If You Ask Me, What It Is Poetry, I Shall Say… Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Poetry for me is the Light Divine,
An experimentation with it,
Doing sadhna
As for to infuse into
The powers divine.

Poetry if you ask me, then is love poetry,
The poems of love
Interspersed with
Deeper feelings and emotions
Of the heart, human heart.

The stanzas and paragraphs of love,
Loveful feelings
And loverly expressions
Is poetry,
Written in verse.

I feeling for you, you feeling for me,
The attachment between the two,
The bonding in-between,
My love for you, your love for me
And it can love for all, whom love we.

My love poetry is the songs of heart and love,
The love experienced
In a tabooed society,
Where the restrictions are,
Not of free-mixing society and culture.

To change it, if ask you, what is poetry,
I shall,
Poetry is modernistics, linguistics,
Urban, contemporary, industrial,
Of the malls, plazas and metros,
Traffic jams and terminuses.

In the parks, cyber cafes, bars, beaches,
Canteens and restaurants,
Taking pizzas and snacks
And the paparazzi sitting,
All taking a break and for an outing,
The colonial and post-colonial people.


The modern, the modernistic and the post-modern,
Jogging in the park early in the morning,
Going to the gym
As for body fitness,
Doing yoga to keep fit,
To hide in age and ageing
And in the bermuda pants.

Dyeing the hair golden and the moustache black,
With the golden glasses on the eyes
Supported by a golden frame
And the black lace hanging on,
Doesn’t present him young and smart,
Stylish and boyish?

Poetry if you ask is irony and satire,
Satire direct while irony indirect,
Satire sarcastic and sardonic
Full of mocks,
But irony twisting and turning
With doublespeak and volte face.

Poetry is myth and mysticism,
Shrouding in mystery,
Poetry myth-application,
Incorporation of myths
With the folk stuffs,
Poetry carrying it forward
The mystery of Creation.

If you ask, I shall say, to change it,
Poetry is innocence and ignorance
Combined together with,
A heart so innocent, so ignorant
To constitute poetry,
The composition of it
In the clean heart of man.

Poetry is if ask you then I shall
Metaphysics, theology and religiosity,
Man and his sense of religion,
Man and his morality,
Man and his ethics.



Poetry is as much as religious faith but as much as doubt,
Lurking within,
Poetry is anti-thesis,
Poetry is blasphemy, atheism,
Scepticism and agnosticism
Giving birth to existentialism.

Poetry is iconography as well as iconoclasm,
Form and see
And if not, break the established things
If God hears not you;
Poetry is nihilism
And the world a big zero.

Poetry is lyricism,
A wreath of lyrics embedded into,
Flowers strung together,
Which sing you,
Poetry as the love-lyrics,
Not only love-lyrics,
But the lyrics of life.

Poetry as the penetration of serenade and silence,
The mind composing,
Picturesque imagery
With the storks, herons and swans flying
And making the scene landscapic.

Poetry poetry,
The poet’s poetry,
The property of the poet,
The proprietor of his poetry,
Maybe it he will hand over to someone
And if the manuscripts see not the light of the day,
The pale sheets of paper will destroy in course of time.

The poet a painter,
Painting scenery and landscape,
The poet a singer,
A singer of heart,
The poet a writer
Of words
And the words as pictures and images
Expressing a vision of life,
Giving signs.

And poetry symbolical,
Full of signs, symbols and motifs,
Poetry laden with, relaying to,
Poetry coded, decode them.

Poetry pessimism, reflecting sorrows,
The sorrows of life,
Despair, dejection and despondence,
Grief and sadness,
Dark despair and bleak hope.

Poetry optimistic, of karmayoga
And the doer as a karmayogi,
Active and dutiful,
Facing the odds and doing the job
To perfection.

Poetry poetry,
The poetry of the poet
And the poet the sole proprietor of his works,
But he handing them over to Time and its dustbin,
Time the Curator of the archival studies,
The museum of life and the world
And its care-taker.

I do not know what did I say to by the way,
Just by the way,
Coming a long way,
Now I want to take a rest
As have walked a long distance
Without claiming for and introducing myself,
Writing almost like an unknown citizen.