The Last Birthday 
  
 pain balloons 
 burns,
 like a candle flame
  
 his lips flicker
 and trickle a prayer
 down the eyes
  
 silent last birthday rose 
 needling like a thorn in his 
 sagged balloon-like flesh
 caked with a culture
 in his temple
  
 a geriatric 
 ward, off 
 like in isolation
 in senility
  
 a mobile of 
 unanswered calls
  
 sad smile
 in the sun’s face
 fading away 
 like evening light
 a last wish
  
  
 A Lie
  
 woven with the void of 
 years in the African sands, 
 borrowed from the 
 life’s incomplete pages
                
 sits in secure flat seated chair 
 bought from the supermarket 
 as a highest bidder at a secret
 safe government auction 
  
 the natural defensive uproar adorned 
 in showy kinesics, entreats for scraps 
 of learning from another that 
 proclaims the biography of  its own 
 blunder written with the stolen letters 
 from the pages of a ruined history
  
 it picks up the leaves and windfalls 
 spilled under growing trees in the
 government orchard with more lies
 that socialize a life whose belly 
 bulges with the voracity for wealth 
  
  
 Paper Boats
  
 dreams spilled 
 down to earth 
 from the truth but 
 carry their own 
 dream scripts 
 that blot out in the 
 truth’s endless streams 
 unfolding it which 
 the earth returns us
 to its verdict
 
  
  
  

   

Dr.Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian English Poet from Machilipatnam, India. His poems were published in various literary Journals in India and abroad. He presented his research papers and recited his poetry in many reputed universities like Oxford University United Kingdom, Wilkes University USA, John Hopkins University USA, Henrich Heine University Germany, University of Caen France, Banja Luka University Bosnia and Herezegovina, University of Gdanski Poland and others. He was the reciepient of Dr. J.K. International Award for 2014, from India for his achievements in poetry. Sreekanth Kopuri is presently a professor of English, Lives in Machilipatnam dividing his time between teaching and creative writing.