Poems Of The Week 002: Without Warning, You Go Completely Blind. How Do You React?

Hello folks! Firstly, we just wanted to thank you for coming to this page and reading this.

We’re into Week 002 of the 2018 100-Poem Challenge, and the poets are motoring on! We read over 250 poems this week, and it was beautiful to read each and every one of them.

The prompt for this week was:

“Without warning, you lose your eyesight. You don’t feel any physical pain. The world around you goes dark, but all your other senses become sharp. Write a poem about how you react in the immediate aftermath.”

Our thinking behind the prompt was this: we wanted people to put themselves in a truly difficult situation, and see how they wrote about their response. Eliminating the element of sight also gave the poets an opportunity to explore the other 4 primary senses, something that a lot of poets did beautifully.

But essentially, the point was to force poets to explore territory that they might otherwise not enter into. Which is why we don’t think it was an easy prompt, and which is why we are so, so proud of all the poets who contributed poems to the challenge this week!

Below are the 3 poems that we picked as Poems Of The Week 002, and below that, are some very special shout-outs for some very special poets (Seriously, make sure you read the shout-outs, some of those lines are out-of-this world!)

Hope you enjoy the poetry! Let us know what you thought of the poems in the comments below ❤ We’d really, really love to hear your opinions!

POEMS OF THE WEEK 002

Listen.

They told me that beauty lies
But in the eyes
Of who beholds.

But late that night
As I held her against my gooseflesh
The atlas was the calluses on my fingertips
As I drew worlds across her skin.

These days I can no longer hold poetry in my palms
So she plays them on my lips instead
The syllables ringing like accordion keys
And I suppose the stars all still look the same
But they tingle just like the wind
As it chimes past the bells on my door.

Listen.
I now know cappuccino breaths smell the same as the waves purring against my footsteps
And every passerby bears the face of a friend I lost
Every passerby is a friend I ever missed
As I smile and mistake them for one.

Listen
These days, skin and tone
Taste likes the radio, you and the morning tea
Bringing Christmas a little bit closer
It’s always Christmas when all you hear are heartbeats drumming out your favourite tune
When the click clack of heels
The pit pat of rains
And the sleepy morning train home chugs out a song you know but have forgotten

Listen.

That day I heard what the mountains echo when I dragged a paintbrush across your spine
Dripping you in colours I cannot see
But love
Love
Oh, have I loved
Your eyes enough to know what colour they are
All the shades of that storm as I ran naked in the rain
Not knowing if anyone’s watching
Not caring if anyone’s watching
You see,
Now that all my mirrors are windows
I tumble through the looking glass into the world beyond
These days, I am too Alice to be afraid.

And the young still fall in love to the sound of Billy Jean
And the soldiers hum as they clean their barrels
Waiting for a morning that for me has faded.

Listen.
Maybe that was always the answer
No wars rage in the dark, my love
No blood pools dawn red

Listen.
As a newborn that knows nothing but of his being
That knows nothing
But skin.

Listen.

For in the night
There is singing.

— Ananyaa Bhowmik

(Congratulations to Ananyaa, our Rank #1 for Week 002! Her poem is sensationally beautiful, and was a delight to read. Please keep writing, Ananyaa!)

My mother’s prayer is the act
of gathering leaves -
the shape of each syllable measured out like love,
like the first bite of fish after monsoon.
Today I hear her pray like I listen to the rain on the window pane -
left out,
from the inside.
Perhaps praying, like a movie, is constructed out of various acts -
the tilt of her chin, her back curved like the top
of a flower stalk, and across her shoulder
the old purple shawl.
Or perhaps, it is lilac.
I cannot remember if it had poppies or
roses on it.
What I do remember is the shape of my mother,
and how the poppies or roses smelt of sun.
Today,
the sun feels like an afterthought,
heat has never tasted like betrayal before-
like a volta to a sonnet
written after days.
Last night I drew a painting of the sea
all in black.
My mother approved -
she said there are only so many colors the fingers can hold,
the rest is in the folds of salt in air.
Today I see a painting that shimmers in the
monochrome of a strange new color called blind.
It is not black or red or brown,
It falls somewhere between the strands of escaped light from an empty fist and
the fading silhouette of my mother praying.

— Rishitha Shetty

(This is such a beautiful, understated poem. We’d advise you to read this poem slowly. Let the images wash over you. We were blown away by the simple beauty of this poem and Rishitha, we hope you keep writing through the year!)

//Today my eyes have died, and//

I’m the box
of tissues they sleep in, and

Never had I ever visioned
that my body would become
a coffin
before a corpse, and

All of a sudden
I smell rose thin red
- residues of dried up arteries like they
were straws sucked off of Rooh Afza
on a sunny summer afternoon, and

The shroud is a blindfold,
I feel the satin white
- how the clear clouds have floated
closer to the horizon but they no longer
can cry any rains, and

As for the warmth of the Sun
I hear golden yellow
- rays falling onto me like they were
warriors shoveling stone and soil,
pushing my eyes into the grave, and

So in my eternal dreams I scream,
I taste the lonely blues
- of heavenly skies and their desire to
open doors to empty sockets because
the earth is too bitter a tomb
to remain in, and

Today my eyes have died, and

I can see

darkness
- of the womb I was born into.

— Lisa Mandal

(Lisa is one of the most talented young spoken word poets we’ve come across, and we’re unbelievably proud of the progress she’s been making in the last few months. Lisa, our advice to you would be to remain patient, and to keep working on your craft, so that you fulfil your immense potential!)

Special Shout-Outs

Just like last week, there was just too much beautiful poetry for us to only share 3 poems! This is why we’re going to give special shout-outs to 5 extremely amazing poets. Please read them, because there’s some real gems below.

1. Daniel Sukumar

A stunning excerpt from this poem:

This is not sex,
this is me tattooing her
on every part inside my head
so the rest of my life in dark days
can remember all the colors of her.
This is not sex,
this is me branding
her outline on
every never ending
and the spaces between them
with the warmth
from all my extremities.
This is not sex,
this is a blind man
desperately trying
not to forget
his light.

2. Nidhi Krishna

Here’s an excerpt from her poem:

love felt like everything all at once
being bear hugged by a bear
the fear of dying but the comfort of
warmth a
slow corrosion of everything we are
familiar with a
deconstruction of our inherent selfishness
like the bitterness of salt
wounded across a lip
sharper than a bee sting
salt doesn’t know how to die
it harvests your skin
grows a home
in your body
leaves you heavier than
before
struggling to swim

3. Pritha Roy Choudhury

An excerpt from her poem:

He sits in his favourite chair and watches you in love and sadness — mostly sadness.
You paint.
You paint away.
The clock ticks hour after hour.
He sleeps and wakes up again.
He asks you if you should stop now.
You don’t.
The black falls on the floor.
He runs to clean it up.
You stop him- “Let it stay. Let it dry. Let it be marked. “
He doesn’t understand.
Neither do you.
It is colder today.
You paint away.
You don’t know what it is but you know what it could have been.

You paint away — two slender hands moving vigorously, painting in blue green yellow green violet red and white.

Not black.

Not black.

Not black.

4. Harry Clifton

An excerpt from his poem:

The air smells tropical, heavy with longing
a sense of vagrant belonging
for once, darkness yields a shape -
My father.

Blurred and dissolving
like sleeping pills in water.

I sniff for memories and breathe vacuum -
they are mischievous now, tickling my nose
Water fizzles on my right arm from the garden hose
he let loose six years back, one autumn afternoon -

5. Shreenidhi Rajagopalan

An excerpt from her poem:

prayers staining breathless pages,
spines dancing to the movements of mouths that got carried away,
goosebump-adorned arms reaching out for an unforeseeable future,
golden ink gobbled up by parched expanses,
long-stalked roses shuddering in tandem with the wind,
waves weaving silken notes around themselves,
exhaustion-rimmed smiles paving skylines,
heartbeats and appetites bottled into veins,
the rustling of the wild swinging itself into the sky’s ears,
pauses sipped by shaking sentences,
the dredges of tea swirling around in a cup wearing itself down,
transactions weakened by the etching of promises on bone,
a fold of memories laid bare for your eyes to spin themselves into,
a clasp of earth aching between two partitioned nations,
questions darkening tongues yearning to unbind themselves
a scar learning to braid solace into itself

So there it is! Our top 3 poems of the week, plus 5 excerpts that absolutely blew us away ❤

Wondering what the 2018 100-Poem Challenge is all about? Read about it here!

See you next week, where we’ll display some brand new fantastic poetry for you!

Disclaimer: The copyright for each poem included in this blog belongs to the poet to which they have been attributed.