all set. Yes.

Time controls and commands

circles, moves and pints.

Whom to see? Yet it does

from the tail to the mouth.

Yes, it does so, and so on.

The identities in a mirage

doting, cooing, finding

and ogling in a chain;

the fissures and craters

the loop and the chain

the vision, the revision

and a silence that sustains.

R P Singh (Ravindra Pratap Singh) is a Professor of English at the University of Lucknow.

Besides his contributions in academics and research, he is an award-winning playwright and poet. Flea Market and Other Plays, Ecologue, When Brancho Flies, Shakespeare ki Saat Ratein, and Antardwand are some of his plays. Cloud, Moon and a Little Girl, Pathik aur Pravah, Neeli Aankhon Wali Ladki, Adventures of Funny and Bana, Two Violet Flowers represent his poetry. He writes in English and Hindi with equal ease and felicity.