STORIZEN POETRY

A Soliloquy Between Two Vaccinations

Universal in its diversity

Life was a montage

An array of pictures

Of births, marriages, rituals, festive feasting

The see-saw of comfort and panic

Emparadised we navigated life

Flirting with flesh, fortune, and freedom

To feel powerful, secure, and cocky

Life happened before the virus put a full stop.

Death is the new normal

Seductive in its organic wholeness

A realm notches above

Higher than our daily concerns

Nothing to be added

Nothing to be subtracted

Its velvety darkness ends all equations.

Corona has dragged death down Into the sphere of everyday life We are more familiar

With the erosion of life

Our expiry date clearly inscribed A short shelf life clipped shorter Consumed and possessed

Death hastens the killing spree Converting breathless mortals into data We live enclosed and hampered Paintings in their frames No longer fluid and free.

Like the Japanese tea party ritual Elaborate and symbolic

Ichigo, Ichie

One chance,one meeting Of fleeting joys and transient encounters Life ends as an epitaph in stone Cosmic joys and sorrows

Dance in the orange-red sparks of the funeral pyre.

Mamta Joshi did her Masters's in History from Allahabad University. Her poems, reflective essays, prose pieces, and short stories have appeared in national dailies and international e-magazines. A free spirit, she works with equal ease in Hindi and English.