Mandragora

 

29.0 x 9.5 inches; Watercolour, pen and ink over graphite pencil on handmade paper (Click on image to enlarge)

 

Twilight in the park

Awakens the fireflies,

Liminal magical beings

Discard their shadows,

Glowing with urgent eyes

Desires that seek the dark.

 

A bush lightly trembles

Growing into life, lazily,

Like a long drawn yawn

Leaving your bed of leaves,

Flipping tousled head hazily

A smile tickling me crumbles.

 

The scent of pleasure

Conjures a potent embrace,

With promises of resurrection

Flowing in our excited veins,

Needy kisses drunkenly trace

The elixir we warily treasure.

 

Cracks open the shell

Bursting boils of repression,

Sighs escape turning us deaf

To screams in our tortured heads,

Grasping this moment of elation

Before hiding, back in our hell.

 

Kundalini

13.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Sleeping coiled like an embryo,

In the hollow of my crescent body,

You are distant and yet so close!

I breathe in your scent,

You breathe out my longing

Uncoiling in my loins, like a rose.

You hear my distant call,

A whistle of a train far away

On a silent night it echoes.

You stir and reach back to fumble

Deep into my throbbing memories,

Between my third eye and my nose.

You tingle and travel up my spine,

Igniting the seven spheres of my being,

Bliss like a cold fire in me grows.

You slither in my head like goose bumps,

I open my eyes and receive your lips,

A lotus of thousand petals blows.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

The Sphinx

9.7x13.7 inches; Pen drawing on paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Enigma

Are you?
Secrets play like dew
On lotus leaves,
Your riddled spirit
Mercurial but true.

Is it your will?
A charade,
To keep us in shade,
Lest we break
Your fragile heart,
Vulnerable but afraid?

Treacherous
They say,
Is your way,
Like a mirage
Igniting passions
Leading lives astray.

Is it your will?
Devising lame
And misleading game?
A trial of faith,
For the lovelorn souls
To drown in shame?

Merciless
To behold,
Is your heart so cold?
A sharp dead stone
None dare melt,
Not even boldest of bold.

Is it your will?
Being cruel,
Using malice as fuel?
Haunting with dread
Of torture and heartache,
While your own self, you duel?

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

The Phoenix

9.7x13.7 inches; Pen drawing on paper with water color wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

Your nest is your pyre.

On a bed of myrrh,
Strewn with ageless suffering
The sepia Cinnamon twigs
Form a fence of memories,
Fading…
Entwined with the Spikenard,
Gathered from the lost Eden
Of love and yearning,
You breathe your last…
Igniting the inferno,
Devouring the past.
The purging flames grow
Into unmarked wings,
An unbroken heart
And you are born anew
From the ashes of desire.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal