Category Archives: Collaborative Poetry

Bohemian Nights

© 2021 Sirishty Thakur

By Sirishty Thakur & Benjamin Grossman

What is love?
I venture for the search,
Hovering above the restrictions,
Masquerading feelings,
Packing the streets and theaters.

In the shadows of the city lights,
The subtle touch of elation,
Tempered by the night’s venom.
A parade of tamers lurking to fragment dreams,
To seek the hook for their puppet master.

There’s always a cage for joyous affairs,
Some subjugation of our bohemian nights.

But I still reach possessively for the moment, as the pendulum strikes.
Eternity vibrant in your eyes,
Unwavering in my faith that love is untamable.

This poem was a collaboration with Sirishty Thakur. Please, do yourself a favor and check out her amazing poetry and photos on her blog: Thought Loop.

© 2021 Sirishty Thakur & Benjamin Grossman

The Lesser of Two Evils

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

The glacial battle begins in our heads
Face pressed to the sun-pierced window pane
January snow in recession, the signs of regression 
Half hidden like an iceberg in the arctic water 
And where once a soft glow illuminated the surface 
Only the placement of desolation remains
Reverberating silent screams 
  
There is no one way of knowing cold
The stages are fluid and transient
Its meaning bitterly ambiguous 
Yet in rare lucid moments, I see husks
An empty bed, scarred skin, chattered teeth
Spirit-numbed mind, missed meals, vacant smiles

There is no one way of knowing cold
Its symptoms appear to have no rhyme or reason
Although they move with wintry doom
From person to person increasing in aggression 
Till you understand the meaning of icy
Which unbeknownst to us creeps in succession 

There is no one way of knowing cold 
Though maybe it’s always the same
Emotional and physical reaction 
A state of feeling dangerously low
Struggling to survive between cold and colder
The very same polar opposites: Arctic and Antarctica

(This is part of a collaborative poetic effort between myself and Cassa Bassa. Make sure you check out her blog by visiting Flicker Of Thoughts. She’s always coming up with some exciting words! And often sketches, too.)

Overambitious Love

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

Her emerald beauty circled his upright being
She stretched her sublime allure to capture the snow 
He felt the weight in totality 
It exceeded what he could possibly endure

Most days there was a smokey haze between them
And this fog formed uneven walls 
With tiny openings just wide enough 
To let toxic fumes leak through

In desperation, she let out her slow poison 
He turned himself inside out to survive
But was never the same man as before
Nor she the same woman

They had interwoven like a tree wrapped in vines
They wanted to thrive  under any conditions
That’s what all lovers long to do 
Tragically they couldn’t harness the moonlight
Nor grow within the embers of dying flames

(This is part of a collaborative poetic effort between myself and Cassa Bassa. Make sure you check out her blog by visiting Flicker Of Thoughts. She’s a favorite poetess of mine.)

Writing for the Soul

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

I savour your words on my tongue daily
Reading aloud your thoughts and feelings
As if sampling a handcrafted recipe

Words, by their prowess, bring life or death
From yours, I only taste an antidote
Each sentence a mouthful of succulent nourishment
Leafy greens of personification and aromatic spices of diction
Lines of sugar poured over smoldering pages
The flavor of an elite story

Always I crave your expression
Every fibre yearning for your art
Never stop writing
Your every scribble satiates my soul

(This is part of a collaborative poetic effort between myself and Cassa Bassa. Make sure you check out her blog by visiting Flicker Of Thoughts.)

Social Contemplation

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

In rainy March
I long for a
philosophical whisper over tea
The smell of possibility permeating
Your gaze an infusion of heaven

Barely we know where we are
Yet we know where we’re going
With some echo of curiosity
On a bed of uncertainty
I inhale your essence
Drink in your presence
Only we temper the inner warmth
Steeped in each other

Rain is threading through each whisper
Tea left unrequited and cold
In the company of drizzling rain

(This is part of a collaborative poetic effort between myself and Cassa Bassa. Make sure you check out her blog by visiting Flicker Of Thoughts.)

Wordsmith Apprentices

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

This daily script interferes
With any royal mood
Leaving abstract smiles
Upon the observer’s space

Each piece reaches the other
with startling ponder
Shaking up their normality
Signaling the writer’s psyche
Demanding a daily dose of encouragement

The bond sparked small
A distant curiosity sated by the choreography of words

A budding denial received confirmation in plain sight
An uncultivated heart given wings to ascend
An untamed mind flew over the boundary beyond the intellectual elasticity

(This is part of a collaborative poetic effort between myself and Cassa Bassa. Make sure you check out her blog by visiting Flicker Of Thoughts.)