Hope and Hurt

Hope and Hurt

Why should I write you feel good lines?
Why do you need me to inspire you?
Why can't poetry be about my blues?
And tell me true, Don't you ever feel beat?
And if my ink wallows in defeat,
Why isn't it cathartic?
Why must we tag it defeatist
Doom and gloom?

All you pie in the sky cutsie pie poets
Who write as if flowers eternally
Bloom, burgeoning outside your
Nine to five dungeons,
And birds chirrup in tasteful decorum...
Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!
Tell me the crow doesn't caw too harsh
for your polite tucked in ears
Tell me the Nightingale does not weep
Or the cuckoo coo in derision
Or the owl gaze terrifyingly ochre red upon your
delicate limpid vision?

I shall not throw up an entire emetic list
And tactfully, ( I hope!), shall desist
From calling poets of your high calling
Safe art house escapists.

I won't because I realize
We all don't sweat blood fire and ice,
That some of us are really truly nice,
And  appreciate each facet of life.

These darling daffodils
Wave and nod sagely in April breeze
Upon steely stalks of sunny will
They can ignore ignominious vagaries...

For this Life can only taunt
And ghosts can only haunt
Those who believe
It should have been much better than this
Or
Hand me the instruction manuals please!

Let's do this teaser life
With joy and fun,
Hope and hurt
Hide and seek
Meeting to depart...
And let us know
Why
It has to end with us all
Six feet down under
Looking up deadpan
While those who weep
At our departure
Look stunned,
skywards for an invisible soul
And make up pretty tales
How it all ends well
With safe homecoming and
Immortal happy hours
Without fail,
Eternal life
That never goes stale!

Oh lead me too,
To your magic
Wishing well.

© Amrita Valan 2015