Dilemma

The answer in your eyes          hangs in suspense

like the undisclosed results      of pregnancy tests.

I wait as an unaborted fetus     floating in the amniotic night

of unawareness. I feel              the pastiness of the situation

in the glair of an egg                the shell is broken

here the shell is                       an image of my faith.

I must learn to see                   what is so clear 

to so many others                    but not to my unborn faculties

which is dumb by design          in the silver trappings

of your esteemed espousal       of my unprepared proposal

and keeps parroting                 what you want to hear             

                               over and over.

Soda Bottle

Somewhere in a cold storage
I was a codd-neck bottle of Soda,
my consciousness crushed,
compressed, chilled, capped.

Foggy clots filled the veins,
the heart was in hibernation,
the beats standstill, a glass marble
trapped in the thin throat.

And then with a warm touch you
opened me up for the first time
and kissed salt into my mouth,
sprinkling seeds of life into me

and the dormant effervescence
gushed out through my neck
like a fountain of lava,
like an abrupt ejaculation.

Debasis Tripathy does a regular desk job for an IT Company in Bangalore. Sometimes he writes – poems and short fiction. His work has been featured in Turnpike, Adelaide Magazine, Kitaab , Punch Magazine & elsewhere.

About the illustrator: Mike Knowles has spent over 40 years working mainly in comics, along with TV, Radio, animation and gonzo-style journalism for a “top-of-the-shelf” magazine, along with odd spells as a digital artist. Finally, there were the three gruesome years writing gags for comedians (even though they begged him not to. But what did they know about humor), in which he was cruelly subjected to the thick nicotine-laden cloud of cigarette smoke that permeated the working men’s clubs.