Your presence

Your presence

Your presence that 

I feel in your absence

blinds my eyes, 

it tears me apart;

the existence of me

as me, it seems

cannot be felt anymore, 

all of my being

rendered meaningless. 

Yet, I imagine your footsteps, 

your disapproving, indulgent, 

affectionate looks with their 

layers of meanings, your 

velvety voice, intoxicating 

touch, suddenly bring me 

back to me, like a thirsty 

traveler whose tired feet 

had just touched an oasis, 

and who was kneeling down

to seek your forgiveness. 

I feel you are giving me a hand

through the gentle waves 

filling my tired, dried passage

with your passionate embrace,

with your quenching essence.

©Supratik Sen

Love

I grew up learning

From here and there

That love was blind

I wondered why, 

Until I heard Dalai Lama, 

Ever so longanimous 

And relevant say that, 

Love was the 

absence of judgement. 

Pray

Pray

There's no other way

In the midst of invented wars

Sadness and stress

You'll discover peace,

Infinite bliss, happiness

Pray

There's no other way

বিষের ওপর বিষ

বিষের ওপর বিষ, নিয়ে এল বিশ্বে

এই বিশ-বিশ, একদিকে 

মহামারীর হুঙ্কার, এল না করোনার

আজও কোনও চিকিৎসার হদিস, 

যুদ্ধের সর্বনাশা চীৎকার অন্যদিকে

ছড়াচ্ছে হতাশার হাহাকার। 

খেটে খাওয়া মজদুর হেঁটে ফিরছে 

দেখ বহুদূর, তাদের ফেলে আসা ঘরে, 

পেটের খিদে মেটানোর আশা, 

চোখের কোল বেয়ে কান্না হয়ে ঝরে। 

কবে হবে এ অবসাদের অবসান

প্রশ্ন করি তোমায়, হে ভগবান। 

এ যে আমাদেরই কর্মফল আর 

কিছুই নয়, এ গরল, এ বিষ 

ধ্বংস করার শক্তি দাও শুধু

আর একটিবার, হে আললাহ, 

হে যিশু, হে নীলকন্ঠ, হে নিরাকার। 

Strange

Right in the middle of the troubled lands, 
the intelligent brains have won many accolades,
they have conquered the outer space, yet the
thinking hearts are unable to win their minds;
with reason, none could find a win-win way
to concur, to discover a system robust and strong
not to kill and fight. Strange that both are right,
yet both, equally wrong. 

In the countries recharged with animosity,
bitterness, and disaster, catapulted with
mindless weapons, devious arms endorsing 
ceaseless killing, spilling of blood, a poet,
like a stranger, stretches its arms and writes
about the resurgence of friendship in the
peace-loving minds of the neighbors. 

The reality is dark, things are falling apart
countries, as it were, are concentrating
on how to harm, how to hurt each other;
making the sellers of weapons richer, year
after year, like Kalidasa, who was seen
cutting the branch of the tree on which
he was sitting, they both are severing
their own developments, their own growths,
they’re sabotaging their own economies; 
strange that they'll continue to be sincere enemies,  
no one, no citizen tells the leaders to focus
on growth, not to indulge in senseless fights,
that killing is not winning, it is never right.

But the poet helplessly ignores all of this!
Perpetually in the winsome world,
permanently in bliss, paints a picture
of prosperity, opulence, and happiness;
the non-judgmental eyes see more
of understanding, of camaraderie,
like intoxicating, deep-rooted folklore,
the yearning ears hear the appeal from
the mosques from the breaking dawn
to the parting dusk, they listen to the
chants from the temples; therefore,
the poet sits on a corner scribbling
on a piece of paper, perhaps like Sartre 
writing his diary during his mobilization,
or perhaps like a child composing a
world of its own, bringing back all the
fond memories, the determined writer
establishes again the paradise on earth
that is not anymore occupied by intruders, 
but bustling with the long-lost brothers and sisters.

Why is this simple thing a challenge,
the poet ponders, finds it strange!

One more, once more

O, Baba! Come and 

Take me in your lap, 

I don't know the way

I can't find the gap. 

Please send someone

Who could come and deliver

With those balls of love

That'll flow inside me,

Like you, I'll forgive them, 

Focus on the kneeling knee

Position of genuflection, 

I'll overlook the force

That'll choke the air,

What your messengers do

They wouldn't want to hear, 

So be it Baba! 

I'll become yours forever

I'll rest in power.

Baba! When I was alive

I had to beat the blues

They beat me black and blue, 

Through their thoughts, 

Through actions, and words, 

But now when I die

As a matter of a fateful ploy

I become the blue-eyed boy. 

Once I go unto you

I'd never ever come back, 

An angel in the endless blue

I'll never ever lose track. 

I'll not be ill anymore, 

Beyond my skin, 

Above all sins, above all hues

Unlike the claustrophobic yore. 

They're hurting the sinner, 

Not hating the sin

We're going to lose again

We're never going to win

So there will be one more

Once more, as always.

Racism

Justice had only been promised, 

It has not been delivered;

They get killed on the streets

Unarmed, they're shot dead

in the park, blacks for ages

Are kept in the dark. 

It's not one country's problem, 

The whole of the first world

Is but a concentration camp, 

Where leaders make false claims

But blacks are openly murdered, 

They are mercilessly butchered. 

This has to end for good. 

We want to live in a world

Free of racist cannibals

Let those civilisation-mongers 

Know that we aren't extraterrestrials.

We're made to work as slaves

Through the tireless days,

Through the endless nights;

We aren't treated as equals

In their actions, they hate us

To the core, although 

They talk of human rights. 

Flawed laws need to be changed, 

First world needs to be trained

To unburden their false baggage

Of hatred, their shameful image

Needs to be cleaned, erased,

To get rid of their so-called

Whites man's burden 

Is the real challenge. 

Justice has been promised so far, 

Now, it needs to be applied;

To put an end to this mindless war, 

Racism has to be written off

In black and white.

For the sake of humanity, 

Let colours of difference unite. 

Let him live, don't grant him leave

Don't demand justice

That'll deplete your soul

Killing a killer

Who's rather a scapegoat

Is not your goal. 

Let him live in the ghettos

For next seventeen years

Let him go and stay

In the third world, 

If you want justice

Ask them to change some laws

That deprive you of your rights, 

That are wrongfully flawed;

For heaven's sake

Justice will be denied

If you let him die. 

You say no justice no peace

Peace is unconditional

If you know what it means. 

The police who killed, 

And his colleagues who didn't 

Prevent

Were all representatives

Of the state

Please have some sense. 

Now looking at the massive protest

The state will disown him

To display plastic justice

Will not let him breathe, 

But if you want justice

Let him serve, let him live

Don't spare him, don't let him leave. 

Dying is an easy exit

Given the chance and choice

Most of us would want 

To leave this troubled world

And heave a sigh of relief, 

Please listen to your inner voice

He deserves to serve in the ghettos

He needs to transform his beliefs. 

Crow

Crow is a beautiful bird

Most unnoticed, most unsung

A silent worker, it cleans 

The environment in the best 

Possible way, I wish I could 

Make the selfless scavenger

The supreme symbol of

World environment day. 

It also tells me how loving

Parents need to be, 

Genuinely caring and true;

For all humans, it's a lesson, 

It nurtures its own children

It fosters, adopts a cuckoo too. 

If the world would allow me

To chirp in my way,

I would make the crow

A befitting symbol of parent's day. 

The crow is a blackbird, 

Unsung, ignored, unheard.

We never look at it as a healer, 

Seldom as a parent figure, 

Partly because of its work,

Partly because of its color.

My people of the world, 

Black is the color of honesty,

A supreme color of authority, 

It's powerful, it's pure as the dew, 

Black's inclusive, cause it accepts,
And absorbs all other hues, 

It's a color of truth and clarity, 

It's a symbol of human dignity. 

I can breathe

Let the war of the third world
be against corruption, manipulation
against the slave trade of sorts
in the name of immigration.
Let the war of the third world
be against injustice, murder,
caprice, and torture;
the war of the third world
is not the third world war.

The same brain-drained workforce
works wonders in the first world,
they beautify the streets, paint the walls
they nurture, safeguard all possible resource;
as daily wage earners, they are these miners,
world-class scientists, engineers, and doctors.

They’re unconscious of their sins,
they’re busy making the first world richer,
while their lands, the poor cousins,
lie neglected, year after year.

Is a comfortable lifestyle everything?
To their motherlands, do they owe nothing?
Look at those clever people of the first world,
they make them do the donkey’s work,
they hire them, lure them, 
cage them with lofty payment,
yet, they remain forever
an immigrant, a foreigner.

Off now from the lazy comfort zone
let them stop working
for the first world anymore
it’s never their orbit,
always a strange ambit,
it was never their own.

All singers, poets, leaders
of their color and skin
had asked them to fight
for their right, so they win,
but over the years, again and again
their efforts went in vain.

This poem is now planting a thought;
asking them to think, to regain what’s lost,
and go back to where they truly belong
where they can write a fresh new song.
.........

Ye men, women, and children,
you can’t breathe here,
isn’t that evident?

Do something insane to save
the soil where you were born,
be selfless, unafraid, and brave,
your soil is where
the seed needs to be sown.

Found an organization that
immediately stops immigration,
that resurrects the third world
into its whole new avatar,
where a smiling heaven
falls in love with the golden garden,
where sing birds of various colors,
where bloom flowers and fruits
of different, and varied nature,
where the streets are as clean
homes with lawns are just as green
where businesses flourish,
industries grow just as they do
in this affluent first world,
where comforts and amenities
are not merely foreign words.

In your own stage,
you'll never be an immigrant
you'll not be in exile anymore,
like the terrible years of the yore;
in your own world,
you'll have a paradise above,
and a kingdom beneath
where, with feet on the ground
you can shout aloud and say,
'I can breathe, I can breathe'.