Bhuwan Thapaliya

Drunk I am today. A Poem by -Bhuwan Thapaliya

by 
Drunk I am today,

O’ you little tender world.

With the book of life open before me,

thwarted, blank, I sit here before you all.

Immersed in myself, I am in the Tundikhel,

floating between medieval and modern times.

 
A peanut seller came with a basket of peanuts

and sat beside me.  He gave me, a handful of peanuts

in a colorful piece of paper.  I tossed the peanuts

into the air, and started reading  the paper instead.

The peanut seller smiled and waved me goodbye,

saying, “You are drunk, very drunk today, my friend!

 
“In remote western Nepal,

people heard the Beatles

on battery-powered tape decks

before they saw electric lights,

and helicopters fluttered

 into their lives

 long before the first trucks got there,”

these sentences rose from their slumber

 and stirred my heart.

 
“The first airplane landed in Nepal in 1949

but it was seven years later before

the first highway connected Kathmandu

 to the outside world.

Within a year of that first landing,

the Rana autocracy was overthrown

with the aid of an airplane.”

These sentences came out

from the paper, and grappled my throat.

 
I stood up

but the gravity

of the revelation pulled me down.

I was now drunk, dead drunk

with a million pegs worth of thoughts.

 
I sat on the grass for a while,

thinking about old Nepal

and my grandfather’s life then.

Then I shifted my thoughts

over to the New Nepal

we claim to be building now.

 
Where are the roots of the new Nepal

we claim to be building?

Where are the roots?

 
With a million thoughts

in my head,

I headed to my home

dusting the bare bodies

of the erotic sculptures

on the multi-tiered pagodas

of  hope.

 
Yes, drunk I am today.

Today I am drunk.

With the book of life open before me,

thwarted, blank, I sit here before you all.

 

 

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)

A dead cell phone. A Poem by Bhuwan Thapaliya

by 
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)

Only to meet Yuyu (A Poem in pandemic for my mentor, Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma) Bhuwan Thapaliya

by

Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma

 
Only to meet Yuyu
(A Poem in pandemic for my mentor, Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma)
Bhuwan Thapaliya
  
There’s no one to talk to
in the buzzing streets of Kathmandu,
everything has frozen in this town;
no calm even in the mannequin eyes standing
erect in the fancy boutiques along
the termite eaten streets of the city.
 
Swirling dust and choking fumes infuse
with the breath of pallid roadside trees.
The landscape changes as the rain falls
and the leaves smile again.
Isolated raindrops, expelled lovers
 before their first kiss lie
along the twigs of the branches
 — round, sparkling globules
— undulating without descent.
 
And then everything changes again
when the leaves falls, everything changes.
Once they touch the ground
they turn into ciphers
the sublime truths of life
beneath their layers.
  
The barriers people create between nature
and windows, walls, doors,
are not really barriers  in Kathmandu
for you can talk with all.  And you can
never be bored, you just have to sit
and look at the people passing by
and there’s so much  to say.
 
Gazing deep into Buddha’s serpent eyes,
one feels like being in a Time Machine. 
But sometimes, there is silence,
utter silence of a sadhu’s stare
into the infinity in Kathmandu,
silence of old mansions
where only  a caretaker kills time.
And the civilians of the nation disappear
like the water  sprouts  of the valley
choking my soul  to the core .
  
There is not a person that I can talk to
in the rustic streets  of Kathmandu.
I am as forlorn and lonely as a man snoozing
on an unused railway tracks
in some old Indian town.
  
I hardly ever go out now.
I am fed up with the squalor of urban life
where everyone is not what they seem to be.
I should have stayed back
at the banks of the river Sunkoshi
that festoons my village
chewing the pebbles
of my pristine dreams.
  
These days, I leave my home
only to meet Yuyu, chat up nonstop over
endless cups of masala tea
at Shreejana’s  While Lotus Book Shop,
watching the poems turn into
colorful serpents and climb the  murky trees 
enveloped in grey mist.
  
I leave my home only to meet Yuyu
and share a joke or two,
listen to his sharp one liners.
anecdotes of his travels from
the shores of his dreams
and laugh aloud 
celebrating full- blooded flame
lighted in honor of his vagabond Muse.
 
His words little by little entrap you,
 enwrap your soul in their singing silence,
at the end of the day feeding my shriveled soul.
 
And often as we wave goodbye,
he delves deep into a silent 
that soon turns into a river of endless vigor.
  
Poem dangles from
the edge of his serene mouth. 
And a dreamy prose
dances over his misty eyelashes.
 
And the silence
an ode to the Kathmandu Valley.
If one dare to pay heed.
 
Bhuwan Thapaliya & Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma

 
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 and Selected
https://www.amazon.com/Safa-Tempo-Poems-New-Selected-Bhuwan-Thapaliya
 
Our Nepal, Our Pride
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

We Hiked West. A Poem by Bhuwan Thapaliya

by

 
We hiked west through the woods
to the tunes of an old Chinese FM radio.
Far away, far away from the anguish
of the malnourished children
scouring railway tracks for food
that may have fallen from passing trains.
 
Far away, far away from the smell
of the rot and sewage of an industrial charade.
Far away, far away from the massacre
in the Narayanhiti
and the Ceausescu’s celibacy tax.
 
Far away , very far away from the
echoes of those black churches in America
where worshipers are seized by the Holy Spirit.
 
We hiked west through the woods.
 
Anxious, exhausted, frail,
we sat around a log fire,
on the edge of the forests
chatting and visualizing a different
vision of the future.
 
But after a while,
the profusion
of sights and sounds
near the flower market
in the Ason Bazaar
invited us home yet again.
 
 
We can’t hike forever, can we?

 
 
 
Bhuwanthapaliya picture

Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 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, and more.
 
Author
Amazon.com/Our Nepal Pride Bhuwan Thapaliya
 
[email protected]
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

Kavre. A Poem by Bhuwan Thapaliya

by

 
In Kavre,
near the village, ‘Baluwa’,
I heard
the chatter
of young kids
not yet corroded
by the parade of the broken bricks
and the uprooted
roadside metal railings
in the streets of Kathmandu,
as they played
marbles on the buffalo fields.
It was a poem
I’d forgotten.
It was a jingle
not yet crushed
by the voracious jaws
of the bull dozers.
It brought back
in a rush
the Nepal
I’d known:
the rhythm of children
playing in streets
free of the racket,
and danger, of passing trucks.
In Kavre
near the village, ‘Baluwa’,
I heard the song
of life against life.
I sat on the porch
of the old hut
and through
the arched gateway
watched the
wisps of steam float upward
from wiry ferns
to kiss
the cuckoo
birds nest .
 
•From Bhuwan’s second poetry collection, “ Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected.”
 
Bhuwanthapaliya picture

Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 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, and more.
 

Author
Amazon.com/Our Nepal Pride Bhuwan Thapaliya
 
[email protected]
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

Shiva’s death. Poem. Bhuwan Thapaliya.

by

 
Then the dream came back again.
It often comes these days.
 
Manjushree with a sword in his hand,
rushing toward Chobar.
 
Men, working in the farm,
complementing each other.
 
Colourful streets, women wearing bright red saris
dancing, bear a resemblance to the festival of Teej.
 
Thundering moan of Kali Gandaki
and the concentration of dazzling mountain peaks.
 
Salubrious aroma of incense sticks
and the burning earthen lamps.
 
Snow roosters and the barking deer’s
walloping here and there.
 
Then, all of a sudden…..
Brutal wind meandered
through the serene forests of time.
 
Then someone, may be a priest,
showed a black shirt, belonging to the God himself.
But not a single drop of rain fell on it.
 
Someone then shouted,
“Machchendranath is angry, Nepal has lost her fertility.”
 
I saw Lord Shiva standing in front of me,
blood dripped like tears down his forehead.
 
I saw dead body of Lord Shiva floating on the
Lake Gosainkund. Saw Nagkunda, Bhairavkund,
 
Saraswati Kund and Suryakund clad in fabric white,
with shaven heads, mourning the Lord’s death.
 
 
Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 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, and more.
 
 
Bhuwanthapaliya picture
Author
Our Nepal, Our Pride
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya/dp/8182531152

 
 

[email protected]
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

Let the Sun set on me.Poem. Bhuwan Thapaliya.

by

 

Virgin dry is my throat
and anaemic the veins

that supply my semen
to your embryo.

I cannot ejaculate
a lover’s warmth in your womb

nor can I grab your breast
as they grasp the deity’s forehead.

The lips of the overhead sky bulb
are seeping the blood out of me,

and my tongue
is parched and lonely.

Let the sun
set on me.

Let its crimson sweat of ferocity
spill all over me.

My heart is ready
for the chill of the darkness.

I put my best shirt on
and wait for a bride of the light.

Let the darkness
rise from me,

the darkness that conceals
the bruises of the light.

 
 
 

Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 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, and more.

***
Bhuwanthapaliya picture
Author
Our Nepal, Our Pride
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya/dp/8182531152

***

[email protected]
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

There is only love.Poem. Bhuwan Thapaliya

by

Grasping her hands closely,
I halt my heart
at the edge of her lips
and stare deeper inside
the lava of passion
ejecting shimmering
volcanoes of love.
I let myself slide
through her hand,
easing myself
deeper into her core.
With each cuddle,
the air shakes with joy;
the clouds of passion
grow thicker
– waves of mountain air
rumble past my soul.
A whisper
from beneath her core
– a rumbling moan –
fills my ear
and rolls across
my soul and beyond.
And in the tender
air of love
– destiny, direction,
and time seems to
waft away.
There is only love,
– two tectonic lips
colliding as one.
The earth shakes,
She pulls a flower
from my heart
and lifts it to the sky.

 

 

Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 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, and more.
 
 
Bhuwanthapaliya picture
Author
Our Nepal, Our Pride
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya/dp/8182531152

 
 

[email protected]
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes