Fires burn bright
Behind eyes shut tight,
Smoke spills regret
Sooted with fright.
The face of nightmares
Soddens with despair,
And dream curdling screams
Scald the seams of aftercare.
Reflections of Today
– Akanksha Gupta
Mirror of Contempt
Tag Archives: mind
Onset of Illness
I can breathe,
But with each breath
Unease
Sweeps through
Guts twist and churn,
Conscious thrums the chest
Off beat
At every turn
When empty,
Hunger gnaws
With claws
That painfully feed
When bloated,
Even the rot of despair
Clots
To never weep
And when breathless,
Though gusts of air
Flail piteously
I can still breathe
I can always breathe
But the still in the air
Waylays the mind
Distills the spirits
Consumes the soul
Dreary dispassion
Threatens
To possess
The body whole
Eventually, it weaves
A frighteningly hypnotic trance
That grips the unwitting senses
In its maddeningly deathless dance
– Akanksha Gupta
The Sarnath Effect
Faith pours artistry into simple words
Conviction cauterises the beginnings of doubt
Wisdom lends belief to the beholder
Goosebumps brush tingles inside out
Richness of history delights the senses
Depth of knowledge astounds
Stories impress the spirit with wonders
Unearthed from ancient grounds
Wellsprings of sounds bloom in the chest
Rushing of conscious shuffles closer to mind
Peace combs through a restless strength
And waters the soul with wealth beyond time
– Akanksha Gupta
Lock and Key
Lurking in the depths of my soul
The hunger unfettered, growls and roars
I grab it tight with both my arms
With fingers unclenched from clammy palms
Yet fear threatens to swallow all sound
The muted ringing of silence surrounds
I dare not open my eyes, and stare
Into the very eyes of despair
On a face that could so easily mirror my own
Had it not been wildly unkempt and so very old
Dazed, startled, I uncurl again, and again glimpse
The future that spins anew with every blink
~ Akanksha Gupta (poem)
The Fault in the Alteration
The day
Like embroidery
Is fine
It scrapes across the fingertips
And digs ‘neath the roughshod nails
Before it eases into night
And the hardships gently wane
And ebb and flow with tendresse
Of each, now habitual, caress
That kneads the creases and furrows away
The day
Like embroidery
Is fine
It scrapes across the fingertips
It digs ‘neath the roughshod nails
Benign, as a child’s gaze,
It draws blood –
It plucks each drop
And hurls into the design
Of Drowning suns
And Ruby skies
The drops pool
The wounds cool
The day rests into night
The rains glaze over the reds
That macabrely coalesce
Along the hardened lines
But if the fault
Were upturned
The rains would gently graze the reds
And ebb and flow with tendresse
Of each, now habitual, caress
That kneads the creases and furrows away
Then the day
Unbeguiled
Like embroidery
Would also smile
– Akanksha Gupta
The QuadCore Brain
ACT I : The Belligerent Sycophant
I wish
I could carve out
A path
From my head to my heart
And rationalize every thought
And every chemical reaction
With a melting pot
Of facts, figures and emotions
I wish
I could dissolve
All my scruples and sorrows
With nary a care
About the tuples of tomorrow
Oh I wish many a wish
And dream many a dream
But right now all I can focus on
Is, my senses tingling
From the cool of the ice cream
ACT II : The Silent Activist
I’m trying to improve my handwriting
Making it clearer
So that when I put down my thoughts
And ideas
And opinions
I can go back and recollect them
So that they leave in my memory
An indelibly clearer impression
They are an expression in time
Of Circumstances and the society
Of myself and those around me
And I wish to put them down
Elegantly and tidily
To preserve them for eternity
To remember, to recall, the actions
To study the reactions
And learn from the inactions
Most of all
– Akanksha Gupta
An Absence of Monotony
One always needs inspiration
In his, her or their life
To live, to work, to think, to <code>
And especially to write
No experience can be said
To leave the mind untouched
No moment can be called
Too ordinary, and as such
Jilting constancy
By transitioning between moments
Produces yet another, thus culminating
Into many a resonance
Of long forgotten, archived facts
And intuitively formed impressions
That trigger newer trains of thoughts,
Streamlining our passions
And after this fashion of convulsing
Into brainstorms, involuntarily
The resulting creation unfurls
Yet another moment of epiphany
– Akanksha Gupta
The Pluming PoeTree 