On Turning Forty

Everyday, I fill myself with 

forgetting. Buying, selling, 

gazing at daydreams. For each day 

reminds me of my mortality.

And each day, my mother's flesh 

melts away in my embrace—her 

skeleton, cold beneath sagging skin, 

as my father's ashes burn 

another wrinkle upon my face.

Everyday, I fill my self with forgetting

that I too am killing time, until time 

kills me in turn. Everyday, I fill myself 

with forgetting—self destruction, 

atrophy, suppressed murder.

August 7, 2023-February 10, 2025

doxa

anchored, 

unmoved by 

the flow of  your

blind math.

solid, unmoving 

amidst the

tide of your...

your liquid 

modernity.

the refusal to 

circulate is 

but another 

name for 

death.

Two Mournings

Snail's tears...
a trifle,
weighed against
the sea of blood.


Snail's dreams,
asinine...under
a firmament of its
own making. Coils and coils
of sleep, adding up
to nothingness.


For what matter a tear
in the snail's shell,
when the sky
is falling on us?


Anirban Kapil Baishya (August 18, 2019)

Lotus

Did you think
it was honey?
Laced with poison,
blood stained hue,
did you think it
shone like gold?


Viscous, damp
against its
orange scales,
were you a
fool to think
it was gold?


were you a fool to call it gold?
only a fool would call it gold.


Anirban Baishya (August 5, 2019)

Geology

An ocean here, its
waves crashing
against the walls
of the heart.

The ebbs and flows
of its tides, etching
their shapes in
riverine arteries.

Welcome to love’s
geology. Its fluvial
logics erode the
levees of the mind.

Welcome to the flood,
Welcome the flood.

Anirban Baishya (March 31, 2019)

Uncanny Valley

Buy me, here
i am by me.

Shimmering
in laminate,
neon reflections
radiate from
bonded skin.
Buy me...

i have drunk
polymer waters
to turn my
blood to wine.

Body bent
on lathe,
chipping bone
to  meet the
shape of
your dreams.

Buy me
and fill
your hole
with my
plasticity...

Buy me. Transact.
Or transform into
a pillar of salt.

Anirban Baishya (November 7th, 2018)

Umbilicus

Night is the 

name of the

color that

invites the

ghost of my

fathers.

Slowly they 

crawl, shells

covering the

echoes of

their sinister

chatter. 

The slime of

their tracks, 

written into

my bones...their 

gastropod teeth 

slicing through 

my  mothers' 

eyes.

A hole in my 

belly is all

that remains...

An aching eye

in my navel

flutters to

remind me of

the cords that

they have cut.

Anirban Baishya (November 2nd, 2018)