94. C. Oulens

Personal revelation and philosophical enquiry from India

Oulens is the pen name of this poet, who comes from India. An academic for two decades, and a nature lover with keen interest in human psychology, she gradually drifted to poetic expressions for personal revelation and philosophical inquiry. Her poetry is suffused with sentience, wit and quiet satire. She is often found lost looking for lost and hidden living and non-living things and questions. She is the recipient of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest awarded by The Six Degrees of Edgar Allan Poe for her poem Seen Unseen. Her works are published/upcoming in The Broken Spine anthologies, The Starbeck Orion, The Candyman’s Trumpet, SciFanSat etc. and in a few haiku journals. Her creative writings posted on Bluesky are well-received.

Poems

A Noiseful of Silence - from Convenience Store
Eyes Open-Shut
I Beg to Disagree
Through the Depths
Doing Away with Monster
The Wait
The Idiot
Amnesia

A Noiseful of Silence - from Convenience Store

Hey Silence!
Don’t you feign naïveté 
You are not kind or brave
You are merely playing safe

C’mon Silence!
Don’t go fooling yourself
Take off the nirvana cape
You’ve got a six-noise-pack

Hush Silence!!
If you’ve muffled your hoots
Is it wise to go about
Wearing it in your boots

Easy… Silence…
Are you scared of my voice
Can you clothe in even yours
Would you rather be a voyeur
Who wears no words

crush… flush… shush…


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Eyes Open-Shut

Sometimes I fear if I open my eyes 
   this fluid face contained within
will vanish and
   the sightless gaze held steadfast
   in this unconfined space
will blink and
   the coarse touch of a travelling ache
   at a distance-less pace
will lose its solace.

Sometimes I think as I close my eyes
   the minutes I send gift-wrapped
   the minutes falling snatched
in this bottomless 
boundless hourglass
   from a timeless universe—
if I’d use them other than 
   giving to Sense and Sensibility to whom
   I have given infinitely more… 
   often in vain?


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I Beg to Disagree

With Due respect to Shakespeare

Your life is not one grand stage—
Don’t trip traipsing on and off it;
Don’t be judged by the audience.

You’re not performing in a play—
Don’t enact staid characters
in plaids, laid out by someone else.

You’re not an audience either—
Don’t merely regale in others’ acts!
Participate in life trapezing. Inside.
Breathe in through your lens. The outside.


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Through the Depths

Every day, or perhaps every other day
Irrespective of whether it’s a Tuesday or 
               a Saturday
Regardless of a dark-draped night or 
               a silk-skein day
Notwithstanding a lazing, a musing or 
               a bustling day
At some point of time, I stand pointless    
               at the tip of some bay
                              sinking sans gravity
                              Just the one weight — the head;

and void sinks in and swells like 
                                                   a torrid tempest 
in a mouthful of water of some known  
               alien taste
Images refuse to surface inside eyes of iron-
               clad casks 
The chest — a dead sea — and in it 
               the only thing alive
               that kicks — tentacled despair. Still,

every time, 
                              not Just every other time
the limbs in nick of time 
                make their presence felt
Eyes light up with infinite 
                rainbowed bubbles —
Amazement abounds all around in the depths 
and I stretch my arms and kick my feet back
               all the way up 
               thrust by buoyancy
               of the indefatigable — the lithe life!



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Doing Away with Monster

Who even tries to kill a monster?
What an atrocious waste of time!
So much sweat and all that gooey grime!

Ever wondered a better way,
sure enough to chase it away?
Who knows? It’s just an impostor!

For all that labour, all that slime,
and all that time that’s worth some dime,
you’d think it’d vanish, still it grows! 

Is it even possible to know,
how many lives it has, it must live?
It’s up and about before you grieve!

Is it black or green, purple or grey?
Will it listen if you kneel and pray?
Could it be an iridescent white?

Can its darkness shimmer in light?
If you clip its claws, trim its mane
will it look less dreary, somewhat sane?

Will it give you a little respite
if you stop your chase, halt its bread,
if you cut loose the trailing thread?

Can’t you seek another path to tread?
Can’t you choose to chase squirrels instead?
Can you do that in spite of your spite?


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The Wait

       The waiting 
from the time the child is conceived
afloat a mother’s celestial womb
to the time to the sun its beauty bursts
amidst pain serenading joy, with aplomb
        is the wait —

…only the earth can know
carrying treasures within, to grow;

…lovers will never get to know
as impatience chained to oscillating tick-tock
paces, clap-tap-clap-tap to and fro;

…love will grow to know
when chains unshackle, lead unbuckles,
nimbly as on Nature’s rug, it tiptoes.


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The Idiot

The idiot, on a fine day was born;
before it could open its eyes—
it opened up its arms.
But it could still manage to see
through the filtered light pouring free.
Only, the light was so blinding 
that to the idiot it seemed befit
to keep shut its translucent lids.

From that day on, all around—
in the house, in neighbours’ mouths,
seventeen miles north and south,
whispers and sniggers abound—
of how the idiot was blind born,
of how its lids were pale and shorn,
of the funny arms that always stretched—
when meeting humans always twitched.

But hang on, let’s not sing a sob story—
be patient, we may find some glory.
Sit tight, choose whatever hat to don—
pity, sympathy, empathy or scorn!
I am yet to tell of the magic lamp
that came hidden with a fairy stamp
to the idiot, on someday unknown—
of its powers, to it unbeknownst!

When faced with the human grid
the lamp revealed the faces hid—
each one to their finest details—
of illustrious days or of travails;
of lecherous eyes, of flowing hearts;
the narcissists or the hypocrites;
of dreams beyond, of flights cut short;
the cunning fox, the intellectual sloth.

Yet, when sieved through its gelatine lid
its arms met just the pure liquid,
and every time stretched out as bid.
And stories, anecdotes still abound,
how the idiot could be spun around.
Yet it could find its peace in pain.
Yet it could savour the glory of rain.


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Amnesia

Dreamy dawn

Forgets 
the night’s tears—shed and held—
blurred to light’s gold

All too soon


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