Enjambment — Four Poems by Mandavi Mishra

Enjambment

Things are suddenly good again

I laughed my heart out

On a friend's joke.

I read new poems

And I am excited for the festivals.

I read Sonnet 116 to my brother

And explained him about enjambment

Shakespeare had to continue an idea

So he carried it to the next line.

I like that device,

I feel we need to say too much

That idea travels to the next line.

I talked to an ex three years later

Something feels light,

Something's off my chest

I kept on talking about you.

You are my enjambment

I'll carry you along wherever I go next

My little sister facetimed today

wearing red and white

The world carries so much beauty

This needs to travel through the next line.

Homelessness

Man ate a forbidden apple

And God sent him to earth

Two people then made this whole world.

Ram was accompanied by Sita on Exile.

They lived in a jungle, made a home

Got separated and united and separated again.

Through Crimes and Punishments,

Wars and Peace

Women and men stuck around.

Ancient languages being deciphered

Tales of love would be found.

People killing and dying for its very sake.

Man made a tower to heaven

Fell down and made different languages

In each of them, he expressed love.

I wonder if in doing so, he won or God did.

Through cave and hut and palace and mansion

Man and woman created a world, a home.

In every language known, they found a way

To say to another human, "You feel like home.”

Before you came, I never felt homeless

After you left, I never felt at home.

A Varsity Love Poem

Never such innocence Again

- Philip Larkin, MCMXIV

Love

It should be first done as a teen

Or should be avoided till late 20s

Because once you enter university

You get in a big group

In there is a small group,

In that small group

There is this guy you'll talk to about

Art and Politics and Films and Books

Ghalib and Meer and Left and Right wing

And democrats and republicans.

And one day, when you're about to gulp

Last sip of your coffee

They'll look at you differently

And tell you that they love you.

Friend, these are the guys who'll break your heart

Most brutally, beyond repair.

You'll not read a page that night.

Not go on a walk with the girls.

You'll say you feel sick

You'll call home to know if everyone is fine.

Only to remind yourself of all the promises

You made them.

And the next day you won't attend any class

In your most comfortable clothes, you'll think of him

Smile to yourself and wonder how

It was always there, this love.

And you couldn't see it.

The next day, in your short black kurti

You'll sit in the canteen waiting for him.

You'll hug and kiss and cry and make love later.

Three years down the line.

You'll tell your little sister.

Don't trust such guys

They'll break your heart

Most brutally, beyond repair.

It's over

Plath put her head in the oven,

Woolf jumped into the water.

I understand why women I have worshipped

Chose death over life.

I preferred Austen's Elizabeth over Hardy's

I believed in things falling in place.

Hardy now reverberates in my ears,

"Happiness is but an occasional episode in the general drama of pain”

Some weird feeling in my chest;

Google says it's called palpitations.

So, it's over.

I chant it like a mantra: "It's over."

I want to call you;

My hand reaches for my phone till I pull it back.

I remind myself that I hate you, That I should hate you.

Until I look at myself in the mirror and see a liar.

"You'll be better," I tell myself.

"You're doing great already."

I have no pictures of ours,

Though I remember every inch of your face.

Thinking of your face, late at night, makes me uncomfortable,

As if it's a crime. You're not mine anymore.

All the principles of morality tell me

I shouldn't be thinking about your face or arm.

To distract myself, I think about myself,

Yet again, I am thinking of myself with you.

Shy, fragile, petite, and cozy.

This, too, is wrong.

I am not yours anymore.

Our souls were not made of the same thing.

Brontë might be hurt in heaven.

'Hurt' – I feel that word,

Somewhere within, there's a wound

I keep on removing the scab.

It's fresh again.

It hurts within me;

Asks for tears as ointment.

I evoke the spirits of dead poets:

Da Da Da, give me some peace.

References:

1. Happiness is but an occasional episode in the general drama of pain” is a quote from Thomas Hardy's book The Mayor of Casterbridge.

2. The "DA DA DA" refrain alludes to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, where the words "data," "damyata," and "dayadvam" appear in the context of a thunderstorm. These words are derived from the Upanishads and represent the principles of charity, compassion, and self-control.

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About the Poet:

Mandavi Mishra is from Banaras and did her master's in English Literature from Banaras Hindu University. She enjoys writing and finds comfort in words. For her, poems often feel like more than just words. She has recently started learning Bharatanatyam and is currently working as a freelance journalist for a US-based news app.