Ayan Chakraborty: 2 poems

Vision

The glare of those neons:
shimmering attire- living, loving, laughing. 
The bustle of the street, the thoroughfares of festivity, the salty smell of pakoras and 
your eyes spare a  second round the corner.

You realise that the dish in your hand 
Wasn’t as vapid anymore. The salt in the air 
has found its                       way to morph it's state. In rivulets they 
trickle down 
some old, forgotten ways.

But a few still await release.

What still confounds  them in those potholes of arid wilderness? No hope but immunity, may be 
a flickering whim of chances. 

The dusty curs howl all the same.  Silence smears the other nook.
People live, laugh. 
Ignorance grasps love.

Dying

Wheeling in senses through short breaths of calm, time warps and calls divide when
your pitch of intelligence unknowingly frames life into an 'it'. The night slows and we greet them before sleep,
their bouquet of presence dying  into a still look.
I wrap languor like a shawl when fire spreads and voices shiver. When calls vibrate between is and was, I pick up your book.
Chanting humid lines to scoot across terrains of consciousness. Nerves as fiddle strings are mute or deaf beings.
The photos glimmer like the rectangular square of your street light till it catches webs of gossamer threads and peep
in moments of uncertainty.
Death has a strange green smell. Those that beat within blots of red and salt
and horrors at huts and hospitals glance wide within your rounded palm.

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_{Currently a PhD Research Scholar and a Junior Research Fellow at Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi Ayan Chakraborty is working on “Gandhian Language, Desire and Messianism” for doctoral research. He has completed his M.Phil research degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His dissertation read, “Re-reading Walter Benjamin’s Messianism: Revolution, Language and Divine Violence”. He has also been a Project Fellow for RUSA 2.0 in collaboration with Jadavpur University in a project entitled, “Narratives of Faith: Devotional Songs and Poetry in Eastern Parts of India”. He has taught the course on ‘Communicative English’ to the students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering for the consecutive semesters January to April, 2020 and August to December, 2020 at Jadavpur University. He has completed his Masters in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi.}