Rajnish Mishra is a poet, writer, translator and blogger born and brought up in Varanasi, India and now in exile from his city. His work originates at the points of intersection between his psyche and his city. He edits PPP Ezine and writes at https://rajnishmishravns.wordpress.com/

The Avalanche

  Death:
  
 a word,
 a set of symbols;
 a trigger 
  
 to an avalanche
 alive, with each breath, 
 inhaled and exhaled. 
  
 The avalanche of thoughts and images;
 Rolling down the slopes of past.
 How common and how strange, 
 is being born to die!
  
 Losses, past, mere outlines 
 that the present fills with colours,
 throwing light on the dark, unseen, un-visited land.
  
 Life speeding top-speed 
 towards the end, eyes closed, 
 opened just before collision.  

The End

 The faceless, fateless, nameless ones 
 haunt me, follow me everywhere. 
 Pain, physical, material, becomes one 
 with existence, borne with valour, smiling. 
  
 I wish we’d never met 
 and I had never seen 
 the naked, ruthless, vulgar 
 truth.
  
 The dastardly, cunning me, 
 who found ways to forgive
 the sin committed in cold blood,
 simulated impotence comfortably.
  
 Time, the greatest playwright, 
 re-uses the hackneyed plot,
 performed with tiny alterations, 
 with changed faces each time.
  
 The end never changes.
 It’s always the same:
 The end. 

Hopeful Suffering

 Poetry remains alive,
 or the poet, 
 in suffering too,
 and hope. 
  
 I can see that.
  
 Tell me some more 
 about hopeful suffering, 
 for me 
 it's new.
  
 I'm suffering, 
 as always, 
 bravely, 
 foolishly, 
 like I've always done.