Poems Woman Scream 2016 India Kolkata

Woman Scream 2016 Kolkata India. A Poetry Collaboration by Kushal Poddar, Amit Shankar Saha, Sufia Khatoon and Sana Mohammed, Daipayan Nair, Anindita Bose.












Yellow and green


 
Daipayan Nair


I sight a leaf on the ground
I pick it up.
I look at the ones still pinned.
The Autumn on my palm
now, is a poem.
Once it was an adjective
and beauty was so easy
to praise.
I keep aside the man in me
for a while, replacing death;
observing

the girl birth a woman.






Kushal Poddar




Was I a pain or pleasure
when I came out
through your slit, mutilated.

Did you even love my body
smelling all of your blood,
all of life's slimy details?





Amit Shankar Saha



Mother, the Red Sea parts,
Your part is othered.

One burming bush.
There ought to be two.

My sisters cry
When their cords are cut.

But their cries are shut.
Mother, where are you?






Sufia Khatoon



You lie in your grave
Gravely mourning my death
I was not your skin,
Not your blood  nor your
Soul, I am your sparrow
Lighted within
Out of your chests cavity
I am revenant, I am remnant
I am reticent,  I am resistant,
I am redundant, I am revealed
The veil no more
Softly breaking my mould
The veil no more.




Sana Mohammed



Sun is a pier.
It swallows burning souls.
Through the slit, Mother,
My waist wasted on
Their charcoal hands,
I emerge.

In the pit of my eyes,
I am no more. Mother,

Do you still dance in
The Fire of Johar?

Hand me those pliers.
An inch more to
Split open my chest.
A bird cries out in a voice
Only I understand.

It ate up my heart.







Amit Shankar Saha



It was red
When your heart opened.
With the exodus
Escaped a songbird.

Who noticed?
The pliers were my hands
That tore your chest.
Who noticed?

You still leap into the fire.
The light dims its head.
Fathers turn deaf.
Songbird cries.





Kushal Poddar




And then comes spring-
I imagine
you will be waiting

so I arrive late,
still early,
and leave alone.

All stone trees of museum
blast with red blossoms.
All fossilised eggs birth bees.

Honey sun glistens
between the boughs,
reminds me of sin.

Sana Mohammed:

If you push a burning coal
Down the throat of my bird
It still sings in its head.

Some never forget their songs.

My baby fingers drew
A melting Sun every time
You leapt into the fire.

Coming Spring,
A bonfire let us build
With cuts and bruises.
From ashes we may rise
Some other day, every day.






Sufia Khatoon


Ashes, ashes,
If only your soul
I could reshape from ashes,
Dear mother,
But my body they bruise,
My blood they dry,
My love they chaar,
My innocence they consume,
Till I am empty.
My heart beats still,
Am I strong or weak mother?
If I cry will I lose this battle
Of hate?
Hate, why do you hate my
Freewill? My dreams to heal
The world.
Intolerance, why do you
Stone my wings?
I am flying, I am flying
In your ashes dear mother.





 
Ipsita Ganguli

 
Woman March On



Woman
March On
Your path has only
Just begun

Woman
Do you hear
Or will you
Live this Life
With fear

Woman
Stand High
Go on
Gulp down
Your sigh

Woman
Look around
Its war zone
But you are
Not alone

Stop the guile
You Woman
Learn to fight it fair
Think beyond
Yourself
And pull yourself
Out there

It ain't going
To be easy
And it ain't
Going to be smooth
But Woman
Let's not give up
Keep going for
The truth

Let the world
Call you names
And the meek
Call you a freak
If you weren't
Any different
Then they
Wouldn't speak

The Men
Will not like you
And the weak
Women too
You see
They like it
Easy, and
You put them in a tizzy

You see
You lovely
Woman
Your shoulders maybe
Slender
And your nature tender
But please dont forget your Fire Your burning desire
For the Right
For the Fair
Just so that you Care
March Ahead
You Woman
It's a long path till there







Anindita Bose


I am a Woman


I am a woman, born to be protected I am told.
I need to act less and witness more; my stories remain untold.
I cannot lead but follow the traditions,
It's for myself, I need to believe in predictions.

I have no choice, but to obey their commands,
Since parents, brothers, lovers, husbands, sons- none ever demands.
They think about my safety, about my own good;
How can I ignore them and be rude?

I need to have a future, a home to survive.
If I wish to achieve these myself, it's a mocked-surprise!
If I want to be stronger, then I need to be reborn.
In this birth, however I remain a woman.

Sometimes while growing up I had visions of myself;
For challenges, success and identity I too craved.
I would make my parents proud, I had faith.
Little did I know that my days were decided!

I am safe, I am loved, I am given what I need.
Yet my heart cries and struggles to be freed.
I wonder why I feel betrayed;
In midst of such loving life, why I feel confined?

In search of my answers, I looked at a mother.
Silently she stared at me and hid behind a father.
Being confused, I nudged a sister;
She vanished amidst the laughter of a brother.

This cannot be true. I am not a feminist.
I was raised lovingly. In unequal stories I believe the least.
But with each ten years of my life;
For more love and freedom I strive!

I am a girl, a sister, a wife and a mother.
They say I have the duty of a creator.
But after playing all these roles,
I witnessed, I have missed some goals.

I lost my dreams and myself somewhere,
Exploring the world, I could never dare.
Learning from experiences, is yet undone;
They say it's fair, since I am a woman.
And I wonder if I should believe in them;
I am a woman and this is my life's game.





Sufia  Khatoon




It buzzed again,
The mind never sleeps
But in a quite alley
of translucent veins
It hides and weeps.

Pain in the eye that
Saw her death,
The tongue that tasted
her dying words,
The ears that heard
her fall off life,
The nose that smelled
her dried blood,
The skin that felt
her tears.

In another life
She was a man,
In another life he was her,
Yet in each life
She dies brutally.
Guilt a friend to your
Unkind notions,
She can no longer
Breath in freewill,
You can no longer
Sow her seed of dreams.
Mind memorises
her fall time after time
after time after time.




I Am No Goddess



Anindita Bose


A fire burning my essence
and scattering ashes of unknown
stories that fade within

dreams are no more dreams
but desires of long lost destinies that
could have been my own

I walk on tales sang by the
witnesses of my own land in which
they demarcate my roles

sometimes a deity and
sometimes evil since they believe
I am a deceitful fetus

I have seen miseries, love,
goodness and moments of brutality
when my existence feared

a pseudo world of words
weaving my life in which I have
nothing to say or act…

amidst such claustrophobic
walls of generic nuisances I rise each
time to play the phoenix

an epic of a wandering river
in search of an ancient sea.









Desert Flowers



Amit Shankar Saha




I live in a dark room,
I lift my hands to touch the sky,
darkness fills the space
between my palms and the ceiling,
I sigh and say...
but my father sends a hail
of stones that fills my mouth.
A thousand horses ride out
from the mouth in my brain.
Their hooves echo in the hollow
of your rib cage. At the pit
of your stomach a knife cuts
the hunger into a gulf.
I gulp the pieces, I gulp.
the men of apocalypse ride
into my mouth with flags of peace.
One more desert flower blooms
and all the stones turn into grains.