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Personalities are
poetic enemies,
escaping, twisting,
over smart.

Can always find
another word to put,
or to remove,
hunting for
just the right words
the apt phrases
the vague but pointed,
to substantiate,
embody,
empower.

Tagged in some spaces
by how many connecting lines
we draw outwards
and how many are drawn to us,
and where we draw our lines,
and how well we draw them,
lines accumulate
and define.

But other spaces
have other definitions,
other rules,
unruled,
undefined,
poetic.

© Utsa Seth, 2020

Plain Words

I threw a testament at you.
Words in a sack
That you had no need for.
I entered on Christmas night
Dropped them down your chimney

Like Santa supreme,
You were gifted.

They landed sooty
They landed old
They'd travelled so far.
After all,
After all, 

they'd been 

At home and seen
Shelves of ideas stored away,
Brain tight, invisible,
A priceless clutter
A warehouse,
Messy and full but frequented
If only by me,
So all surfaces dust-free,
Singularly touched
Unless 
You can mind read.

I had so many things to say
So I parcelled

And pampered
And prepared,
Alongside my mind
Busy elsewhere.
Conjuring these compulsions
Decorating, dressing them
In necessity
Smudging unseen corners,
Implications, 
I drained everything
Into you.

Can't help wondering 

What you'll do with my words.
If you'd 

Eat them
Seat them
Seed them
Need them
Or anything
At all.

With the phone in front of me
A dimmed reality,
The falling of night,
An app dulling the light,
I'm able to see
nothing else.

Plain words.

© Utsa Seth, 2020

The White Bougainvillea

It fell
appearing suddenly
a surprise,
a blessing,
a small papery thing.

I needed a standstill
a tangible silence,
I needed time to procrastinate.

A longer elongated second
a moment starting
here and moving to
the next without pause
but very slowly.
Instants like droplets in a wave
inseparable, continuous, infinite
to create a reception.
I needed it to flutter down...

It fell.
Into the Prussian embrace 
of a full moon night,
from amidst a past of emerald leaves,
to a ground existence.

A white bougainvillea,
like life, 
a passing wonder.

© Utsa Seth, 2020

In Need Of A New Poem

In my attempts to translate
thought to word,
I face the absurd,
the moment i look
into THAT book.
Reading from the top
I stop,
and then I read
and then I crop
and then I reread,
reread, 
reread, 
reread,
till letters float off the pages
retelling ages
filled with 
words I didn't mean
situations I didn't feel
needs that i didn't need
dreams that i thought i dreamed
but didn't.
But in my greed
for new words
I blur the print,
remove my inhibitions
and squint
but i find only hints,
and no answers.

© Utsa Seth, 2020

Movie Night Hand-holding

Painted in crimson,
pale skin and dark hair
in the wicked monster's lair
where the prince's dare
and eyes stare
glued to the television screen.
Ah!
a jump scare
catch on to the nearest hand there.
Silence, a pair
getting comfortable comforting
attentions diverting
horror converting to something else,
its working 
for both of them.
Yet, uncertainty taints
for there are fears at play
trying to keep those devils at bay
but it is difficult to say
walls could crumble
so you mumble
but on this trip,
your grip is all that matters.

© Utsa Seth, 2020

Sunflower

A follower of radiance
is hesitant to farm her own
and yet the glow stays the night over.
Her yellow tosses among blades of grass
confused, until the very last
when she realizes, 
her light is complete.

© Utsa Seth, 2020

Smudged Ink

The story begins 

with a cold draft
interwoven, in the 

soft whispers of a hand
that stutters out its 

first words.

As the blue fingers 

tighten their grip,
utterances solidify.

They harden and sharpen
as the prose is chiseled
to an effigy of thought.

Words rise from the depths
where glistening thought bubbles 

fallen between cracks ambled, aloof

until the pinpricks of reality

burst their taught surfaces.

They form sullen puddles

deepened by missed cuddles

and endless struggles

but smudged ink is not weakness,

it is to be treasured.

© Utsa Seth, 2020