Chronic Cemetery - By Abhinaba Gogoi

Written By: Abhinaba Gogoi

Category: Poetry

Competition: Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Abhinaba Gogoi, writing under the name "Teal Luncheon, Chronic Cemetery," presents a compelling poetic work titled "Chronic Cemetery" in the esteemed Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 hosted by Hashtag Kalakar. This submission weaves together profound imagery and introspective themes, inviting readers into a richly textured narrative. Participating in the competition, Gogoi explores the depths of emotion and existential reflections through his evocative poetry.

About the Work

"Chronic Cemetery" delves into the haunting landscapes of memory and identity, utilizing vivid imagery and a lyrical tone. The poem navigates themes of decay, introspection, and existential struggle, painting a picture of life's cyclical nature. Gogoi's use of stark contrasts and surrealist elements creates a gripping atmosphere, challenging readers to confront the complexities of human experience and the inevitable passage of time.

Teal Luncheon, Chronic Cemetery

Original Submission by Abhinaba Gogoi

CHRONIC CEMETERY

Eye-lidded, four-legged on a sour bite, Sleepwalking, pulse naked, teethed blood mite Tongued in the abdomen, tear-drowned, upholstered The dragnet of sleep-shocks flittered Over his impending footsteps: dazzled blue,

Into his own bowels, abattoir of chewed love From where he woke to a cemetery, abraded move Of all kinds and shapes to an epilogue. Tell him of an end, drugged and dogged. Tell him of the ochrered marrow, grouting gout flu.

Then a fibrous push pulps out a globular flush Through the rectal rooted headstone, one skull Tumbles forth the fetid sorrow That wails away worms Moon-spread onto The soil onto dog turd and hollow

Blinks As many as fly-deaths and towers Over him. Clean of rancid twenty year’s stupor. Opens its long-jawed smile of bad breadth, Locking its hawsers on his mummy head that Stupefaction of a yawn or a fawn, he couldn’t follow.

Slowly,direly, he asks out what he came for, He clocks back a white wrist bandage by bandage Bandage by bandage, smell close his mother’s horror Nine, nine, nine feline scratches work out to etch The blades; the blade on bone, mired, and skin grew all over.

A suicide? A jargon? A pardon? A pardon? What will he recover here? A pinch of blood or love? A white heart among wheat grass grassing the porn-rutted scion? He asks for nothing now. Not even breath, rind of hope. A head slot in soil over his cindered melanin bulk: sacrilegious mourn.

Composts and composts undergrow a thudding Shaking an underworld of no-flesh-bone-breeding Mucking a poor puny impaired soul by rending

The sinews and cells stilled in frost webbing Back and forth from now to Eocene ,silvering.

“Get out, out, GET OUT!” went off his flesh trigger, Thrusted the ash powdered taloned nail into miserdom. Taunted, heckled, sewed occult and name together. Something like this guards a cyclops, bugling: Doom! It thinks to sway him into a forgetting faggot.

Seed hard eyes interred in hanging fruits fused of vision Burrows through pulp to no hooting-squawking of Owls or bats; A nocturne drags the clangor of constellations, The sky scrolls solitary. Nor crows black stall themselves, but fly above Domes of tombs, hard pecking the top off: imagine grain.

Though a corner of a mirror, sanded, a night crystal From crooks and parapet walls, concretize the machinery Of cities: At the end of choked faces; lumps their vertical Fetishes into languid languagelessness infinitesimally Larger to whelm his menace out: His life, once again, becomes a mockery.

TEAL LUNCHEON

You had been the daughter of King Minos, Through some eye of mine, soothsaying, tailed up White ,as if an ostrichnecked binocular set to prowl. Those times of seconds skipping into themselves, Frame upon image, invisible in that noon, skipping Your pebbles and clambering rocks of memory, aged Memory’s grin. The calf muscles of your leg frisking The skin of your father when they betrayed him over The promontory, those black sails impounded our lives To that heirloom of tragedy. His trachea colored in shallow Blood. The episode incinerated distant days, diffracted Our sharp smiles. Slivering opalescence. Into all this.

You and I huddled into one. Before that we were never one. Swiftly afterwards, you pledged yourself to pronouns, Put your head out and execute yourself: a bride. You didn’t gauge how large it was, how hag it was, When you surfed it into a man’s uteral absence. And lactated your hair roots, curled your waist, Hypnotized your fingers over your clitoris, sweated Your palm that thought incest and marriage can exist. You little knew our Neo-God, the only one we need: A harlot. You lacked ambition. Maybe you undermined. In that muddy tea bed, seminal sheeted, you were defying, You were defying Godhood, Flesh-hood, Cell-hood, etcetera.

You didn’t convince me for a man. That I am a man. Nor how to smell blessings, nor how to disobey them When I love another man. When I would have to know you. Once again. After all those years. Years in a hibernaculum. Now you scowl in motherhood, regal as a raped queen. Weren’t you the one who I sucked at? Weren’t you the one who sharpened my pencils, Papered my dreams into boats, doctored me into life? Weren’t you my little girl? My little doll? Never whispering a lullaby. Never singing a birdsong. Wasn’t it your whim that made him love me? Wasn’t it your tar-flesh that stuck onto his nails?

You worked through as a murderer. By not killing me. The world would call it a sin: a whatever sin. A sinner. Without murdering your umbilical totem, you orphaned me. Dunking my head long enough in water, you could have Feigned an accident. Wailed out into a performance. Under a water-morn, both of us touched: hand in hand. The warmth of handholding again and over again. Again, and again warmed splashes to joy. Patient plastic Blue buckets contained our ends, the ends of love moans.

I was happy then. Maybe. The last days of laughing regardless. The white pillars of concrete. They stood guard over our future Of granular matrix of pixels and sand-smiles, and a pink pigeon.

Things that stayed to be stayed. A musical cat, that did never meow. An alarm clock that it vomited. The source of all our music. Beyond Guttural. Stomach-within. An old lady wearing a male crotch. A starfruit tree with red leaves. Reddening less by dew dawn, Docking sailing hymns at the fringe of paddy-winds, earth mouthed. Wintry. I gashed everything like this, an inch into my tear, To lose it as it quenched away. Away closed near a patrol, Patrolling occasionally beneath the canopy’s crate of space, Monitor lizards scaled barks of resurrection. Forked tongues Vanishing. Under each move. Under each miss. Cold. The cold breathing of life. Invulnerable then. To haunt us back ahead. While every day we fed and fed on, bowls in brass ,as it hardened.

Mindless, flawless and yawning, your hands sprinkled salt, Sugar; Heads on your tip, pinch full of men. Full of death Powder, the foot-powder flayed off death’s soles, puss drenched, Never dusted away on your first swipes, overlooked the stove. They might have seen you hatch your magic in men’s mannerisms, Or crib female hisses out of men’s shape, out of your lips that Needed men’s eyes to smile. A voice must have cackled behind All your heavy nights over light air: It’s the game of an hour. You will risk playing it beyond. By when the regimen will have, Will have indubitably charred the player. You gave no heed. Nor fetched your son the milk of poppy, or a cyanide pie. Famished till rot, I was mawed open in saline seas. To a marauder.

Famished. Mudded just on time. I stole. I stole cadavers. I ate them up. I became a walking cadaver. A castle of planarian curses. I fed on rotten rain-moss. Lost sleep to a cast inferno. Enduring all the rot, the tonnage of echoes left along by the sistrum That was yours to claim. Saved by toil behind your right, your own. Never owned in any hellish law. Out burps no foul smell, no symptoms For any eye awoke. No nothing whatsoever that is. If fascist was its face, It shan’t be happy with the use of my life. For its rot, rotting historical. It needs my burnt death, my buried aftermath, or even after. Much after. Rot, rot, rot, rot in rot in genes loyal as bridal libido. Plaited perfect. Damned CUNT in a Y ! Syncopating a bloody memory of my wizen few morrows to a vague close.

I was winced enough. I am seething now. I will forgive nothing. My feet hot toed, hot soled; No weather impaling conscience. But a teal fever. Gouging for a life. Gouging for lunch. It will feed on you, mother. It will kill you. The game you risked Playing for good. You know you are dead. I have already begun

Slicing you. Halved from head to toe. Daggered in Symmetry. Straightened your intestines. Gutted your jaw between My crying Teeth. Tongued and salivated your pulp. Teeth on teeth on teeth. Like metal sculptures conjoined in a copulating rhythmic act, Dropped your popped eyeballs into my esophagus, your smile Into my larynx. Your muscles like candy puff, melting behind my lips, Your heart minced, your lungs and whatever held us close. Minced.

As if I, not anymore a marauder but a matador. My mind the muleta. You the grass-fed bull. Your horns baited by my jewelry. My words. The arch of my waist. My long curls. Everything already read. Pages at the end, the few papery leaves left to suck. Every leaf a day. Touching paper, I live and flip pages under your blood trenches. Blood glues paper to paper. One delicate page there. One delicate day to live. On touch it would tear up, dismember, die. And my fingers could flip Nothing at all. All under your blood. A struggle in undertow. I could not flip that page ahead. I could not find a day to live. Mother, Love is the distance between stars. It separates us. Apart. Apart. Light years apart. It was not love that tied us together, mother. Or your deferred motherhood. It was denial that did.

About the Competition

The Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform celebrating diverse voices and creativity. It encourages writers from various backgrounds to share their unique perspectives through the art of poetry and creative writing, fostering a vibrant community of literary expression.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Abhinaba Gogoi for sharing "Chronic Cemetery" with us. Your participation in the Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 enriches the tapestry of voices and stories we celebrate. We appreciate your contribution and look forward to witnessing more of your literary journey.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.