by Vinita Agrawal
Poetry is not a mouthpiece
Amplifying the beats of a million hearts like a song
Rather, it is silent and anaemic like the soundless tired fall of an autumn leaf
Like the voiceless bundle of sad creases on an elephant’s face scrutinizing lost cover
Poetry is about the dark alleys
Lurking behind false bright smiles
It is like white piano keys
Cowering against the brittle black
Poetry might appear dead at times
But it is alive, like a wound beneath a scab
Pick on it with mind’s talons
And it oozes fresh blood always
Poetry is diffident like a lost scent
Intimate only if you have a story of your own
Otherwise like the earth’s hard crust, you can walk all over it
Without discovering a thing
For its real treasures lie buried deep within
Revealed best against the odds of life
Like the seven dyes of white light
Bursting into a rainbow, when up against the sun
Vinita is a Mumbai based writer and poet. Her poems have been published in Asiancha, Raedleaf Poetry , Wordweavers, OpenRoad Review, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Spark, The Taj Mahal Review, CLRI, SAARC Anthologies, Kritya.org, Touch- The Journal of healing, Museindia, Everydaypoets.com, Mahmag World Literature, The Criterion, The Brown Critique, Twenty20journal.com, Sketchbook, Poetry 24, Mandala and others which include several international anthologies. Her poem was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 by CLRI. She received a prize from MuseIndia in 2010. Her debut collection of poems titled Words Not Spoken published by Sampark/Brown Critique was released in November 2013. Her poem was awarded a prize in the Wordweavers contest 2013.
