Muhammad orates
to blue does, in paradise—
wings of gold birds clang.
firebrick horses neigh—
feathered girls chortle in moonglow,
rain cossets the dark.
sleeping jaguar mist
in your velvet armpit castles—
chandeliers in wind.
hungry egrettas
invade summer’s white fingers—
hotel nostalgia.
nocturnal flaregrime,
everything is geometry—
a nameless winter.
love’s mendicants become monsoons’ downpour—black horses on a cloudy day—hasten towards the laguna of gelatin skulls,
you gently prune solar leaves in meadows of clay orisons; the feather is a wakened gypsy whom the unhinged, carmine wind lulls.
Inam Hussain Begg Mullick is a poet and editor, photographer, composer and performance artiste residing in Kolkata. Variously anthologised in print and on the internet, his publications in print include Roses for the Madhouse (Cult of Beauty, 2010), Winter’s Electric Architecture (Hawakal Prokashona, 2016) and The Magical Life of Inamorato (Writers Workshop, forthcoming in 2021). He has coedited Freedom Raga 2020: 74 Poets pay Tribute to the 74th Edition of India’s Independence (Exceller Books, 2020) with Joie Bose, Peacocks in a Dream: An Anthology of Contemporary Indian English Verse (Erothanatos: The Alternative, 2020) with Subrata Biswas and The Kolkata Cadence: Contemporary Kolkata Poets (Hawakal Publishers, 2021) with Jagari Mukherjee and Anindita Bose. A topper in the Drama in Practice and Writing in Practice papers at JUDE, Inam teaches Creative Writing across various levels. Formerly a columnist with Evolve, The Statesman, Inam is the Founder-Editor, The Quiver Review, the Poetry Editor, Erothanatos and the Nodal Officer, Poetry Paradigm. He blogs at www.inamorato.in, The Inamorato Studio.
