"Treading through No-Choice", "Response", and "Humming" by O.P. Jha

Treading through No-Choice

In the multi-colored war-zone

of the Middle-East

different groups fight

and God on the top of the sky

watches them alone

here, women have a chance

either to die

or to wait for bad news till their death

here, death looks more beautiful

than waiting till death,

to console women

their men say, “Women had no choice

in the past centuries too.

they’d either waited with tears

or died under monolithic emotions.”

but women respond

“They’re in a new century.”

but their men say,

“We’ve the same Moon

and the same Sun.

We’ve the same Earth too.”

here, poets also have no choice

but to select ugly words

to depict death in battle-fields

and waiting for bad news

in waiting-rooms with no window

here, poems are filled with smoke

fire, blood, flesh and tears

here rhyming resembles the cacophony

of congested cities

stanzas look like dilapidated structures

here, in this no-sleep zone

(In a war-zone sleep is rare.)

no one has words to console poets

in the past poets had beautiful words

but now for them

all seasons are nothing

but the first line

of the opening stanza of “The Waste Land”:

“April is the cruelest Month,

breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land,”

O beautiful commas of these lines!

Thou art the alien in the Middle-East.

O fragrant lilacs!

You’ve lost your strong aroma

on these blood-drenched slippery stones.

here, women have no peace

and poems have no proper punctuation marks

here, marks are like scars on hearts

like incessant rains of mortars

in this punctuated “Cradle of Civilizations”.

here, flashes of shelling are rays

of hope for winning territories

and cruel sparks of despair

emitting tirelessly from the crushing bones

of civilizations in the firm fists of darkness.

behind their cover

women and poets invent hope (unusual)

with diligent smiles

inside and outside

their homes

with much pain

for finding a footprint of life

under the debris of death,

and they continue to crawl

in the land of no-choice.

Has anyone seen prophets smiling here?

none but women and poets,

they try to decipher

their smiles, not on stone boulders

scattered as orphans on the melancholic shores

of the Mediterranean Sea,

the Red Sea and the Dead Sea,

but in the cradles where babies sleep,

with a dream unknown to ‘grown ups,

and on the tongues, poetry breaths

in the ears where whispers

of innocent prayers heard.

Response

Wandering in a desert with no oasis

love doesn’t receive response

either from bruised clouds

or upset seas

it’s recalling a green time

in wilderness it was burning

in the unexpected clashes of dry logs

& wetting in the rain

with an eye on the horizon

in the flashes of lightening

love is alone

with reminiscences

with a hope

to lick the lips of a daffodil

in a bright morning.

humming

a humming bird comes

sees the haze

over my head

finds some shrieks

on the road ahead

it flaps its wings

and whispers

there’s smog

but love is bare

you can see it

you can do it

O humming bird!

I’ve not yielded,

from my window I’m sending

flying kisses to the sky

for pulling a piece

of sun-shine again

my breaths are humming

a new note again.

Bio: O.P. Jha’s works appeared in more than one hundred journals including Rigorous, Mantis, Punt Volat, Discretionary Love, In Parentheses, Shot Glass, Lothlorien Poetry, Kelp, The Cry Lounge, The Odessa Collective, Backchannels, Homer’s Odyssey, The Indian Literature, The Broken Teacup, Poetry Pacific, Five Fleas-Itchy Poetry, By the Beach, miniMag, Iceblink, Infinite Scroll, The Rome Review, The Tiger Leaping Review, The Accendo, Aloka, Ghudsavar, Panorama, Gabby and Min’s Review, Hoot, Vocivia, The Marbled Sigh, Balestra, Forevermore, and others. His poems appeared in anthologies "We were Seeds" and "We are Resilient". He holds Ph.D. in “Translation Studies”. X: @OPJha17