Bhuwan Thapaliya – Page 2

King Kong vs. the Green Witch Shuttered in that arched ceiling house with oversized window eyes, fear frozen as ten foot high Green Witch and King Kong square off neath crabapple tree beside the scotch heavy station wagon. Flared feminine nostrils bull out white choking smoke as accented witch hurls broomstick spears at Brooklyn's hairy ape. Uncertain who to root for I cower neath my cottony get, and pray for peace. Even now some nights that five-year-old boy revives ever cowering neath warm get as warbled voices of the long dead king and Green Witch, throw rock centered snowballs down from sad rooftops of this life. Amplified through sterile echo chambers, their cold white straitjackets bind me to safer letters, as pained hourglass grains drift relentlessly south. So I wake and puke up vanilla conformity echoing art house dramas or MGM movie plots, neutering unknown verses till they sound like every mediocre show on thin air. Whispering, "Picture this... it's easier," in hope that peace will come to this mental house divided if only I write as they want.

Her late grandfather came with a hobbling gait

in her dream last night. They were in a tented camp 

on the river bank, nearby their abandoned farmhouse.

He poured a large peg of Khukri Rum, drank it

with a sly smile and sat down beside her

 on a wobbly camp cot, lit a  cigarette, 

nostalgic smoke curled into the night. 

He took a sip again and through a ragged crack

glimpsed outside and beamed at a  star worm crawling

among the fallen leaves, and thereafter listened for hours and hours,

the melody of those olden times. Its lyrics now hidden, buried,

awaiting discovery as a child with several siblings,

all forgotten, overlooked, lost.

The sky roared and the wind blew hard.

“I think I have to go now,” he whispered in her ear.

“So where do you go from here, grand pa,” she asked.

“I will continue to travel 

but now it is all about reverse travel.

I will move to a place where I’d been before

and stay maybe a week, a month , a year, 

and completely alter the way I see the future.

I see my father. I see my mother.

I see your grandmother.  I see you,”

he answered her with a somber smile

and requested her to stay connected with her past.

She nodded her head and said I will grandpa.

Next morning, she woke up late 

to a dead cell phone

beside her bed in a wooden rack.

No charger in sight.

Nepalese poet, Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections and currently he is working on his fresh poetry collection, The Marching Millions. Thapaliya’s books include, Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), Our Nepal, Our Pride , Verses from the Himalayas and Rhythm of the Heart. (Cyberwit.net)Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, The Strand Book of International Poets 2010, and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, VOICES (Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Countercurrents etc. Author: Safa Tempo: Poems New & Selected & Our Nepal, Our Pride

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author
& https://poetrylifeandtimes.com
See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

King Kong vs. the Green Witch. A Poem by Richard L. Weissman

A dead cell phone. A Poem by Bhuwan Thapaliya