The poetry is in the dumps.
The poet too is on the slump.
Remembering flow and metaphors, he laughs
at all the times his words were good enough.
The verses now, they don’t make sense.
The verses now are full of pretence.
Locked indoors, the poet struggles to string words,
running out of themes, he may write about birds.
And if my poems talk about walking down the stairway,
and if in April we look forward to May,
and if my writings start feeling forced and blue
You can blame all this on Covid-19 too.
He’ll write his way out, he often says,
He’ll fight his way out, he often says.
He types away, calls it a nice refrain,
He shuffles words, but all in vain.
He reads the words,
and throws away the sheet,
there’s a vowel missing here, and he can’t see.
And if the words look like squiggles thrown around
You hear them but can’t understand the sounds,
And if the book you’re writing is with plotholes strewn,
You can blame all this on Covid-19 too.
Day 16 of the 21-day lockdown in India
Grains of thought 