Dr. Amitabh Mitra was chosen as "Best Entry" in an April 2nd Themed Prompt, titled, "Gazing at Moon From the Balcony". Another poem was chosen as a "Best Entry" as well as a painting, in our weekly "Anything Friday" offerings held each week on our Facebook Group. Dr. Mitra is quite multitalented, not only is he a Trauma surgeon, he is a publisher, poet, and an avid photographer and painter as you will observe below. I have added extra poems that Dr. Mitra submitted to ILA, previously.
It's Here... The theme of godfather is playing somewhere and my mind once again tries to open a long shuttered window on pall bearer of shadows and sadness of a sun dimmed by an incongruous sky It's here in a Gwalior palace moments entwined with moss and lichen kept their eyelids open for a stray summer ray or a fragrance unforgotten from a wisp of your night breast on that night It's here in a Gwalior palace beasts of wind beat the stonewalls in frantic passions trying since long to unveil your hair and a tangled evening heavy with another days feeling It's here in a Gwalior palace I had once held your hand and asked you of dawn and destiny of the heart caught in silk of bare-thread talk Since then I have changed my name so many times I have treaded many evenings at different times I have forgotten the dusk many a times I have recalled a night so many times and I have slept in your smile many a times. © Amitabh Mitra
and in such nights when loneliness recurs in the eye of lost twilights I think of u as always desperation breaks even on a sky seeking the rebellion of old streets and thoughts © Amitabh Mitra
Photograph below by Dr. Mitra
and then the sun swept a sea and red horizons fell in the far depths of a tenor the swirling dervishes at a bereft mausoleum chased the mind to seas skies and the orbis time plunged from old trees older forts leaving a carpet of brown shades and you once suggested an anarchic revelation your lips shared just a whisper in blue © Amitabh Mitra
Gwalior there is a river closing in on a night of shifting blues ascending the dark. a cluster sky clang closes the gates. paths and palaces hurtle merging in a silk sheen touch. your eyes take over the suddenness of everyday forlorn tantrums of a skin and brittle memories rush in before the fort falls to a splintered dawn.
© Amitabh Mitra
"another sudden day" I had met you on a day when red flowers stormed a hesitant sky. I couldn't understand then the red saree, the red bindi and your red bangles, abrasions scarring a river that I had never known the red tram that took us to Park Street, broke through your smile and small talk. drinking tea of chipped cups, your red lips, you knew I yearned to write of subterfuges and shadows in a rundown cafe' closing the sun. even the rising moon broke in a rendezvous of red horizon sifting memories on a balcony whispers of a red flower on another sudden day. © Amitabh Mitra
these are the days when a mind yearns to escape a landscape of runaway seasons there are sudden rains a cloudburst of static expectations and then a sun shone on a darkside of manymemorylanes manyafterthoughts a heart slows down in the eye of a twilight time passes © Amitabh Mitra
The images in the slider below are either photography taken by Dr. Mitra or taken of him. The photograph of Dr. Mitra standing in front of his painting, is titled: "Mdantsane - The Sense of Freedom". We have posted photography taken by Dr. Mitra with his poem. Another image (the yellowish painting with a window), is Art by Dr. Mitra. It is art fused into poetry of Pablo Neruda. Dr. Mitra has given ILA a bit of information about Mdantsane: Mdantsane at one time, was part of an independent country before the apartheid fell, it was called, Ciskei. The doctor had been working in the South African Military Health Service decommissioned as Captain and joined the Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane. Cecilia Makiwane was the first Black Registered Nurse in Apartheid South Africa. You can view artwork by the Doctor on Wikipedia of Cecilia Makiwane Hospital. He has given ILA permission to mention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Makiwane_Hospital
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