Vrinda Anurag Gupta
Nothing more than rolling skies.
Beaded, bound, wrapped around
abound in lands that bask in shrouds. Shrouds of scalding,
sweating, rich. Every moulting light a lasting gift
that wraps me tight in arms of bliss.
A blazing blanket, this heavenly honey flowing languid
sweetening sweat to a sherbet banquet— my hunger whet,
I am cut clear, shrouded in sanguine.
Set where I lay, bare, in fear and reverence,
I see only the sands of empyrean lands immense
and beating intense; with the dizzying glare of blues, yellows, and lilacs,
echoed in birdwing and songs waxed— poetically drawn in cerulean string,
rays twist through the pores of my rust-earthen-skin. Like pins and needles
and pills, the Roller’s quill perforates soil and soul, making straits through my arteries
and glutting my veins with gold. I lay ruptured,
euphoric, dirt mingles with blood as I watch the eternity above become
fleeting and stolid. The glittering plume of paint spatter receding
as dark descends like ice— all the warm scatters— replaced with
gauze-soft moonlight. And cool dust that kisses where it burns
and clots punctures and pricks with wind that stops the leaking of life from my nostrils and lips.
This shroud, heavy and thick. Dynamic and slick,
that steals away my breath and gives it back quick. Mellow and rhythmic,
a mild metronome; singing my nerves to sleep,
tucking my bones into loam. Letting grass roam my muscles,
rumbling tectonic to massage away aching, time itself waiting and wading
through these overflowing vales. The gales so solid I read their secrets in Braille.
Inhale this inkwell sky. Its shroud of dye exhaled to
alchemy, a golden flood each set and rise.
Veiled by howling I am frail and muted. I am cradled by dirt and gloom—
I am rooted. Till morn.
Splayed— laid human, an ephemeral truth is the only music:
We are grafted, torn, and repeatedly born.
And there is nothing more.
There is nothing more.
Vrinda Anurag Gupta aims to write from the place between spoken word and hip hop, having been inspired by the way Nas, MF DOOM, and Mos Def use rhythm, rhyme, and cadence to transform the written word into something tangible. Vrinda is currently a freshman majoring in Psychology and Asian Languages and Cultures.
