Santosh Bakaya writes

A poet ‘s soliloquy [Stone]

Not long back, I remember, she used to be a quivering mass of protoplasm,
  so malleable, so pliant, putty in my hands, now, she has
metamorphosed into a huge stone -  heartless, glacially cold.
Those eyes! Those damn eyes!
 Those goddamn eyes!
The way they look at me with so humongous a contempt.  Constant. Unrelenting.
At times, I think that she is convinced that her eyes are stones and
she would just gouge them out of their sockets and hurl them at me!
When did this change come about?
The other day, she jabbed a sharp finger into my chest, eyes and teeth clenched
as though in pain, and snapped, "I don’t - repeat, don’t - want to hear
any of your so-called poetry.
 Dammit, I hate your poetry, don’t you dare shove it down my gullet!”
 And the way she folded her arms across her chest, and stood there
unmoving, it looked as if she were carved in stone.
Can my poetry turn someone to stone? Do I have a magic spell?
When did this change come about? When?
That is a million dollar question, friend,
 and I guess needs a million dollar answer.
 Oh forget it! Why should I be bothered! Darn it! Let me go and bask
on the sunny shores of some tropical beach,
 where the sunrays skitter off round pebbles and stones and forget
everything about a girl whose heart has turned to stone,
 whose eyes have turned to stone, and who is all fire and brimstone!
Did my poetry do this to her, or is it that I have gone bonkers?


His beloved’s Rejoinder [Pebble]

I just happened to read the note lying on your computer table. Mind
you, I was definitely not eavesdropping or trespassing on your
territory,
 that piece of paper just happened to fall in my line of vision, [mind
you , my eyes are not stones] and hit me with the power of a pebble.

Well! Well, I can imagine you writing, first with a befuddled
expression, then your body tensing up like a much too tightly strung
guitar,
 looking around for a rag doll you can shred to pieces and more poetic
pebbles that you can throw at me .
Love me, love my poetry, huh? But how can you expect me to love your
poetry, there was a time I loved you [remember?] sans poetry.
 But then, you took it into your pebble-sized head to write verses!
And I watched in absolute horror, as you went from verse to worse,
affecting our relation adversely.
There was a time you called my eyes limpid pools, now you call them
STONES! Look what poetry has done to you! From sublime to stone!
Putty! My foot! Ouch!
What is your credibility as a poet, huh?
You call your pathetic scribblings poetry!
Get a reality check, man! Now, I shudder to think, what if you also
start making those loopy drawings
 to go with your poetry and expect young instagrammers to flock to you,
 like that young girl , [I forget her name] who is earning millions! Arrgh!

From the frying pan I have landed into the fire.
Pathetically saddled with a venal, vile versifier
who in his powerful baritone
labels my limpid eyes, stone
How to lift myself from these circumstances dire!

Oh no! You have rubbed some of your poetic insensibilities on me!
Wait, I am coming too , to the sunny shores of some tropical beach,
 where the sunrays skitter off round pebbles and stones and forget
everything - except poetry!
Let us, then, sit on sun-drenched boulders, stringing poetic pebbles
together and bring about a poetic revolution -

Hey, can doggerel bring about a revolution?

That, I guess, is a million dollar question
and calls for a million dollar answer!
 Let me go back to my poetry.



 *This piece was triggered by two prompts given by Aakriti Kuntal in The Significant League,
[A very popular Writers Group] in Facebook -
‘Stone’ taken from the title of the same poem by Charles Simic and
‘Pebble’ taken from the title of the same name by Zbigniew Herbert

Eyes -- Daniel Arsham