JanakyJojo

Everything you seek is waiting inside you to be found, but only if you take the time to understand

Green buildings covering blue  Not the blue of your clouds or skies More like the one I found inside a sardine once Half alive , bio lumine — It locked my eyes with a dead stare  My mouth gasping for air — It asked me about an ocean of this earth That I haven’t heard about Not fair, I blame you , it mumbled, I blame your starships and the plastic skies, Sparkling papyrus sands of some…

Writer’s Note This is a poem to be read silently and in reverence. I wrote this with a heavy heart after seeing a devastating image in recent news I saw, of a dalit girl who was murdered in my country. The image of her mother clutching her limp body that was covered in a muddy sack like discarded garbage on a roadside left me reeling. I was stunned, angry, fearful and defeated. This poem came as…

Information Overload by Devika Haridas Today I asked my heartif what you were doing was alright?To leave a man you love like how the passenger poem grumbled on Spotify,I read about a man on man fighting for a close touch and I thought if competence is what is to be trained to that meatball,When a cancer moon wanes tonight you might as well call him back, said a friend online or brutally split…

“Washing” by Devika Haridas I have scrubbed plates since six —Sitting down, standing up —pipes, drains and tumblersFood scrapes and wishing bonesBlowing bubbles and sweeping ash from mirrors of my soul, my day and my face.I like these shining pots, squeak squeakpick those squeaking fingernails scraping in clean,that jolt of metal rushing into my brain,Then one day, washing them clean, The sunset…

Remember those people without faces  But with clothes that you can recognise– A man stacking his langra mangoes in a sorrowful silence — A crooked spine with an orange tip in his beard selling jamuns– The dazzling sapphire embroideries of scurrying feet. Here in these grey alleyways, the winds don’t touch the ground. Grass doesn’t grow like plastic mounds, Black drains run along with…

To feel sunlight and golden, To kiss the autumn breeze To see the hummingbirds in my garden,Took me long enough,To see my hands and feel the buzz,Like the magic of germinated seeds,To love them, like infants Took me long enough, to feel,Complete, with fear of oversteppingOversaying over respect and yet saying and over stepping took me long enough, to open my mouth,To put a crown on my head, for…

Writer’s Note This poem can be called as my attempt to personify the ego through a series of intimate, fraught relationships with each stanza exploring a different dynamic of co-dependence and conflict. Here, the central tension lies in the push and pull between our self and the ego—the desire for its protection and the struggle for liberation. However, The poem is designed to open it entirely…

Some nights when darkness clutches me with its newly sharpened claws, it feels safer to hold your hands; firm crystalline darkness to pull me home.Habits I recognise and yours that I can read between the lines. A moving Q-star searching for balls of light, thankgod, I am not the kind of light you like —The first time, I faintly saw you rise from the horizonI thought, I will write about your…

It’s a monday morning where sky is only blueI got up when metros were running and soaked my hair flat in the rain,I felt like I had a meeting overdue but no,In grace, I refilled my ink fountain quiland wrote about hunger, eyes , heart and mouth.I checked on plants, few downloads from family spirits, got status updates from heart and  had coffee with angels hovering over my back. Lunching with…

You can’t exist in binariesI must say The fruit punch you had was sweet as plumBut clawing you like sugar Your arteries choke on loveSo loud and honest; but it’s like that clear lake, clouds floating in waterRipples in the sky I have much to say about what I amNo shying away from what I can beI sting like a scorpion on my loverYet hold him so tenderlyMy heart does bleed for the beggar on the…

There was much tranquil calm to know I was written by the stars  to know I was written by the stars  Once on a lunar eclipse I drew my birthchart and tried to make sense of it, for Wonder to welcome Anxiety –  Mundanity to lose its excitement I asked them if this was what was meant to be? The silent moon waned in melancholy. Bored, the next day I  sat  in the grove of my frontyard…

You who is now a Distant Dream of a fourteen year old Appears so bleak, so damn ordinary To me — Those tattoos on Your left arm are nothing But black vestiges of ink and scar; Transient like your chameleon Skin that changes over time, To decompose — Your voice, your hair and your nails; Everything appears so old and so ugly To embrace or to hold, In disgust and in fear Of how…

Mediocre poems of a lonely night #2

Wet neon lights heavy on our eyes This rain is killing us, We know it on our skin And yet we can’t help but find romance In this wasteland So we laugh — Laugh to feel anything other than dread of this lonely night (like yesterday) This room is flooded and it faintly smells like skin Some burnt; Some rotten I ask you if you want kids “Yes” Your laughter ringing in my ears — Red…