O.P. JHA

Let me know again

Let me know who has heard songs buzzing

in the curious breathes of restless nomads again

Let me know who has felt multilayered love

folded in the humming in throbbing hearts again

Let me know who has dared to lick the drops

glittering on petals of roses in a war-field again

Let me know who has sown the seeds of love

in refugee camps longing for a piece of light again

Let me know who has overlooked complexity

and hugged simplicity in this difficult time again

Let me know who has seen clumps of leaves

with the glow-worms glowing all the night again

Let me know who has smiled in innocence again

& suddenly broken many chains of man again.

Seething

Parentheses are bubbling over

for breaking into exclamations

as ice of Alaska is melting

for trade talk between reluctant partners,

someone on the top is preparing

for fusion of hydrogen atoms

into helium and releasing tremendous energy

& marauders on the divided Earth are throttling

for chunks, craters, cracks and cleavages.

They’re ready for more fission,

From the Earth to the sky

millions of lines are drawn in little dots

like the cells carrying whims of ancestors.

Wonder is woven into common, a mask

with many layers, with dappled identities

with addresses on meandering roads

leading to mazes in minds.

& everyone looks like a phoenix risen above

out of his own ash. In the great cemetery

epitaphs look like filling up the gaps

between life and death.

In this boiling, centre has slept for ever

& paths leading nowhere, yet no one says

“I won’t make a friendship band

with a half-burnt fabric.” But he’s seething. 

O.P. Jha’s works appeared in more hundred plus journals including Rigorous, Mantis, Punt Volat, Discretionary Love, In Parentheses, Shot Glass, Lothlorien Poetry, Odessa Collective, Backchannels, Poetry Pacific, Five Fleas, miniMag, Iceblink, Infinite Scroll, The Rome Review, Valiant Scribe, Kelp, pulplit etc. His poems appeared in anthologies We were Seeds and We are Resilient. 

Previous / Next