POETRY EDITOR ANANYA S GUHA’S NOTE: Sushmita Baruah’s poems critique a humanity that has forgotten the essential values  of  life and humanity and how to preserve them. From Syria to generalized views on mankind her poems are socially relevant.

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The Purple Haze

 

On a cold winter morning in the woods

she wakes up in her usual gleeful mood

takes on the horses for their daily graze

soon to be a victim in this urban maze!

 

Vagary came in a sham,

not of nature but a monster’s clan

the brutal act of savagery,

her piercing eyes cannot lie

the day humanity was to die.

 

Heinous and dastardly crime;

amidst deities in your holy shrine

the demons hath their plot

not fearing their own god!

 

Whilst still in that holy abode;

tender purple crushed before the blossom

Death! could you have been less gruesome?

Her father called aloud in dismay

the horses had the loudest neigh,

little bud could not see the light of the day.

 

the radicals against the fringe

seems to be ever widening

no way of protecting,

but stealthily suppressed

inside the womb and once out

beneath the political clout

tradition and culture once eulogized

Is a nation that is grossly polarized.

 

While the feeble laws are stifling

Humanity is unabatedly bleeding

Faith is to come together not to part

Crime has no religion, community or caste.

 

Ashamed, appalled, outraged and helpless

Most of us still in a daze

Cannot seem to see through the Purple Haze!

 

(In memory of the horrific gang rape and murder of a 8 year old child which has shocked the entire country of India. Bloodcurdling and heartrending to say the least, this is a slur on humanity .  )

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The Contrite

 

A note to thyself when words fail

a past that haunts, still holds a trail

a split second but a cruel lapse

not of deceit but an instance of how thoughts collapse.

 

The feelings of a stoic,

conscience crushed to guilt

a moment that had the last bean spilt.

 

A state of bewilderment while unmasking,

familiar faces in the guise of demons,

a life of remorse confessing to moral sermons.

 

I am at sixes and seven,

patches in life seem so uneven.

serendipity by a stroke of luck

pursuit of happiness is where I am stuck!

 

Bruised and scarred,

in the ears the thoughts are jarred

wake up in a daze to my dismay,

I describe my life in a brief soliloquy

The contrite ! they say.

 

Contemptuous and disdainful

a life of damnation !

deemed superficial and pretentious,

yet the indignation to be righteous,

she clings to her conviction

her only path to salvation.

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Sushmita Baruah is a working professional currently working with Wipro Technologies, Delhi. Poetry is her passion and so is reading, and travelling across the globe. She has been closely associated with the Personality Development & Grooming Sessions for Corporates as well as in the Fashion Industry in Guwahati.