Ode to humanity and William Carlos Williams

The coffee has gone cold

I can nuke it if you want 

she says it's alright

so I turn to my phone again

the news streams keep getting worse

and I am a little dazed this morning

from yesterday's beer

it was a European brew 

a little bitter 

the ones that come in green bottles

with edged crowns 

and lesser-known names.

 

It’s a muggy day

and humanity is almost on the cusp of a total meltdown

so we get on with the hours

like William Carlos Williams 

would have, 

through the narrow streets of Paterson, New Jersey

after a home visit to an ailing child.

 

Anant Dhavale

( From "What the Tornado Left Behind.)

Springtime Desolation

 

From our fancy cars to our cozy homes, filled to the brim with things of comfort and of instantaneous joys, what hounds us - what emptiness hoovers our lives.

 

we boast of our wisdom and marvel at our heavy, expensive volumes of Homer and Plato and Emily and Gandhi. Decorated tombs of men and women of yore.

 

we meet at poetry readings and laugh and drink and squeeze energy from the newly supple spring air. Breathe us the mirth.

 

this could be the New York School of Poetry of our times or the immigrant generation of the Beats. Or a nothinger in a sea of other nothingnesses. 

 

nights are blue and virile, ripe with sparkling charms. And stars are good at being the deadbeat masses of gas and dirt. 

 

but the emptiness still hounds us.  

Anant Dhavale

This poem was recently published in the “This Broken Shore’l magazine . 

A Ghazal

 A Ghazal

..

In heart's alleys, a singular halo of sadness remains 

In a little nook of mind, a lingering darkness remains

Forgotten shores, lapping and frothing waves, warmer banks of sands

Memory's broken figment, a shadowy lightness remains

I’ve been what I’ve been, a stranger and a wanderer even

Not her though, like steadfast angelic light, her kindness remains

Under the canopy of countless stars and a brighter moon

A doubt lurks, a question hums and hums, a lonesomeness remains

How we have walked along these uncertain and weary roads

And though the perils are forgotten, the awareness remains

..

Anant Dhavale

(I wrote this Ghazal in simple syllabic verse to match the cadence the genre requires..)

Haiku

sub-tropical mars

an alligator meditates

lilies peek out

.

Anant Dhavale 

[Haikus for the Everglades]

If

If you’ve loved me unconditionally

And I have failed to reciprocate 

You should know I am not the one

Love demands steadfast devotion

But I am a mere leaf in the wind

Do not mourn for me if I float away 

I abandon the tree that birthed me 

When times change and colors fade

The wind carries my judgment and 

When it beckons, I have to go away. 

..

Anant Dhavale

Amber rises the moon

Amber rises the moon

Beneath - thick green woods

A jubilant river makes its way through the gorge

Rims of gray hang around a few stray clouds

Silhouettes of silver float away

in tandem - a swift movement of tectonic plates

Amber moon melts away

in the distance - a smoke, a pallid hue spreads.

..

Anant Dhavale

Recent poems

I've written much these days but have not published here since most publications insist on previously unpublished stuff. Prominent ones include "One Flat Microcosm," "Daughters of Israel," "Springtime Desolation," "Sisterhood of Dukhha," and "Civilization is a Zero Sum Game."

"One Flat Microcosm," and "Springtime Desolation," are published in "This Broken Shore," magazine.