Time and Beyond

Become a toothbrush and settle upon my incisors,
Become a moth and feed upon my sucrose.
Treat time like you treat your pencil
Sharpen it only when it’s blunt
And sleep like an island in a sea
Without the fear of wild animals,
As you are no dense forest.
Do not remember to wake up
Since there is the danger of insomnia
And the limit of morning space
Where you become a clothed human with identity;
You do not need to bath,
I have licked your South-Asian sweat
For breakfast, you are already pregnant with reminiscence.
I have stretched your legs for you
So that you do not develop the habit of turning around
When you wear me upside-down
And think about the world that never stopped revolving
Or bend down to mimic morning sickness for winning the fight over hegemony.
Know that we have dissolved,
Like wounds and ointments, smoke and cigarettes,
Like distance and displacement, sense and solitude.
So do not wake up to be at the mercy of the clock
Because you have become my time and I have become your memory.

Evanescence 

Upon well remembered alleys
When poetry climbs up through the sideburns
Of broken, semi-placid strangers
It is later not emptied from the ears
Like vaporous, semi-restless exits.   
It plays on every time
The side burns are shaven,
In the bathroom sink, on the dusky faces
Which now know that no such verses
Were ever uttered to undergo
The pressure of evanescence,
They were soliloquies of tepid nights. 

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Kaustav B. Kashyap is a young poet whose poetry pieces have won various competitions. His works have ‘The Reading Hour’ magazine and elsewhere. Born and grown up in the Indian state of Assam, Kaustav currently lives in New Delhi where he is pursuing his graduation in English Literature from University of Delhi.