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

27^th 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’.