Christene Nongbet’s poems are sensitive ruminations
POETRY EDITOR ANANYA S GUHA”S NOTE:
Christene Nongbet’s poems are sensitive ruminations on the world around her and surroundings. They are hard hitting at times for their stark realism. Though ostensibly bare bodied the poems reflect her rural surroundings in a powerful manner.
***
Will you Love Me?
Will you love me like a dog,
wagging your heart
whenever I come home?
Will you lick my hands
and climb all over my soul?
Will you love me like a dog?
***
Tomato
I wish you were
a tomato
so I can have you
in my hand:
soft
and easy to eat.
***
Soul Love
What more honourable
than this soul-to-soul fusion?
Oh, soul love of mine,
do not defile this love
by the merely physical!
Don’t you see,
I am trapped in your heart
like a grain of sand in the desert?
Encircle me,
transform me with a touch
of your pure love.
Make me an angel,
not heavenly,
only yours.
***
How Will I?
How can you be my soul love
if you do not see my love,
or my efforts
to understand you?
How can you freeze your mind with a
magic wand, forget the things we share
and only think of my digging into
your heart so I can bleed you?
How can you lock
your memories
in the darkest of caves,
fooling yourself
that my heart and hand,
while caressing you,
were just a show?
How can you conclude
everything so soon?
Do I need to remind you
of what I said on my sick bed?
I’ve etched your name inside me:
even if I want to, I cannot erase it.
How can you forget
the night we drove together,
filled with divine passion,
and I called you my soul love,
not soul mate?
Isn’t love, eternal?
Isn’t mate, merely sensual?
Don’t you remember?
We inspire each other
like rain ‘honouring Earth’!
How will I carry the blood
staining your pants
in my mynsiem, my soul,
if you fail to see that the blood
pumping in my heart
is all for you?
How will I make you positive about me?
How will I make you spurn
the insecurities crawling
in your heart like summer ants?
How will I assure you
that I adore you,
or that you are the sun
and the moon to me?
How will I?
A question unanswered,
maybe
till I die…
How will I?
***
Magical Rain
For you,
Dear Bahduh,
I cry,
I lose control.
Breathless
with excitement,
I think of how
Mother Earth
had gifted us
(for our special day)
the magic globule
of water,
explicitly
termed as ‘rain’,
to conspire with us:
bond our thoughts,
bond our dreams.
***
Hailstorm and Chaos
27th November 2004.
Hailstorm came barging
into every room
with hails like potatoes,
thumping our heads.
Mother took an umbrella,
shielding my siblings…
The house was no longer
a house.
Hailstorm’s best companion,
Chaos, followed soon after,
harrying us relentlessly—peace
outside the house.
Thus that day,
Hailstorm
and Chaos became
inseparable;
thus to this day,
I dread their return,
like the child
I haven’t outgrown.
***
Your Touch
Your touch
has replenished
my dried well,
put me to the test
of wild passions.
Will you drink
from it?
Will you satisfy
my passions,
dipping in it?
***
Bio-sketch:
‘CHRISTENE NONGBET is an upcoming poet and school teacher. She has completed her MA in English literature from North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, and her BEd from IGNOU. She lives at Umsning village, Meghalaya’.
