Poems by Sanjukta Dasgupta

BE GOOD

 

Of all the words

In the lexicon

Good is the worst adjective

Conferred as a crown

On girls and women.

 

Be good

Is a swish of a whiplash

Be good

Is a lash of the tongue

Be good

Is a command

That turns women

Into potted bonsai

 

If

Be bad

Is to dance madly

Sing loudly

Shout and laugh

Speak and write freely

All that’s bad about good

 

Then throw off the mask

Liberate good

Good is bad

Bad is good

Let us breathe

In the good-free air

 

MAN

 

A man or men

Are never beautiful or lovely

Their jutting muscles are so ugly

They are handsome they feel

It is an illusion that can kill

 

Man hates a mirror

For him mirror is a scary jester

Man loves to imagine he is a tower

the truth is he is not even a flower

 

Man is a baby who dreams that

Women are mothers in disguise

If otherwise, he screams in dismay

 All anti-depressants fail to calm him

 

He needs mothers not medicines

To mollify his jangled nerves

And tell him he is a tower

And not a blob of kneaded flour.

 

 

MAY DAY

 

‘Workers of the world, UNITE

You have nothing to lose

But your chains.’

 

Workers at home

The soft-spoken dutiful women

Hear the timeless slogan and shrug

 

Women at home

Work all the time

Eight hour shifts a blasphemy

 

Women at home

Are non-working women

Women at home love unpaid labour 

 

Criminals are paid in jail for allotted work

 Home is an intimate rigorous imprisonment cell

Women inmates at home have no bank account

 

Women at home die like everyone else

A framed photo on the wall

A martyred angel in the house.

 

Women at home

Lose their chains in death

Brain-washed by mythic mystique.