Sumedha Sengupta

Why is Poetry the Way it is?

Even with the dwindling perfume of
the candle, and the tinge of orange on the
horizon, there is hardly any poetry
twirling on my lips-

Why is poetry most often about
book-bound, dried up leaves,
and the rays of the sun slyly
iridescent on shimmering glass beads?
Why are corpses always shrouded
with crisp white sheets?
The autumn roads are lachrymose,
covered in bright scarlet and yellow leaves,
And the path to happiness is twisted and turned,
if not broken into divergent streets.
Decisions are always to the rhythm
of the wind, and sorrow set
to hackneyed old tunes.
How can poetry be good or bad,
when it's merely metaphors of our
woes painted in bright pastel hues?
How does the smile of a beautiful maiden,
cast slanting rays of hope, and why are flowers
a symbol of freedom when they dance only to
the whim of the powerful westerlies?
Why does love appear as flutters in the chest,
and how is the simple off-white of the moon,
a cornucopia of a Forlorn lovers' dreams?
How does the night sky give one hope,
that dark empty spaces can exist?
Why do we study rhymes written by broken souls?

My courtyard was never adorned with
withered tulip petals. My home has the stench
of dried up fish, and my nights just reserved
for spinning whimsical stories.

But poetry is aesthetic without vanity I'm told-
It's finding rhythm in the blink of an eye.
It's narrating stories not meant for headstones,
stories that perhaps have already been told,
but you and I, we set it to verses and it
becomes our tale, one that hasn't existed before.
It's about seeing faces in clouds, and
souls in the stars. Maybe crisp white
bedsheets are, after all, just shrouding the
words that were never said aloud.
Maybe, it's about finding shades
of colour in an inconspicuous grey path.
Maybe it's the sound of people who
would otherwise drift away into oblivion.
Wonderfully so, even rejected poetry is a
powerful sound to the perceptive heart.
Most of all, maybe it's just simply about
asking things that have never asked-

Then maybe, just maybe,
I have a poet's heart after all?


Sumedha Sengupta (She/Her) is a 21 year old student and writer residing in New Delhi, India. Her work can be found in Twist&Twain, The LiveWire, and is forthcoming in a few anthologies. On a good day, she can be found obsessing over chemical reactions, painting contorted faces, or listening to classical music. One day, she hopes to discover something extraordinary!