Octra Sasha

I know I sound cruel....but!

The octopus was breeding upon the ocean floor
The Octopus knew
Once her eggs had hatched
She would live no more.
But she shed no inky jets of tears
Coz that would be
Such a squalid bore!
Hey at least I'm a lot better off, she thought,
Than the silly squid next door!

Sasha the squid was spawning
Festooning the sea weeds with her eggs
Jet propelling back and forth
Oh! But you see, they never use their legs!

Neither did queen Octra, the nocturnal octopus
But really that's old news and nothing to make a fuss!
Meanwhile Sasha dashed about in frantic rush,
For once she had spawned
She would be "a squid who was"
She was a spunky sporty lass
Really better than deeper than thou
Miss Octra puss.

They were a pair always eying each other
With disdain writ clear in porthole eyes
Occasionally spurting out jets of ink
In a manner most unladylike!

Still Octra would live at least
to see her brood,
Willingly die .. And become
Ugh...their food!

Sasha, aah the poor silly girl
Would line up her eggs like priceless pearls
Then roll up in a curly ball
And  perform
The Mollusca Roll of honor call!
A grand finale among the ocean waves
While Octra smirked in her sea bed cave!
Though it would be only for a little while,
She would see her young uns and maybe smile
Then burst into a frothy mess,
And that would mean one octopus less.

So now do tell me really dear,
Which one of the two do you prefer?
Scalloped squids with frittered shallots
Or a eight legged Octopus in your pot?

© Amrita Valan 2015

Unedited Me

Unedited Me.

Poets are supposed to be wise creatures
Not simpletons
They are supposed to be deeply profound
Not shallow
If and when suffering tears them apart
A grave solemnity and inherent
Philosophy should assist
And keep them buoyant.

All I have are deep profound sorrows
They are my roots and beginnings
When I did not even know
It could have been better.

All I have
Is my instinct for survival.
A lunatic laughter bubbling inside
That mocks derision and sorrow
When with bleak aspect and
Blank demeanor I turn
Face to the wall
When trust thrusts
Brutal knives
And a river of thirst
Can't be quenched with tears.

All I have then is
a little voice inside
Calling"Man up sister,
and get real.
"
And that's so much more
Than all the beautiful poetry
In the world.
That's my heart which thumps
To the beat of an entire universe.

Life you're but a fading line
On my greedy palm.
Nevertheless
I never say die.

This is all
My poetry and my purpose.
Let us be sufficient
Unto ourselves.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Nursery Rhyme Weekly Challenge

Er....I got a wee bit carried away.

Nursery Rhyme for Coelacanth

The sharks swam over the typhoon
The sharks swam over the moon
The sharks shook their deadly fin
At my coffee spoon.

The dolphins were in doldrums
Because the dolphins had been barred
The dolphins wanted to see the world
But they got stuck between the stars

The mighty whale was watching
He licked his lipid lips
Let those crazy fool sharks  leap about
And those dipsy dolphins dip.

I catapult under the ocean waves
I wave my mighty belly fin
I dance above the ocean floor
Where sunlight can't enter in.

The shark licked up the coffee spoon
With a toothy sugary grin
That made the dolphins throw hula hoops
Drool dropping down their slurpy chins!

The steely shark flip flopped, baring brazen jaws
What in the world is this?
Men will be men and birds will be birds
When shall these fish be Fish?

Grr..... Bazooka, you snarky shark
First learn your biology!!
We be mammals, though of the oceans deep
And your ignorance makes us weep.
We need to be prepared ready and all
To conquer land air and stand up tall
Fin be feet and fish fingers grow
Lo and behold, the Dolphins blow!

The smarmy shark  licked his pinkish chops
By my life I have never heard such caterwauling
I'm a true fish of the ocean deep
You mammals from land came crawling...

Forgetting your roots you go woot woot woot
You forget that even the cow jumped over the moon
If you don't stop this nonsense rhyme
I will beat you with this raucous spoon.

My poetic license I stand to lose
But by this ditty true I staunchly choose
To stand by shaking in my soggy shoes...
Here the wonky whale the dolphin and the shark
Me attacked
We don't wear shoes
And have no feet that sweat
You whacky tacky
pseudopoetic poet.

© Amrita Valan 2015

New Town

New Town

New stars nibble the frosty darkness
Calm celestial countdown
Meltdowns on the
Soft carpet of green
By the balustraded boulevard
New town buses thundering by
Lazy home comers
From the IT sector, satchels slinging
The brute city, dark hearted mars humanity
Towering behemoths shrug  shoulders
with precision ease
Yet I sense the scented wind
Carrying swaying parcels of hopes
Dense in its prosaic pastel
breeze.

The gold aureole of impotent streetlamps
Carve impossible pi dreams.
From heaven to earth
A natal jolt backwards
Through time
Reaffirms astral chords.
I smell the salty fried offerings
Hawked by vendors
Spring rolls and corn on cobs
Go by jauntily
Hand in hand.
New lovers fresh as spanking
Summer lullaby.

My mind haunts the dark crevices of
Our tiny bedroom
In our tiny flat
Where cars scrawl love notes
In bold zebra bars upon
ceilings of domestic heavens
In reverent reveries
I turn my eyes inwards
To violet dreams.
Singing to my children
Of the sparkle...of
Ancestral dreams.

© Amrita Valan 2015

We The Livng

We The Living

We don't die. We don't go away. We don't even disappear into the wings or backstage for a change of costume.
We the living seamlessly occupy the fabric of an entire universe, recycling through time and space, without waste.

Pure energy, pure Ecstasy, We cannot be destroyed.
Then when our body falls onstage where does our soul
go?

Does the soul mean an unity, or an unified entity of the universe in entirety?
A mosaic of multitudinous spirits inhabit me, some harmonious, some conflicting, some dominant some subjugated.

We are rather like our own genome. The phenotypical expression is not our genotypical range, and like shifting expressions on our face a plethora peoples us.

Turn, turn, turn, as seasons shift under the sun, as we age and ripen and mellow... run, run, run.

Seamlessly we release old personas like cellulose masks that dissolve, and don the novus spiritus that animates the moment.

Our babies are nascence rejuvenated from our old corporeal flesh. They're temples housing spirits of the old, all of our infinite pasts. And so that the laughing menagerie of voices don't drown each other out, the somnolent ones await their own seasons of awakening.

And in my mirror, my eyes mirror a mystery that passeth understanding.
My grandmothers don't leave me. I see one in my eyes.
The other dances upon the lips in a smile.
My forefathers sit upon my forehead and my soul sings not with one voice, but a single unified song.
We who are the Living, are All the lives that have come to be.
And all the lives that are. And all of the lives yet to be.
We the living, don't wait backstage, for a chance entry.
We are here in spirit, and in my insular singularity, is the multiplicity of many spirits, an universe called into being.

The stars look at us. And in wonder. For the immensity they bridge exists in each soul.  Interchangeable yet unique...
One body....housing the spirits of the universe.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Universe and I

I'm part of everything else and everything else is a part of me. Life is about discovering some of the connections.
The universe is the sum of the living and non living, all of us, the parts. Yet each part contains the whole in a microcosm.
Its because the sum is greater than the whole we perceive it as the visible universe.

Love made visible, is life.
Visible, tactile, audible, gustatory, olfactory and rational, these are just the overpowering perceptible facets of love and life.
Though this sensory feast threatens to overwhelm, we must manifest much greater miracles.
They are ours for the asking, but we must forsake petty ends and gains.
Sear the sunlight with visionary dreams, walk in intoxication, let life addict.
Seek salvation not for self but as the balm you apply to saddened hearts.
Reap real rewards of gratitude good will and joy.
The ancient unit of currency was significantly called talent. An apt metaphor for the real wealth inside, one that is to be shared benevolently symbiotically.
You will be returned in kind and not cash. And there's no better gain than that.
Be human, be love.
Life is not a downwards slide to the grave. It is a catapult to the stars.

Weekly Challenge Slop Sully Precipitate Metronome

Sully my dull metronome moments
With abject precipitate
Pure and copious
Let dullness be relegated
To monarchs
And this beggar maid
Follow the arrhythmia
Of her heart.

Nothing lost
In slice of time
Irrelevant
You chase success
Over such impossible
Mountains
I watch my eggs
overdone easy
Run over our
Daily bread,
Oftentimes
My prayers said
Are sweet nothings
To four winds instead,
The incensed heart
Rages
And longs to sully
Itself
Sin and shame
Were never
A heritage
But accrued
Precipitate
Just the same beats of variations
Changing my poem
Of a thousand
Metronomes
Just my mundane life
Making up for
Lost moments...

I get it,
This sunny drawing room moment
When sparrows fight over
Crumbs of my broken bread

But lying in yesterday's unmade
Bed
I cry in syncopated sobs
In my maddening head

The crests and troughs undulate
But refuse to pause
Or understand.

© Amrita Valan 2015

It's Not Over, Yet.

It's Not Over, Yet.

The candle dark makes
Light so stark
Making butterflies blister
On our burning wall

My heart beats a
Staccato lost remorse
Terse verses sotto voice
Shaky recall

This thing I am
That thing I was
And what strange thing
What dreaded being
Shall I be,
On the morrow?

We're coming together
Pile upon pile, heap the bonfire
Your holocaust  survival then,
may I borrow?

Will I come back again
And again
And if so,
Will I come back,
Reeling dizzy
Reeking uneasy
Spellbound easy
Forgetting
This way of feeling?

Tell me please,
Samurai warlord
With thy firm sword
My warm heart in silence
pinning?

This piercing feeling
This rotten worming,
This potent willing,
This hollow crater of
Acid hurt
On which I'm high,
Will it all come back
Again and again,
And once more
Each time
we certain live
To die?

My seven lifetimes
Wed to a single love
The divine nature
Of Hindu covenant,

This flickering
Half light
Shadowy on my wall
This piercing wound
Dazed 5 am calls...

Will you be
Swear you will
My witness through
Heaven
Unto hell

Assure my love
That you will know me
Again and again
Through all eternity!

There is in fake assurance
Something
More real
The salvation of dreams.

There's something else
Left to be said
Oh! Here it is,
lest I forget
Remember me!

The me that was
A heart shaped
Ungainly butterfly
Shadowy substance
Pale flickering light of
4 am reverie.

Fluttering on the pins
Of your senile anchorage
Till motions and emotions
Went grave and stilled
Betrothed to night
Above whitest summer knights
To Darkness wed
I am the bridesmaid of brittle
Life
And the eternal bride
Of Death.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Slop Weekly Challenge.... Lime Green Skies

I wanted then to shout in glee
The golden morn that greeted me
And sisters, brothers  six were we
Beneath the tender shades of emerald skies
Under jade green trees.

The variegated shades of lime green scenes
Pickled and preserved in pretty bell jars of hoarding
minds, shelved away from heat and light
Waiting half a lifetime whilst we grew blind

To love, to hope, to holding hands
Little Robin Hoods in merry bands
Off to granny's house across the hill
We were six lively Jacks and Jills.

Our preserves of love over time turned sour
The green skies turned dark with our darkest hours
One moved away farther than human reach
Her mere shell, a discarded Conch,
In sand encrusted unknown beach.

And quietly one by one dear held hands unchained
To far off shores traipsed our thoughtless merry men
Christmas cards were all we exchanged
Eventually we forgot to mine
Our memory's richest veins.

I received this letter yesterday
Blind eyes grew globes of vision again
Of a little sister who was now no more
Oh my six sweet siblings!
Now we are four.

The eldest daughter of aged parents gone
I sat down in silence that sang its forlorn song
Speaking louder than beating heart
This world is the meeting place for unique souls
Before we part.

And under the magic morning sun
By shades of memories trees bygone
Let us open the charmed doors of love again
Four to honor the gang of six brethren.

The same places never stay the same
Love evolves while static is empty pain
Stars shine on and the moon softly smiles
Under the sun our hearts unite for
A  little while.
An oasis of space,
A brief occupancy in endless
Vacancies of time.

We are now overweight and slow
Our eyes dimmed our bones fragile
Yet with hearts aglow
We can now only perform mental somersaults
Our love tempered by wisdom
We reach out for one another
Grave embraces before time's safekeeping
In oblivion's vaults.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Haikus composed on four of Sudhir Godiyal's Photographs

Silver heights of heaven
Aspiring ascent of limbs
Mythical meetings.

Addicted to haikus  accompanying Sudhir Godiyal's gorgeous photographs.
This picture perfect one gets a choice of three.

Velvet foliage
Dense verdant cotton wool clouds
Framing Jade mirror.

Swooning in the noon
Avocado still waters
Verdant green embrace.

Velvet green embrace
Dense packed clouds of foliage
Verdant float glass lake.

Thank you for this one Sudhir Godiyal truly beautiful my friend. Pardon my inadequate expression of your poetic photograph.

Molten gorgeous gold
Oceans of eternity
Shed lava rivers.

Another of Sudhir Godiyal 's excellent photographs, to which a haiku just rolled out of my mind! I could do this all day!

Nature's canopy
Lime green sepia rusted beige
Sheltered dreams dozing.

Bloodbath for Elite Critiques Challenge

I just got back home. And fell to my knees and retched. And found myself on shaking knees walking into hell. Because that was my blood on the floor. My own. My mind had instantly split into two parts, one, a cold reptilian vengeful observer, the other, wailing it cannot be.
It was.
All of the people who comprise my past present and future lying around like lifeless dolls in a dream.
I say dolls because... I need to be kind.
To them and to myself.
If they were the worst demons of my dreams they would have been prettier.
Horrifyingly enough,  I couldn't take my fascinated eyes off the frozen rictus of their dying terror. The rivers of blood and the screams forever frozen in their eyes mesmerized me, till I began to feel something inside me slipping away, leaving deserting me.
My last moment of sanity recorded a team of men in bright yellow walking officiously in, asking me
"Please come away ma'am."
I had already departed. From the world of living logical beings. I was now a livid nightmare, waiting for a chance to come true. To rise in your
wide shut eyes.
When you go to sleep tonight, leave a door open for me. I will make your worst fears come true.
Like I did to my own.
It's a promise!

The Chameleon Part 2

The Chameleon Part 2

Choking muzzled
Through parched and thirsty throat
My lusty lips sip you.
You never drench my wilted roots,
but cold unflinching eyes
And odd austere look,
measure my need for dew.

I  praise you shrill with high hosannas,
Form hastily
My holiest psalms for you
But your love is thoughtless guarded
Alm
Calm and thrifty
It rings untrue.

In balmy summers, I hate to astonish
Constantly changing, neither to grow
Or nourish,
I admonish my loss of control
My affinities for passive grief.

Sinuous lupine, I rise
in moonbeam to release
My shiny lustrous lofty spring
silvery mercurial aquamarine
Even though grief is prettified
My poetic heart it petrifies.
I renounce what I cherish.

And so my chameleon cells I turn
Inside out
I singe and modify the song I sing
A soft semester of my culled out being
That no one but you had ever seen
And no one else will see again.

The holiest vows are abstinence
Mercy is joyous penitence
Not a hair upon your head
The holy gem of love I pluck instead.

Thrice invoke the living dead
Let them line up towards the bridge of Lethe
They never were ready, they never will be.
Blind liveried men marching marionettes
Under  blood curdling howls
A pale haunted moon they'll never see.

Oh chameleon nights of honey tinted rose
Amber guilt upsets all our tropes
My loss my love my grief my sin
Antanaclasis  shades the theme.

With a swish of flicking dragon tail
Cauda Draconis hide ye well!
The chameleons
Dart and lope between
The empty boughs of ashen
barren tree
Hiding stories, telling tales,
Turning rainbows into
Gaudy hells,
And stripping hell of its
tacky stripes
Strange how loss of fear
Births seed of life.

I emulate the lonely moon
In empty squalor of oily sea.
Squirting my bloody froth and jets of ink
That carry shredded bits of flesh off me
Pallid ghost my mother moon
I rock upon her knobbly knees
Who but she my tears see?

The elusive manna,
The holy bread of life
Of this one way lease
Release me please
Drink my foaming ruby red
Stroll on the amber road I roam
Forever drink my kool aid
Of Oz.

The slow to courage chameleon
Softly easy in malaise
We each pay in
Our own currencies
The Piper tempts us to betray
Ourselves with curses and purses,
With Promised lands of honeyed milk
Walking taller than shadowy
Judas Iscariot
We may our  souls
For silver release.

This attrition of our hard intent
Contrite dissolution in our
month of Lent
Is the going rate for peace,
Chequered vibrancy
Stolen capture,
Moonlight sonata
In the tortured breeze.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Chameleon Part 1

Chameleon Part 1

Mind loading like chameleon
Changing gears shifting colors
Shining shimmering water towers
Colored lights in fountain showers.

There are no rules no real solutions
Exceptions prove rules of every
Occasion. For every matchless swan
dozen changeling princesses die
The prince charms no doubt,
But oh!, he always lies.

In the dark blue of evening mellow
No one sees hope's hurt
Turn sickly green
Hazel light swimming in
Hollow abandon of
Empty heart.
And the stunning
brilliant sickle eyes
Of disjoint and disgust in time
Plotting revenge and
Etching lies.

The world is laughing
Up its ballooning sleeves
Devious tease, teaching us
To please.

I must be an embodiment
Of such awkward truth
Or else, be blackened vessel
for my own funeral soot.

A million rhinestones, paste
Diamonds glittering their venomous glare
Upon the serpent head of knowledge clear
As forked tongues of Babel leer...

Is your hand out then to receive ?
Roll back hideous sleeve,
And hand out relief.

I climb onto the erect serpent's head
In righteous fury, strike a
Chameleon pose, to
behead
But those I strike
The Living Dead.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Dust Desire

My beloved books
Are scattered across the floor
And I'm visiting the past
In lotus pose
My footloose hell has
Begun twitching

Sharp straws poking out of
Stuffed scarecrow.

Bright and scary
An umbilical parade of
Winking lights
Dim the soul's
Choral chords of
Music!

Awake O beast
I ready the feast.

My torment party canopies
Your skewered rods
My sky dew eyes
Uplifts your arrogance,
My tired skin mists
My wet blue mind
Gnawing upon this vast
sigh
Of an emptiness.

The agony of timeless
endurance.

The cold wind lashes
Across widower peaks and bay,
A wet slap of reminder upon
My crushed and shameless face.

Briny memoirs salted preserved
Away.

Sailing by rancorous ill winds
At gaping rugged ruddy blood red skies
Ancient anchors tugging
reluctant...
Oh lift up the slime tangled fangs of lies!

Soft hued coastal plains in hushed
Variegation of melting greens
An arched courtyard
Opening onto temple,
Unearthly deserted scene.

A feast for a God
Set upon table
Smashed awry
Vases cracked caressing
the abject floor littered
Like a frittered
Fable.

Time hangs thin in
Ribbons of blue
Bleeding pus into
Access through abscesses
That  leads back again
Through hazy trickster mess
Burning books and bridges
In mind's decadent
endless maze.

Wipe the whiplash drool
Off saline face.
Angels of anguish
Lead me on,
To languish
Together...
Ever your fool
and clown.

Languid we descend
Darkling stairs,
Our bewildering destiny.
Step
By lonely step

Tremble upon
The  abyss,
Echoing love
Under each
Footfall lies
Another
Unfinished
Turgid chapter.

Exhaling the exhumed lines
Of all my books.
And licking forest tongues of flippant
Funeral fires.
My breathless lungs lunge for expelled
Hope,
Longing to inhale
Life's incence to the brim
And end forever pangs of
Dust desires.

© Amrita Valan 2015

For my friends Stephen Cecilia and little angel Sheila

Christian marriage vows speak of " ...Till death do us part...",
But I instinctively feel that the bonds of true love go beyond lifetimes.

For the love of God I cannot cry any more
Yet tears are doomed to fall for you
Young and sweet and beautiful
wise devoted wife so wonderful.

In joyous eyes such depth of  prophesies
To see you tenderness itself  decries
The energy to resist your charm
And garners every determination,
To keep you away from every harm.

I soak in goodness through your radiant eyes
Aesthetics make up all we surmise
Endless oceans stretch and shimmer
In beauty each morn, as the sun does rise
Again and again for near-infinity, as a
Majestic gauge of scales,how time flies!

It flew from you, lovely girl of wondrous hues
To poignancy shall be paid your dues
Of this life you deserved perhaps fourscore
Years or more,
But not one of us can lay Time by in store!
And when it opens its dreaded uncouth door...
Continuum of the endless sum of
All our fears and tears mean no more.

It flew from your living splendor, as it shall
Fly from us all
Come dwell deep in my heart that swells with
Your painful pleas....
Those dewy eyes too beloved too magical
Too soon for you
To be staring down at us from sorry walls.

I will keep your memories close
In me
Sister your beautiful half-life be
Sigh... all that you were cruelly denied
Daily in me shall crisply die.

Why I feel this way....I cannot say
Maybe each woman feels another's pain
I am your echoing love relived
Again and again
The centuries water our burnt offerings
Cleanses and closes those wounds
Of ashen grief unspent.

Eternity cannot erase you,
Woman of strength and joy
Though it dared take you as it's prey
Till breath and hope and love itself is dead
At least till then in loving hearts
Of husband and child and friend
And all who like me
feel your compelling power
You shall forever stay.

© Amrita Valan 2015

The Aniline Rose/ The Pale Blue Rose

I am not consciously trying to be clever. The poem however is. Trying to be clever I mean.Having wrestled and flexed my mental muscles for an hour I give up and present this as it is. It demands a greater intellect than mine and yet this was how it affected me.

The Blue Rose

The flower peeped out through the eyelashes of time
Crumpled up my notions of perceptual divine
Became the balled up poem in my papered head
That wouldn't articulate itself nor let me rest.

Rose of rhapsodies it rested upon my eyes
Flashing the blind spots of mortal sight
Crackling blue white surges of electric might
It shimmered and sparkled a most unearthly light.

In my mental matrices I ran amok with checks
The meditative rose smiled at my lavish mistakes
In powdery blue display of plush purplish lavender
It glimmered an abandon of secretive splendor
Dispersing notions of sanity inviting surrender
The blue rose rained soft garden of cosmic thunder

This world became cold as ice
on which floated a floral wake
A float of magical bloom, swan lake replayed
enchantment alive, amidst universal doom
Rippling outwards, recreating conceptual room.

Resurrection never returns us to life from death
The futuristic rose  chanted in retrospect
The Rose of reality isn't what you see
Love burns it to such distilled purity,
Turns it inside out to the ideal rose of your heart
The image removed perfects living art
And its the negative that hints what the positive maybe
Can you envision what you're never-yet to see?

I'm blue inalienable as the sky mirrored in the aniline sea
I am the purest form of Rose that is ever-yet to be
Azure oceans of candor  livid purple lesions
of  passion,
I am the wink of the monk transformed by
Spontaneous ignition
Enlightenment miraculous
A frozen free form potential
icicles of  motion.

Chant unfreeze release your power
Realize the random Rose,
You yet maybe,
In immortalised
Never-ever hours.

© Amrita Valan 2015

The Blue Rose

Just to match the lovely picture! A mood poem.

The Blue Rose

Blue roses don't blush they blend in deep
Midnight's velvet is their theme
A rose pressed thin like blue veins
Of compressed sorrow, seeping through,
saline grief into alabaster's skin.

Rose of quiet regards kept secret
stilled queenly hearts
Too regal to come out and declare
Frozen allegiance gorgeous
Love is a dream in the ether that rains
Sacred dew
That sprinkles holy water, yes
But never drenches its object
Of affection.

Blue roses are spiritual symbols of love's
Tremulous journey into ardent sacrifice
The rigorously treasured flame that
once graced a Rosalind
Igniting impassioned loyalty
It dances a cold clean flamenco
Flickering its grace, bravely glowing
Without outward crimsoned show
With only its desire to please.
Lovely in dutiful discretion
Silent noblesse oblige.

© Amrita Valan 2015

No Limits

I feel free and love endlessly
Borders and fences on the imagination
Curb the spirit.
Limitless possibilities, nurture a limitless soul.
Take your cue from the universe. Every which way you look, the infinite dark stretches.
Can the ken of your tiny horizon mark out its endpoints?
Yes, you will make mistakes, worship false gods with feet of clay.
The Tin gods will clatter clashing against the silence
Of universal peace.
Your mistakes are experiments.
The only mistake is to limit yourself through fear
Of being arrogant.
True meekness and humility comes only when you test
Yourself beyond limits or barriers set by others.
You learn from others only when you open and pore over the text of yourself.
With love and esteem.
The God you so respect will have created a noble being.
Be abject not because you dare to make mistakes to reach your highest self, but when you are afraid to dare.
It's never truth or dare.
There's no truth without dare.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Dry Mind

I am an Indian. I have no experience of interaction with a gay person, no gay friends. I remember feeling crushed when i discovered that Ricky Martin was gay.
In India homosexuality is still a crime.
Yet in my heart a rebel refuses to judge people by mere
physical or sexual orientation.
Hell no, I'm Indian...we have accepted and integrated with waves of invaders. Our culture is ancient enough for me to assert, ( despite personal ignorance), " surely been there done that!", nothing new under the sun,  nothing evil either.
This poem is a spur of this very moment raw post, I hope you my friends judge it with mercy.

Dry mind
Bleeding paper cuts
Crusty with dessicated hurts
Leave me to learn my
Own lessons
Let life be the teacher
Divinity the preacher
Not you.

In my rainbow camouflage
A city of beautiful clouds
Have cleared,
Your inclement doubts just aren't
Part of my weather.

I seek no pots of gold
But this time,
This spirited merciful clime
Has promised to me
The same clemency
God once showed to thee.

When he sent a rainbow bridge
Across the skies of sinning
Humanity, seeing
Repentance sincere,
He withheld the floods of fear,
Will you not at least,
Withhold your judgment
And let me be
My fellow humans dear?

© Amrita Valan 2015

Footnote: All this delving into the depths of scriptures and sacred texts, morality isn't rocket science, and even rocket science is fairly comprehensible.
Don't dig into books, dig into your hearts, with mercy and love, and use that innate sense of justice. We all have it.
Not just priests and theologians.

My Shimmering Rose

My Shimmering Rose

My gentle rose of coral  hue
Soft and sweet and wondrous true
Your subtle petals enfold me, I curl and hide
In thy modest charms,
Of innocent blushful brides.

Therein by shy flushed demeanor
A world subdued, in your soulful whorls,
lies enraptured
Potent dreams of escape into thy
Fragrant capture
My fragile red rose,
in your heart lies,
my strength's departure.

Yet in your demure dream embrace
This torn worldly heart of mine
Seeks to find solace,
Healed by satiny sutures of your
Shining touch
My shimmering Red Rose
I love you very much.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Vacancies of Time

I wanted then to shout in glee
The golden morn that greeted me
And sisters, brothers  six were we
Beneath the tender shades of emerald skies
Under jade green trees.

The variegated shades of lime green scenes
Pickled and preserved in pretty bell jars of hoarding
minds, shelved away from heat and light
Waiting half a lifetime whilst we grew blind

To love, to hope, to holding hands
Little Robin Hoods in merry bands
Off to granny's house across the hill
We were six lively Jacks and Jills.

Our preserves of love over time turned sour
The green skies turned dark with our darkest hours
One moved away farther than human reach
Her mere shell, a discarded Conch,
In sand encrusted unknown beach.

And quietly one by one dear held hands unchained
To far off shores traipsed our thoughtless merry men
Christmas cards were all we exchanged
Eventually we forgot to mine
Our memory's richest veins.

I received this letter yesterday
Blind eyes grew globes of vision again
Of a little sister who was now no more
Oh my six sweet siblings!
Now we are four.

The eldest daughter of aged parents gone
I sat down in silence that sang its forlorn song
Speaking louder than beating heart
This world is the meeting place for unique souls
Before we part.

And under the magic morning sun
By shades of memories trees bygone
Let us open the charmed doors of love again
Four to honor the gang of six brethren.

The same places never stay the same
Love evolves while static is empty pain
Stars shine on and the moon softly smiles
Under the sun our hearts unite for
A  little while.
An oasis of space,
A brief occupancy in endless
Vacancies of time.

We are now overweight and slow
Our eyes dimmed our bones fragile
Yet with hearts aglow
We can now only perform mental somersaults
Our love tempered by wisdom
We reach out for one another
Grave embraces before time's safekeeping
In oblivion's vaults.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Madonna of Mercy

Madonna of Mercy

The daisies sighed by the banks of brimming lake
My spirit colluded with iced clouds to overtake
Soon all above was uniform solder grey
And all below lush green Maidenhead.
Breathless electric tingles upon salt sorbet skin
Before the first cold drop of  fulsome rain
Splashed in.

I spied a lissome woman then, lithe like vine
Swinging from Linden boughs in tangledwoods divine,
Like a vaporous mistladen dream etched so fine!

And in her hair was tucked in brightest marigolds
I washed my eyes clean of sorrow
in orange droplets bold.

She danced and sang and made her frisky way
Through paths of soggy leaves melting Elysian
Fields unclaimed
the foggy mist dispelled the visionary sprite
Forced me to seek shelter
Inside an ancient bower and hide.

The light of day reappeared after a long weary hour
My thoughts were jumbled my eyes steeped in tears
The soigné woman was gone the watery field was clear
Across gray cashmere skies Angola fleece appeared.

I waded into sullied silver of muddied lake
And gathered my breath in sharp intake
Floating in water were beauteous marigolds
In slender garland of delicate gold!

And the little girl who from far I spied
And thought I had beheld a most charming bride
Was just a little woman of ten years, if a day
With eyes of nutty chocolate and red lips so gay,
And she cast me a doe eyed glance that seemed to say
Did you have your share of my glorious day?

I nodded and smiled and touched by her crystal soul
Tried hard to lift up her garland with a slender pole
The little Madonna so merry, gestured then
For me to pin it upon my tangled mane.
And do you know how I coveted it?
More, oh mercy me,
Than gemstudded diademed wreath!

Wet and shy and giggling glee, I rose
Sporting her flowers upon capricious dripping locks
Innocent gracious Maria thank you for this precious woodland tiara
Joy has adorned me upon your dancing 
carefree docks
The rain to me untold heavens brought,
And I shall carry with me forever feathery wrought,
Crown of  angels
Your love and hope.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Should You Need Me.

Should You Need Me

She cries into the night her careful defense
Of a life defined  that makes no sense,
Softly weeps into darkness her plight
Which sits on her chest supping her in
Quiet malovolent bites
Unhurried and gluttonous.

She keens into the night, prays for easy respite
Tastes the dust of betrayal and lack of foresight
Her mistakes leaching her foothold into a soggy
Pool of quicksand
Shadowy silvery mercurial, elusive wonderland.

And in her sickness and in health she  nurses
Her own robustness she silently wondering, curses
Yet what would happen to those, innocent
Of her mistakes
Those little arms that tug hers hands and immerses
All joy and pain all hope of gain, of love and sandmen,
In a sea of faithful briny forgiveness...

Onwards to new life then, chug ahead little engines cute!
Forget old tracks  abandoned, disrepaired, disused.
I have shedded them and settled down to be,
Your course correcting muse,
For as long as you should
Need me.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Deadpan

Wintry hazy call of blood curdling alarm
Abandoned blankets rise like reluctant hurricane
Icy touch the ground flip flop gingerly to the doors
Opening onto the nihilist morning.
Down veranda, drowsy
Knock knock knock
Ma opens the drawing room doors
Of our L shaped habitat
My room comprised the tail end.

In between the long and short arm
The vermilion cemented verandah
stretches in icy venom
I like it in summer but between November and February's eerie five a.m lights
I am reminded of Stephen King's
ghost towns of Maine.

By the time I'm showered and ready
The polite six o clock world is smiling
Civilization's thin veneer of a sneer
Relentless rise and shine
Get up and go program pasted on
Lunatic leers of imposed normalcy.

Hot cocoa on trays and the family up
In pyjamas and nightdresses.
Someone drops me off to the local station
To board the 6 28 each and every day.
I never howl though I almost growl
At innane chitchat, like the price of
Tomatoes.

My school mates stand, their smiles are
Placid jeers, hiya lazybones no one
Let you bunk today I see...
This part is good, the programming
Acceptable and integral to survival
Plastic welcome of the amiable familiar.

After the bonecrushing journey
They're tender and help me up the
Bus steps,
Engine already roaring to rev off
Its murderous marathon
At breakneck speed we tumble into
downtown Calcutta
Of the pristine chapels and greens
Of Loreto College
The exciting dream sequined walk of Park Street
The city's poshest most happening thoroughfare

Eleventh grade not a boyfriend
In an all girls school
Dreaming greedily about Tom Cruise and
Boris Boom Boom Becker
And struggling with Calculus in classrooms.
The frogs I dissected had not been caught
Less unaware by the taciturn Gardener
Of our lives...
as dear and precious and holy,
as it was meaningless.

And later that night in bubble gum
pink tunic and skimpy camouflage shorts
I crouched on the back steps
Of the languid verandah
Staring psalms into the darkness.
The garden glowered back as I sent it my
Dreams, to be brave feckless, praying
To Angels of opportunity.
My sozzled angels were busy that night
Solving crises of other
More amenable teenagers
The problems of alcohol depression
And suicides flow smoother
through societal sluice gates of care
Than unease unrest and anthems unformed
Vague hopes and sordid fears.

And like every other one
I put on some cherished music
To sputter my grandiose inarticulacy
My apalled treasures and spent tears sent
into an enigmatic eternity of ether
For sentient star dwellers,
Samurais, sentinels of the frontiers.

And then calm as an unsolved puzzle
I took my misfit rough hewn pieces
Hope faith doubts and fears
Cuddling in the blanket of bedlam
Deadpan to bed.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Atreyi

I am going to post  a maudlin poem. Please bear with this whimsical one.
Atreyi is a childhood friend I miss.

Atreyi

I remembered your heart shaped  face
A sudden sunny morn
It was just as if sweet yesterday
Had quietly been reborn.

Dark ringlets dangling on your forehead
Your outstanding voice rendered
a Christmas carol of my  choice
Joy to the world and so it was
Serene and beautiful our childhood's pause.

Winter winged by and a fresh
Summer flew in
School days got over and goodbye to teens.
We were separated from each other forever
As our parents settled farther and farther.

Seven years of childhood can be
Eternity in heaven
Our hearts retained a tenor of complacence
Wherever we went whatever we did
We would meet often, be thick as thieves.

Gallant efforts, nights spent at each other's place
My friend who can forget your serious almond gaze
Slowly the tectonics were drifting us apart
As mind slid on mental planes sealing secret places of our hearts

The day you married I kept staring my wonder
You were such a quintessential crybaby mama's darling
Independent sinuous bride in red regalia
Touring the hall greeting your guests with elan

I have met you yes, only once since then
I remember both those dates, eleven and four years to this day.
And you're like me a mommy of two boys
I recall how I married my doll to yours
We were going to be best friends forever
But we becameTime's passive  faceless dolls.

Every memory has you tucked in to a green leaf that's yet to open
The dark lush green remains unviewed,  for inside it
I am too.

Every high thought every brave deed every tear of
Joy and sorrow
You were my living diary of yesterday
Lost from all of my tomorrows.

If I meet you again dear friend
I shall be your Time capsule living in
Our past
If you remember not a jot of us
You will then, be forever and finally lost.

Flourish in ease my beloved friend,
May peace happiness and success
Attend
May your distant glorious path wind long
Through secret heart shaped leaves that fan our song
And dappled sunshine cast such paisley dreams
That forevermore this friend may seem
A lost little girl living in your heart
And my dear Atreyi,
At least that ways
we may never part.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Slop Weekly Challenge

Weekly Challenge!

House upon the Hill

House upon the hill
British colonial still
Rose red brick and cream cheese wslls
Silver roof of corrugated tin.

Polished grandiloquent wooden floors
Chocolate delicious formal doors
Outside summery benches sprawling
On Himalayan stoops of lore.

Kanchenjunga peaks
Dressed up snowy white beaks
Dribbling sunny honeymead sludge
My sixteen years are hushed and still.

I wish I could paint the tones
Memories lovely ebony bones
Of cedars and slender pines
Quiet evergreen times.

The jutting hill rambling down
In rutted paths of pebbled stone
Gina the spaniel slipping along
Loping the mind's slopes bygone.

Breakfast with mom and dad
Many hot buttery toasts crunched and
munched and had,
With pale cognac Darjeeling tea
Debating endless pros and con's of
The mountains over the seas.

The early evening walks
Through uphill snaking woods
The air clear fresh and good
Those days of interlude
The very last summer between
my teens and adulthood.

The blue mist blurs the path
The lighting up of distant malls
The dolls cottages upon the slopes sharply hones
Oh! the way their lives and lights had shone.

Simple Indian mountain folks
Cherubic lasses and rural lads
Applecheeked smiles that charm me still
And clean faces that never seemed sad.

The dotted hillside glows
Paper lanterns illuminate roads
One look up at the celestial sky
Is a celebration of God.

That night upon the varnished porch
I knelt in nature's church
My pew was the dewy downy grass
My altar, a star packed sky above.

God's necklace studs time and space
Embedding the darkest space
Kali glistening in her swathes of midnight silk
Trailing  pearls of the milky way

From sixteen with God's grace
The years have swiftly raced
The heart and mind has grown
With sadness hopes defaced.

Yet I have some treasures in my stowaway chest
Where a glimpse of unfettered sky I saved
Where stars softly shimmer and glimmer
Dead doubt away
My Kanchenjunga days.

© Amrita Valan 2015

For Open Poets Challenge

We see things as they are
As they should have been
So you refuse to look up at all
And I peep slyly from within.

Bitter recriminations lie, like
Dry leaves on the ground
In this black and white landscape
Of rights and wrongs, where
No one turns around.

No one sees the blossoming
Red, of ruby wounded heart,
No one sees the golden hope
Wither and fall apart.

We have two hearts entwined
Love is not of the mind,
Preaching right and wrong
In jet and ice
But the rainbows that we find.

In soft petals that require our tears
To nurture hope and wash off fears
To smell and take in the fragrance
Sip the sweet mercy of romance.

Look back, and turn around then
Our love still blossoms, though
Bleeding scarlet stains...
In falsehood's pride, don't pay this price
This meaningless craven sacrifice
Please, don't let us go,
In vain.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Folds and Creases

Folds and Creases

Crenellated Love overtook me under cover
Of the shady guava betelnut groves
My darkest edge of divinity
Hedging borders of bright lit
Civilization and domesticity.

I kept counsel in the dark
My wild animal heart
India animus
My subcontinental
Howls, and tear smudged
Mascara shut out
The distant chandelier
In a blaze of blurry crystal.

But the blue moon licked
Me alive with
tongues of vengeance
Hissing multiple pagan
Myths
Cold soft strokes
Melting dead corpuscles of
Composure
Remembrance, an ushering in
Of nice things
Beyond my power
To bear.

Endurance is .
Every moment
whispers to us
" Your survival is
Luck of the lottery's
Draw.

Love, the far pavilions
Of crazy beautiful
Dreams
Fallacy of faith
coitus interruptus
Amidst life's
Frenzied mauling."

You take my love too high
Sister moon
Where mere mortality can't
Breathe
Immerse me then
In rough seas of tranquility
Powdered bony distillate
Of chalked out sawdust
This circus ring.

Or let me reverse motion
Straighten my shoulders
With a jaunty swing
Thrust up my defiance
Tilt my crescent chin
And smiling charm
The waiting audience
Of puppeteers.

Brothers sisters,cousins,
Family, fresh and frozen
on wooden furniture reclining,
Ready to smile their confused
Hocus pocus, at the camera....
A brief disarray of focused
Purpose, bonhomie for
Posterity.

Woodlands wild inside
My jumanji mind
I am abandoned
In a brilliance of despair
Smoking the lenses
Tears roll down my clenched up
Senses,
Ah, snapshots of soo many
Many insensate years...

While the brain burns briny
Images of disparate beauty
Bursting the swelling sweetness
Hedonist hibiscus heart
Into white oleander folds and creases
Sacrifice on the marble altar
Of hideous memory
Cataracts, milky, obsolete,
bleeding lifeless,
Spilling out of catacombs of
Non linear Time.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Lilith in Waiting

Lilith in Waiting

Lilith in the meadows by the grassy knoll
Liilith in the shadows awaiting for
Whom the bells toll
A Lilith whose love is sullied yet pure joy, unmatched
Always forever deserted, unclaimed untouched.

Lilith reigning in her field of lilies, flaunting a snowy white
Diamond drops of  dew on her cheeks blushing rubies...dreaming of easy conquests,
Serene surety of pride.

Lilith of unearthly dreams too pure,
earthed from cadaverous hurt.
Lilith of driven snow
Unsullied by dirt.

She dreams alone
Her gashing gaping wounds,
Clean of regrets bereft of solace
Her heart quietly flows to trump your ace
Towards eternal honeymoon tryst.

Her love unmatched her Adam lost,
Vulnerability aglow upon her crystal face
Her unspoken vow,
Sacrilegious sacred cant...
Cold as marble her  taut embrace.

Her teasing bower
Her tempting power
Her lonely hour
Her kindest flowers,
Only in the beds
Of poesy,
Found is she,
Only in lilting rhyme
She garlands thee.

Loveless hell,
Dark listless heart
Torrid tears cleanse her
Tragic acts
Of three part tragedy,
Reject of God and Adam
And scorned by womankind
She masks her sorrows
Such sweet acceptance of eternal pact
Such lovely betrayal
Her truth and  fact.

So lovely so beautiful so inclement
Rapture  in swift increments
If you understand her life is
rebuilt by loss
If you fail in  keeping her faith
You stand bereaved
And she softly leaves you
Herself lost,
To wander her dreaming
meandering path.

Lilith lonesome forever lost in verse,
Robbed of power of rightful woman's wrath...
The rib that cornered all,
Of a woman's worth
Cast her into the woods
Of wondrous lots.

For you who trifle
Yet can't forget,
Slink and sink in quagmire of
voyeur's grave, 
Cement thy doom in time's
Tomb of hell.

Laced with passion your regret
A love suppressed is without grace,
To bear pain with fortitude in your
Pit of sin, awed by
Sincerity, her towering grace.

She fled from her place in
Incredulous disbelief
That her craven love
Placed her in Sin city
Your faux guilt, her grief.
A fortress of virtue, debts unpaid
In this city of Dull gratification
Without nobility or faith.

Lilith in wings of purity
A wildflower in flight
As where the wind goes
Her desires alight,
In your dead heart too
She reigns vile, 
ever decadant.
A blue gold flame
Unfettered royalty
Of loyalty dauntless of
Your plebian games

Blurred blue red
By the sloth of your saliva
Your drooling desperation
You despair despite
Attaining the fruit of
Life and knowledge
Upon soft Bosom
Of blissful décolletage...

A song of silver
A sipher of sighs
Traveller take a sip
Of her fragrant eyes
Forevermore face
The righteous garden
The incandescence
Of secret Eden

In Moon daughter's
Wisdom...Discover lost
Reveries...
Revelries flowering in the
Hearts of Wise Magi.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Provocateur/ une femme est une femme

A wisp of a french lisp
An odd twist of a hip
A provocateur
A twiggy legged chic.

A morbid fantastic
Twirling around
The one way mirror
Her daily act
A who's the fairest
Moment,
Before she
Sallies forth.

She takes a brief moment
To strike her amorous poses
Planning elegant views
Hosannas in motion...
Casting her spells
Cupidity, her cue.

Hint of a tweak
So fake it is cute
Breathtaking beauty, designs
To bring out the beast.

The sinner who feigns
Deigning to reign,
At heart a bit unworldly
Rather a gullible saint.

Devotee deep
Singular in the
Shallow art of pleasing.

She tweaks your interest
Bats baby lashes
A tremble of lips
A wide eyed stare
A cute tilt of her chin
Eyes aslant planted
A coy glance soft painted 
To cut your guts to slivers
With a stilleto thrust
twin coalblack daggers.

And as vain as she is regal
As odd as she is common
As dainty and demure
A little bit  tramp
A little more goddess
A comely siren
A carnivorous woman....

Une femme qui fait pas mal
Une femme est une femme
Nothing venture nothing have
Is the soft song that she hums.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Toofan

Toofaan ...

The reckless carriage of the express train
Melted blue steely rails to buttery trail
A flash, a gleam, a sizzling whizz!
The trees kissed my heart and
Went amiss...
Everything nearby a merry whirling blur,
The far horizon like still life portraiture.

I recalled him then...
The boy with the mop that fringed
Winsome puppy dog eyes
In a chestnut mane
With full on black lashes like blinkers
That drove me insane!

His name was Toofan, a veritable whirlwind.
He was laid back psychedelic and
Quite deceptive...
LSD on speed or something like it!

He took my number.
And nailed my heart to his teenage needs.
My brother raged at me, growling
I would learn the hard way, how smooth boys
Like Toofan compiled sad little diaries.
That I would soon find out
He had my number, on his
Shoot-to-slay hit list.

I rode his cycle like a rodeo driver
Twistings and turnings every which way
He walked grinning his lopsided moppety grin
Rescued me when I fell into the high drain.

Now I'm grinning at my snot nosed friends
Toofan came from the wrong side of the tracks
Not à child from an exclusive colony like ours
But someone who's daddy was in business of some kind.

So my very best friend didn't say hello.
I mentally said to hell with you
My barbie doll pal.
Play with your tea set and fancy boarding school boys
I liked him far better, unruly hair and all.

Toofan turned on the heat of his charm
Afternoons spent awaiting sweet calls
Studies went haywire and my meek mom
Was soon on fire.

So happy was I to this day I can't say why!
Well it ends this way, soon enough
And far too predictably I chickened away!
Don't blame me for I was only 16
With perhaps, maybe the mind and heart of 13.
Toofaan was fun that I dived into with zest
To discover dismayed, the deep end
Of my shallow emotional pool!

Somehow someone who led a faster life than I
Was peeking at me curiously over the stile
The heart has borders which it always longs to cross
Borderlands are where it flips, into a mile high toss;
At least for me!

The train whistles in the wind and my enigmatic heart
Purrs with the sudden pleasures of its speeding up
Lanes by-lanes of quaint country side scenes
Recall plaited memories of picnics and treks through the high hills.

And immersing myself in the view from the train
I revisit places I have been to again
I can almost see his soft Cheshire cat act
The unctuous soft twinkly smile of cute tact

Well he had never been too happy to lend me his bike
And though I wanted to love I was only in like,
And young Toofan my old friend, life speeds  up midway
Like this train and my poem it feels the fast lane...
So I free up my clutter, and make room for space
release the heart to be itself, in its strangest of  ways.

Its funny how a genuine like lasts much longer than most love
In the heartland's unexpected grace it discovers,
True stuff of what's  more than enough.

I will carry a part of you and the place we never found
When we raced apart in divergent ways....
Life let's us dance but
Partners last according to pace.

Thinking about my friend who was soft and kind
Lazy and slow, a snail to unwind
And yet fast as Summer lightning
And so very very exciting !
This strangest of poem now meanders
to a remote station
And an abrupt wayside ending!

© Amrita Valan 2015

Pas de deux

I don't know you
You don't know me
Twin souls
If at all
Anchored to eternity
Ancient passage
Of past ships
And the storm dark evening
And the curdled wind
The birth of an aftermath
You could never foresee
Tell me how
If you exist
Will you recognize me
Tell me why
You will remember me?

My pleasant evenings home alone at twelve
Watching the window erupt in glassed out
Safe thunderstorm
And me penning a poem triumphant
Finding such ease in a way with
words

Where you then with me?
My muse? Captaining the destiny
Of some hidden ship
Though a born romantic
I believe we carve our own destiny
We forge soulmate from
The fire of our love
And the iron of our resolve
On the heated anvil of passion.

So happy I was feeling,
Feeding  upon my new found power
To please, reciting
to mamma my penned treatise.
So fond am I of those memories
Were you watching on me
Somewhere please?

For us both
Though I had gone blind with ease
Pain sears open the towering third eye
Of vision
Tell me my angel you were overhead
And your piercing eye
Saw my frightened cries
When I was too young and too naive
Too unlearned in lessons of life.

Ancient passage
Vikings board
Fearless voyagers
Looted hoard.
Who watches with grim lantern
Ever gruffer laugh
Cold gleaming eye
Bewitched that's
the icy weather's match?

Strike a match to stroke the dark
Grow up heart glow lovely firefly
in vacant park,
when all the children have left
And trees stand guard
Frontiers of demonic
Possession.

Paths collide but never cross
They meet and part
And alas twas fixed upon some
cadaver stars,

We are condemned to charm and tease
And with dirty tears release...
This ancient game
Pas de deux
Of two loving hearts.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Blue Epiphanies

Shooting blue epiphanies
Into ethereal reservoir
Stance of a stoic
Focused bravado
Dreamy concentration
Triumphant grace.

His indigo reserves of pain
Firebolts of Orion...
hurtling through
Oblivion's domain.

Past perfect relived.
Released from oblong bow
Curvilinear destiny
Taut with unfound
Expression.

Access heaven before landing
Find ferocious tongue
A foreign language, so rabid
For your fervor.

Express the hollows,
Pierced into my heart
So long ago
... Tattoos of my fretworked soul.
Etchings
Of your love touch.

Raining hard and fast
Like arrows of longing
Draining the desert beyond
His reach.
He stands inimitable
straddling twin spires;
The finest flames are honed
To such sharp pinnacles
Of desire.

The Archer wrote across the
Night sky
His love letter to the stars.

The one who belongs to him.
Willing and brave
Will pluck from her heart
The resounding ether

The hidden waves plunging ploughing
The poignant air
To reach her.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Tu Eres Bonita

Tu eres Bonita

Bella Linda....Hermosa
Tu eres bonita
Not anymore
The lines are visible
The features lose definition
Skin loosens....
Sags tiring of collagen.
Resistance to gravity
Is futile.

The depravity of the notion
Of fountain of immortality
Elixirs of youth
Bottled self preservation
Of a need to freeze
the mutable into
Botoxed rictus.

When to be fallible
Is innocent of design
Pure and genuine.

Susceptible to wrinkles
And crinkles in the
Fabric of our time
Through space
Is to be human
And graciously agree
To let victory lie
In befriending defeat.
To surrender
Is courage of
High order, valor most
Discreet and sweet.

Bit by bit bid goodbye
To past image.
Look like yourself.
Make allowances
Adjust the mental loopholes
Like yourself flawlessly.
Just be.

Its sweet serendipitous happenstance
In a lifeless universe to be
Beautiful living You.

Share yourself generously
An existential room
With a view.
Looking outwards onto autumn vistas
The gaze turns inwards too.

Tu eres bonita...Hermosa.
You are truly beautiful.
In truth you're true.

The sunlight is sinfully  harsh
But not ever,  you.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Mother Do You Remember?

unita Jugran your poem speaking of the sun pulling out its brocade gowns brought out such rich memories of mother airing her brocade saris...Thank you for bringing out happiness from my closet of memories

Mother do you remember?
Oh so many beautiful things
On a string of memories
The kite flies far away from us both
Borne on strong winds
Time's tide of oblivion.

Sweet mother
Pale and drawn
Starry doe eyed beauty
In motion
Airing and sunning your rich brocades
Bustling about
Humming cozy songs
Playing merrily with my brother and I
Your two little living dolls.

Mother do you remember?
Innocence like sin in our dewy eyes?
Unaware that this wave of seeing
You strong and invincible
Fresh and bright goddess
would pass like the bright day
Colored cobalt blue up above
Melting yellowish
On smooth mosaic floors
Floods of happiness
Pooling into our hearth and hearts.

Guardian of our door, keeper of
Our haven, peace maker,
You mother...
Remember all....
And yet remember no more
How and when,
We flew the coop...
The door got unhinged
The wide world beckoned
The safe room of nursery exchanged
For tough halls of reckoning...

And examiner Life wasn't patient
As you were.
Mother do you remember
Wee kids at your knees
Blessed by your love
Toughened by your care,
Do you still see us
That high
In tender heart reveries?

For two adults stand in your vision
Toddler hood left in your wake
Two adults stand on their feet
For your sweet love's sake.

Mother,
I wish you could remember
All the happiness you made.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Will Be Done

Will Be Done

I recognize goodness where I see it,
If not in the form, yet
The contents do please.

I love the action benevolent
Even if I can't agree always,
With the principles dictating it.

Why will I neglect to love the other,
who comprehends me not,
Yet respects my right to be me?

Likewise I bow
To passionate sincerity
Which reaches out
To make me see.

I can put on your glasses admiringly...
yet my friend,
I will turn around and frankly confess
If your rosy hued vision
eludes me.

I walk in my dreams and you
Choose to tread lightly on faith
I surface in bouyant hope, you dive into unseen depths
The sun light is clear, I call the cards I see
You recreate the ancient past of stellar mystery!

And so beautiful are we both,
Let us walk hand in hand
And bend to gather sea shells of happiness
Scattered on life's elusive sands.

And when our day is over
And our profound Night begun
My friend,
Hold on to your ladder of faith,
And I will say goodnight
And embrace my death
Shorn of angel wings
But with a heart full of faith
In love, my
Glorious  love...

And though it fails to save my mortal shell
Yet still it makes a mockery of empty loveless hell
For wherever or whatever is my immortal soul,
I go without remorse, my love makes me whole
To go in peace because love always Is!

Rise and rise and rise above
Petty theisms and sing,
I am who I am
We are who we are
And as it should be
So it is.

Rise and rise and rise above
Petty divisive loss or gain
God is no carrot of salvation
Upon painful thorn
Of flagellations for sin.

And we shall sing together,
That "What dreams may come"
Shall  become one day,
And beckon us to the heart of hope
And love, and bring God
To ourselves.

And we shall pray together
What lies beneath
Is mastered,
The shells of our past present and future...
Gathered all together.

Life's mystery majestic
Made manifest forsaking crooked dialectic
May His Will be done...
Who directs and yet is never
Didactic.

Who isn't above or below
Who is the staff and the sheep and the shepherd
The stuff of our being the heart of our theme
Behind the "razzling-dazzling" show.

Let us meet with our meaning
For the Maker is Him
Holiest of holistic Truth
The way, of life and being.

© Amrita Valan 2015

An Ocean Within

An Ocean within

Holier than thou men of God,
I didn't know he formed exclusive clubs.
You tell us we can all partake
But interpretation is only yours to make?

Tell me by what authority
Dost thou offer man indemnity?

By whose licence proclaim your right
To preach as though you alone,
Have divine insight?

How dare you presume to supplant,
He who lives in every human heart?
Don't you know it beats ever alert?
Mindful that the greatest good
Lies in doing to others, as only
One's self would choose?

Wouldst thou contain him in an
Empty house
However filled with incense and myrrh
But vacant of the Muse?

Dost thou don garments designed to show
Divine authority invested in you?
The Son of God wore no uniform
Safe at the very end,
His humble crown of thorns

Do you know mercy? Would you let live?
Can you content be, to only give?
Can you resist from playing decisive judge?
Placing yourself much higher above...
Can you trust in a higher plan
That individually caters to every man?
Can you forsake your false peace that demands
Every man should and must recant
His beliefs, his faith, that means his world, his life
Would you even step between a husband and wife?

Marriage was writ in the Holy books
Because it dwelt in ages before it
Became the way established so
True,
Ages before it was inscribed by the scribes
The vows two people in love or amity took
Records of it imprints in holiest private nooks
Of our instinctive human hearts
Now by our literal brains and minds forsook.

Forgetting we can only be accountable to ourselves
Not live as  virulent purpose of being, an example
To better everyone else.

To thine own self be true and
Let there be no "saving" of human souls please friends,
For however far and wide and vast you cast your arrogant fishing nets,
The humble Fisher of Hearts lives within, and owns
the entire ocean's range
From end to end.

© Amrita Valan 2015

Majestic Woman

Majestic leonine goddess
Grace and strength adorning
your face
Handsome sturdy well built
This lady of substance
Knew where she was going
And always who she
Belonged with.

No doubts wasted her.
No second guessing
the first love of her life.
Her loyalty was hard as ice
Frozen, ingrained in every
Cool icicle of her being.

Her soul sat coiled in her eyes
Wise serpent who declined to rise
Erect to baits, flash the lies
Of empty seduction.

Instead she poured out her soul
Through searchlights of passion
Radiating warmth and compassion
From her serpentine slanting
Long lashed eyes.

She was a gorgeous beauty
To behold her was to die
In sighs...

She lives, she is real.
Not a dream.
In every loyal humble woman
Who seems weak
Because she is meek.
And her strength isn't in
Her voice
Or even in  glamorous decoy eyes
Casting looks artificially coy.

Her strength is durability, endurance
In debilitation.
In gentle smiles, in poise unmatched
On the teetering verge of loss.

One weakness remains
For her love to exploit.
The eighth deadly sin,
Pity on the undeserving.
Unchaste, yet unchastened.

Her pliant eyes pierced me
soft like mercy, in them an
ocean of moisture retained.
Dreaming oases, twin
Watering holes of pity
For men who dwell like beasts.
A direct gaze that's unsullied by taints,
Grace and gravity attained
At the cost if necessary, of
Stoical pretence.

Perhaps this ode to a woman of
Virtuous fortitude wouldn't be worthwhile
While she lived.
Because I wouldn't advocate Woman
To be Angel
Shorn of wings...

To return to those bereaved...
The loss of precious most peace
grievous the breaking of pacts
Of a promised lifetime
Together.

But in her death
A thousand dreams of mine were shattered.
And to me
Her song shall matter
When I think courage I
Think you.
Rest angelic sister soul
In sweet soft purity.

© Amrita Valan 2015