The division of labour between poet and person I think, is very cumbersome: The poet is of course free - To live in a truth of his own contrivance Strewn with an abundance of roses or miseries As he sees fit; The person often has a wife and child And so the slavery of billed existence. But he is the one with the eyes and ears That the poet so parasitises on To turn sights into spectacles And sounds into symphonies Or all into a dystopic, pus-filled rant. It is in this obscene dance of words yet That the person finds freedom - However fleeting - from his personhood Entrapped in flesh, that presents him mirages To drudge on. Cumbersome indeed then, this schizophrenia Of being real and imaginary In the same fragile frame. Published in Amaravati Poetic Prism 2017 ed. Padmaja Iyengar, Cultural Centre of Vijayawada & Amaravati
The message is supreme;
Born in the heart,
and lilting itself
from tongue to tongue,
throwing its scent
over wind and wave;
travelling on dots
or fingers
when blindness
or silence bar its way.
It hews itself into stone
or burns itself onto magnetic discs;
it is the message that lives
and I exist
solely to pass it on.