The Straitjackets: Poetry of Sonnet Mondal

Poetry:
Blue-Collar Twister Sweat tries to swim upwards through the hairs of a labourer building the statue of the herald but fails and falls in the soil sucked up by heat, Vanishes as a struggling animal in quicksand; Dreams drain and entity turns into fossils as slippers walk over it. His weapons are a chisel and spade; He lifts them to protest but vacuum wailing in the curves of his muscles make it fall again on the mummified ground; just to dig, dig the ground for the Herald's statue must stand firm or his existence will be buried under its falling weight. Toils will evaporate with the smile of the moon The dawn will hear sounds again- sounds of iron striking against rocks. The air waits to weave those sounds and strike a twister with them- Tall enough for the world to see bold enough to step over mountains Clear enough to show the waving hands begging a day out of slavery.
The Solitary Bench A forlorn bench, putrid with age sits amongst vibrant foliage like a school boy waiting for his first love. The coarse rustle of ruling ‘Gulmohar’ flowers tries to sway him in congenial talks. His silence forces the air to rub them off his body; let him remain lonely for the guest deserves to stick to his mad wishes. The figure that he is longing for runs away from him with each days dying in the ever flowing tide of time. Still, hope says no, wishes say yes and the everyday falling flowers quarrel with the dry leaves riding upon withered braches, to impress his soul and the day ends with the bench shaking them off with the passing air. He sits for one and will not break till she comes running and sits on him just like the day decades ago, when these woods used to a park and the bench was the friend of her everyday indolence.	Two Worlds A blue lake captures my soul in its unmeasured, unimaginable depths where a new world better than lands survive drinking immortality. Howling wolves pierce melancholy and the dropping leaves stuck with fever of spring bows down before the majestic stance of endless sky and waters. Echo of unknown sounds emerging from the interstices of the woods run wildly, circle around ears like unquenched souls. Striking against trunks topless trees they become one with lingering serenity. The bridge connecting them to my land is left broken for years, perhaps broken by the Gods and none has dared to swim across for both worlds gets bewildered with the laws in either side of the bridge
Last Wish Declined Trials after trials; my begging lips started to give up and then spoke the reticent judge- “Hang till death” Similar footsteps were heavy that day marching onto my thin nerves where memories has set up a light nest; I was wrong; my thoughts of it to be undying were crushed. The nest was thrown off and the eggs about to burst open were carried away by ravenous vultures. A month was the time, in which I was allowed to be a man fit to be hung in the square of law; a man who can feel pain rather than one of whom pain is ashamed of. A book, I still call nameless was all I took as medicine; pages after pages the holiness of it cured my sores red in deliberations of the world outside the prison and future. The clock in the central hall that used to sound as the devil’s treads, now seem to be useful hours that smile with the era of truth approaching me with its unlikelihood. One more day to go and the last page of the book had, “seven ways to go to heaven”. I had restored my greed of learning till the last day to grasp the ideas just before falling free into the ocean of kismet. Strong arms pulled me out and the walls wailed, feeling my nonexistence. My last wish was torn to pieces without any grounds known to me or perhaps to the ones who did it. Now, I am walking with obscurity holding onto some pages which said, “truth prevails on death. Neither before nor after.”
Sonnet Mondal is the author of six books of poetry and is the pioneer of the 21 line fusion sonnet form of poetry. At present he is the managing editor of the Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Editor of Indian section of Best Poems Encyclopedia, Editor of Sonnets in the New Millennium(Diamond Point Press) and the Sub Secretary Geneal of Asia Unit of Poetas Del Mundo.