I dream of a poem
I dream of a poem
about words
without words
like a primitive thought
unborn
in the awareness
of language
then grammar
but a deciduous patois
at every step
on every tongue
dangling out
of aporia
once you step on
your God
your primitive thought
of the Universe—
a mega-poem
by the Creator
that fathoms deeper
than depth of a poet’s dreams
spread across the lengthy skies
beyond the bedlam breath
of our recurrent lives
I dream of a poem
about words
without words
Nude poem (2)
This poem right here
reminds me of another poem
lost in remembering nothing
about itself or the intervention
the scratches here and there
uncared into scars
recur in amnesic dreams
like the unfinished lines
neither erased nor delivered
squeeze and writhe about
in the manner of rain-washed
earthworms peppered
in semi-abandoned diaries
this poem here is
about that poem somewhere:
a nude poem perhaps that was
one without words for ornaments
one with feelings alone for flesh
a nude poem of yours
a nude one mine
The denial of words
It all happened thereafter
that the verse began to rip apart
from the skin
without the grace of falling stars
the metaphor betrayed
the imagination
unlike the divorce signatures reasoned to be
and poetry became a starless sky
not like the blank page that beholds
the promise to be inked
it all happened after the moment
words began to be served for meals
that the words
left at the logic’s end
neither knitted into a warm nest for return
nor opened into wings for flight
Shelly Bhoil is an Indian writer and scholar on Tibet. She has published two poetry books An Ember from Her Pyre (Writers Workshop, 2016) and Preposição de Entendimento (Urutau, Brazil, forthcoming); edited the reference book New Narratives of Exile Tibet (Lexington Books, 2020), and co-edited Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage (Lexington Books, 2018); and edited two journals Tibetan Writings in India for Muse India (2014) and Tibetan Exile Poetry in Brazilian-Portuguese translation for Cadernos (University of Sao Paulo, forthcoming). Shelly lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Read an interview with her on Kitaab.