Pain and Poetry

I walk with my wounds
Pain winding me down
Up and down
And all around
Poetry
The shroud I lay you out
Upon the ground
The cast of all my pain.
I leave you behind
For others may need
My tale
As I walk away
From my wounds
As I walk through the hole in the shroud
Where pain clawed and tore
A flawless hole
Through it such light fabulous pours
I walk through brilliant
Walls
Where pain loses its hold
And poetry makes me whole
Or perhaps
Poetry is what still glues together
This broken chipped down soul.

Eyes Wide

Eyes open at the source
Wider than consciousness
Can hold
Eyes dreaming
Assimilating nightmares
Annihilating all fears
Sorrows have their own defence
The silken path of silent tears.

Eyes popping out trying to
See through madness
An universe behind the bland wooden door
Every intricate carving
With a coy cipher at its core
Each number each choice
Each year's explosive babel of voice

We brought it on
And then our once beloveds
Are once again
Forever gone.

Finality is forever
Are you there still?
Do you see or hear
Or feel?

And even asleep
Can you miss me?
And though death chilled corpse
Can you please bless me?

Or are you gone?
Truly switched off forever?
Once so alive so vibrantly on?

Eyes can shed only so much tears
Eyes grow stern with fate's deception or is it destined design?
Or something erratic anarchic beyond
Human comprehension?

Entropy of our beloved
Who ordered our lives
Balanced and brought beauty
Then died all alone
Their screaming horror misaligned?

Grief is a ringside spectator
The show of life goes on
Friends foes passer bys
On pretentious stilts
Prance to touch the skies
All of the while
Their skins dissolving
Like dreams
Steaming in my far off
Familial eyes.

God bless them
They who ordered our lives
And taught us love
Amidst disorderly chaos
Taught us to live amidst strife
God is the ultimate
Will to survive.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

And Then We Learn Love

If there's one lesson "Gone With the Wind", offers me then I guess it's not the adorably spunky and unimaginative (And therefore indomitable), Scarlett's motto "Tomorrow's another day."
More like we tend to ignore and undervalue what's truly ours.
And the person who stands by us steadfastly, becomes just that, the stand by.
We'll always hanker after the unavailable ordinary who assumes mythical proportions and significance.
Rhett Butler and Melanie Wilkes both  achieve their halos on martyrdom.
Sadly whilst Melanie is alive, and well worth taking a second look at, she is most conveniently hoisted up on a pedestal for due diligence homage to some distant deity. 
The ebullient Butler whistling up a storm of flirtation all around his beloved Scarlett is treated much like a buzzing mosquito swatted most energetically by an oblivious Ms O'Hara.
One has to literally die to get her man's attention.
And the other has to get all aloof impervious inscrutable and totally inaccessible to be coveted.
We want the drama. We crave tragedy. 
Anyday. We will trade comfort and warmth and  rush off on our fools' missions to win the hearts already spoken for or dig up one from the grave.
Why? Because We need to feel Special.
Not make someone feel special.
We need to feel unique.
Perhaps it's the man in the mirror we are finally in love with.
When we grow up we put away the mirror or it shatters and along with it our interfering egos.
And then we learn love.

Ten Feet Deep

Don't be soft
Don't take it to heart
Don't wear your heart on your sleeve
Just dig a hole ten feet deep
Bury it in and let it sleep.

Dont waste those precious tears
Don't ever let your face show fear.
walk  tall and proud and strong
Swaggering like your shadow's
So long.

But midway at midday
The sun will burn your pate
And if alas, you wilt then creeping home
Ever so quietly lick those wounds
Apply band aids, kool aids, retail  therapy or massages
And persuade yourself that such slight hurts might fade.

But make no mistake
Offering free confidences
In lieu of crocodile condolences.

Talk is cheap
And if you confide in "friends"
You may find out later
You have to weep
When sorrow bounces off
Unfeeling dead ends.

Your soul
Is  a spongy vacuuming hole
A big black drain hole
A light pulling sink hole
A bluffing killer's wink hole.n

To entrust your sorrow
To another
Makes it's a feast
An orgy of agony
A vicarious suffering
voyeuristic moaning.
Keep your sorrows
Like you keep your money.

And deep in the darkness
Of our own
stonewalled dead ends
Yesterday's sorrow
Starts to make sense
Assimilates meaning
regurgitates weakness
And from back door exits
Of black hole despair
Finds itself a new universe
Where laws are made to bend.

When we're ready
We will be able and willing
Majestic creators
Our own universe
Of choices.

And no one will ever
Shame us
For wearing
Our hearts on our faces
Because the best part of
This bodily temple of life
Lived in hope of love
Should bear triumphant  indeed
Such lucent grace.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

I Would

I Would.

It never comes back
The pure moment
Of earnest belief
The feeling
That nothing needs change
To render the moment
More perfect
Than it is.

I take it in my stride
In these trying dying days
Of wading downstream
Shaking the cloggy mud off
Imprisoned heels
For journeys need completion.

If I were to get younger
And not older
Then I would fling off
The youthful inhibitors
Fright pride and ego
I would reject
Both options
Flight or fight
I would choose
Love every time
With joy and accept
pain as a true
friend and teacher.
I would.

I would hold your hands easy
In the softest sinews
Of my heart
And let silence speak
Stormy stories songs of
Passion sorrow and redemption.

I wouldn't mock and jeer
Myself for choosing a morsel of
humble hope over allures of
Vanity fair, and empty
Crumbs of dead dreams.

Opportunities are angels
Offering assistance
And lending broad wings
Soaring on
Winds of change.

I would be peaceful
A prayer of perfect gratitude
For being in an interesting life
But not the picture perfect one.

I would heap marshmallow pillows
Under my head
And dream harmless candy floss dreams.

Of  my love's leonine mane in submissive bow
Hus puppy dog eyes spilling  topaz laughter
Warnings  in warm disarming silence
"Never take me seriously!"

And so heedful would I be
At curtains we would part
Graceful departures of the heart
No grand passion merits
Perpetual rotting, lifelong
Penance for unrequited
Love.

Carpe diem, My diadem,
Crazy pastiche of gems
Some paste and others
Brilliant diamonds freely given.

I would be softer gentler easier
On you, me, us...
The shrill cacophonous world
And should you turn cartwheels
For my attention
I'd shower you with
Hershey kisses
dreamy adulatory indulgence!

Life is the art of basking
In the sunshine of
A perfect dream
On a sunny beach
Where sunset unfolds red silk bolts of passion on the far horrizon on the right
And melts thick gold honey of warm sunrise on the left.

We must be completed.
If for only a day,
Let us still be eager
Flowers of tenderness
Against tough pebbles
Kissing gritty sands
and puckered sea shells
Solicitous seasonal adoration.

Rocking in my heart
Gentle as lullaby
Memories sift snatches
Of magic
Magic sieve moments
That take pride of place
And overthrow all notions
Of either endings
Or defeat.

The body of resilient silence
Cradles my bed
I'm landlocked and have
Lost my address
But you still serenade me
From beyond ice valleys and rifts
Of Titanic graves.

I'm a dream in slow motion
Flipping through distress
My axis of rotation tilted
Hearing strangest music
Like comforting dreams
Waves washing shores
If sanity were no more
I would've been dipping
Bowling over the horrizon
Into worlds of past
Absolution.

If Hades embraced me
I would still take my chance
Life is not of Heaven
Or of hell...

Ever Dipping at the trough
Again riding the crest of waves
And surfing eternally level
With the edge
Drowning all expectations
of static surfaces.

The comfort is
Not in knowing
But in the never knowing.

The knowledge
that there is far more
Beyond this present beachfront,
Of beauty and wonder.

That should a world
Of waves submerge us
Perchance a new Atlantis
May appear.

Thus I am comforted
And crave no more
For the return I crave
Is fated in my helical
Journeys through every
Cell and molecules and atom
Of my life, my being,
and the sherical celestial patterns
and pathways of stellar dust I've trodden
To view and comprehend
All I am comprised of.

The journey once completed
Truly begins.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

For Susan

Susan E Birch

For Susan

My heart's smiling just about now
Scrawling your name onscreen
Never met you can't even picture you
I confess I have rarely been
To your page or wall or profile
Call it what you will
Social media is funny town
Because I adore you still.

Kindness of course and a kindred soul
An attractive personality pure and whole
Always gentle but ready for fun
Susan dear friend You're someone

I'm truly grateful to come across
Because not knowing your kind
Would've been a loss

Smart capable very witty
But that's not why I sing your ditty
Easy to befriend
Honest free and open
Quintessentially nice
You dear beautiful poetess
Are indeed a prize.

Do forgive this childish rhyme
I promise! I'll try and do better next time!

Live to Tell

If you live to tell your tale
Will you
Let the scars show?
Will you
Let the pain and hurt
All of the people from
the unleavened past
Not so kind or good to you
Will you let them go
At last?

Or recite the litany of woes
And invoke the endless times
They committed thoughtless spiteful cruel crimes
Against them will you raise the flag
Black and barren, horrid corrosion's rag?

Or can you maybe
Forgive,
To forget the pain?
Perhaps you might not
Extract revenge
But simply learn
To live again?
Only because
You said goodbye,
Goodbye and god bless
I will not die!

Just because you cursed me
Ignored my muted cry,
Look again!, look well,
Because of pain
I am hammered from fiend fires of hell
And fine beaten into gold
Through stress by strain.

And now am I a sheet of music plain
Elemental
A veil of endurance
Into horrizons endless
Beyond your timid ken.

Still I live and sing
In still depths
of bottomless pools of pity,
And drink deep from
Crystal fountains of ethereal
Clarity
And inhale purity from pyrrhic
Sacrifices
Willingly made and bravely paid.

I am sacred and divine
My heart lit up with dreams
Devotional bliss in gallant stream
Flowing through in a gush of stubborn hope
I am
Neither blasphemy nor infamy
Neither heretic nor haggard witch
But the pale reflection of sun that  gropes out to reach
Stillest deadwaters of murky ditch.
I reflect the Seeker
One who sends out such
Splendor of Light to shine
All Nature proclaims
A friend of mine.
So loving a gift,
Is light and hope
None may disown
Its certitude.

If my life could be a tale
That you choose to read
Hold my scribbling hand
Let me lead
But let deepest love for you
my fellow beings
And gratitude and joy be guide
To the song I sing.

For hate dies lonely
And love lives
Marble monumental glorious song
That sanctifies both beloved
And he who gives.

(c)  Amrita Valan 2016

Resident Evil

In the smoky ascent of
Pent up passion spent
At cooler altitudes
Common sense prevailed
And cloudy cloying regrets
Began tremulous descent.

At first salty pearls of precipitation
Precise honesty lucent
And then opaque, foggy with
maelstrom of memories
The  kind that are not
for putting away
In treasured hope chests
Like bridal trousseau
But effervescent salts that
you could never contrive
to curb or contain.

The anchors of
Control swept aside
Floodgates bursting
cascading crescendo
Falling acceleration
Of acrimonious calumnies
Descent into torrential
Madnesss.

Alone
This is the forever place
I founded and carved
This hollow scooped out shelter
The sad notion of my being.

Forever emptiness
till relinquished of duties
of future and the
travesty of choices.

Life leads me by hand
From loneliness
To greater loneliness.
The pinnacle of my
Existence an annihilation
Of the self generated
Image, the persona
I impersonate.

What's me and
Constitutes myself
As meaningless
As squiggles in the squishy
Sand washed off
The shores
Of life forevermore
Never to return
Or repeat the
Self same patterns of yore.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016.

Day 8 If I were a Bird

If I were a Bird

Houses below me
Rooftops my perches
Clouds majestically tinged
With gold silver and rose
Delirious canopy of dreams
My soft worlds enclose.

Towards the wild west I fly
Always from sacred east I cry
My shrill shriek of triumphal joyful love
I am alive!

The earth bends me to its proper will
Magnet understudies my eccentric wings
Of freedom's flurry
To patterns primeval
Flight predestined.

Still I cry raucous and ravenous
Forevermore hungering
For flight to new territories
Seen from solitaire bird eyes.

I am Here,
Now,
Time's harbinger
To sail dreams for you
So earthbound, so pensive
Mulling on distant dreams
Too heavy eyed.

I'm fire bird and phoenix
I am owl wise and beatific
Serenity's dove...

The beautiful messenger
Of peace offerings
Dove from heaven's cote
I swoop I fly I glide
Thy olive branches
To bring
I'm spring time cuckoo
nocturnal nightingale
At daybreak or evening's heartache
Thy soul to singe.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Theme park or Fair Treats : Day 7

Candy floss on my lips
Strange melting in  the mouth
Sweetness
Your baby lips
Softly clinging to  my shoulders
Your sunkissed caramel skin

Mamma will take you places
Keep you safely harnessed
through the wild rides while you
Babble on baby
Or dip into
Sweet pop corn dreams.

Little one,
You are the sweet theme
of this fairground song
The sense behind the  madness
Of endless carousels
That I sing.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Childhood

Childhood

Childhood home and garden
Sunny days ago
Warm and friendly
and a balm
For the rest of my life

I look at the photo of a white washed
Transit bungalow
For company guests
Can just spy a shadow of the
Cane sofa set
Where we ambled languid
Careless of our lives
When the sun never set
On summer days.

I cast a glance to the left
Where photographic blur
Can't do  justice to memory's
Sharp etched pictures

The swimming pool's pristine blue
Floats into view
Mind is awash.
Thirst quenching memories
Heart wrenching stories
Everyone has a childhood
Drenched with sweet moments.

In my eyes
Two pools of love and gratitude
For graceful days gone by.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Slop Weekly Challenge proverb

Weekly Challenge
Feeling a little bit naughty. So this "inappropriate?" (Perhaps) proverb caught my eye.
If the wife sins, the husband is not innocent.

This is a truth to which I can testify

I used to walk the high way but
Now I crawl underneath
Understand my heart
It has been tossed for dirty dimes at your false feet

A good woman' heart unvarnished
Loves to keep her faith
Take her not  for granted
Nor scorn the soft dreaming love she gave
For  she will save it for another,
On a rainy day
Along with tears she forbore to shed
And bestow it in her despair
on beggars and dreamers and jokers
Dry hearts long since dead
Until to its last furtive drop
its eventually bled.

If the wife sins, the husband is not innocent.
So if she walks with vampires undead
He sank his own greedy fangs in first
Untrustworthy fodder for lust he made.

If the wife sins, the husband is not innocent.
This is your truth, so own it
Take your sordid taint
With which you painted your woman black
Nocturnal lying desolate black
Ravenous ruthless relentless black
Darkness is what you will
Ever get back....

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Move

Move

Hop skip shove push
Jump run dive in to hoops
Race trace each tortuous maze
Amble if lame  but move always

Been a while stuck in the groove
The road restive to feel heated hooves
Make the motion take the trip
Get off the carousel leap over the tip

See yonder sun that daily dips
In bloody trail through hungry lips
Of rapacious skies into what lies beyond
And your staid home the earth
Moves madly, round and round

And every degree tilts through time
The road shimmering, shifts its paradigm
The path changes the journey derails
Convoluted curves and endlessly
loops this living tale.

We missed the boat but we can't stay
on at the port
Shipwrecked we swim still forward to receding shores
The waters catch up crawling serpentine over our necks
Goodnight sweet dreaming life on safety's starry deck
In the waves move memories maddening light
where moon and stars congeal in delight
And White Atlantis awaits
Or mortal fate
Movement is Life impetuous
Life that dances brave and calm
Into death's embrace.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Heaven

Heaven

Heaven must  be a place
where none else is
And yet we reign supreme
Above all, yet alone,
our mastery
undisputed unchallenged
Sovereign.

Because in heaven
Our presence is perfection
We're all in all
Complete in isolation
Surrounded by solitude
A golden silence.
Simplicity
Our deliverance
Complicit with utter lack of want. 
An attaiment of the very best
The essence of everything.

On Earth
We compete and fight our own
Petty selves,
Split into lying shards
Multiple mrror images
Dissected to deceive.

Conflicted egos engaged in
Puerile pernicious battle
Still jealous, sullen, suspicious
Of our very own depths
That we flounder in...

Meanwhile heaven lies heavy
Upon our souls
Ordering guilt trips
To hell a plenty
Till unity is sought
In understanding
In empathetic
reception.

And then finally
We find
We are alone
True masters
of  existential experience.
In heaven
We are one...

And solitude and rest,
Clarity and compassion,
Reward not one,
Not you,
Not me alone,
But universally,
reapers of peace
In explosive successions.

And love
Regrows us exponentially
our organic shells discarded
Boundaries transcended outgrown
Into shimmering halos
Auras of infinity
Divine benediction.

Heaven is you.
Knowing me
So well
That I become
You
And renew
me.

And you see yourself
Through my eyes
And pierce veils of
Illusion and delusion.

Ourselves
Are both,
Rescued and
Savior. 
Salvaged and Salvation.
Mendicants and Messiahs...

When sun
Falling soft
upon our sleeping souls
Light up the true side
Of this ethereal mirror of
Life.
Awakening third eye
Of unified perception
And bring us to
Our heaven.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

The Ladder

The Ladder

The ladder stretches
Halfway through heaven
Makes skyline accessible
blue and white breath kissed
Loose ends, tying up
remembrances too vast
To wrap up
In the stoppered
time capsule
Of one life.

The terraced memories ascend
Into sun's smoky descent
Our blood livid against
Fierce skies.
Against the wall by the black plastic
Water tanks
The ladder gapes
Grappling with answers
to open ended questions
Of my unconscious soul.

I grasp silver railings
Of childhood bliss.

I am almost there.

Sliding to the bottom of
this mystery.

Ascending the ladder
That welcomes and
Ushers in
Loneliness
Thrusting me into
Intimate realms of trust
and truth.

The legacies,
If only we knew,
Of blissful eternity.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Slop Weekly Challenge

The tale be told
The woman alone
His birth the mystery
Her faith behold
An insular nativity
An island of pity
A sea of wolves
Carousing drawing
Lots over his bones

The women behold
The Man the Magus
His cross upstages
All our sins and sorrow
Out of our reckoning
See Lady beckoning
I hold this lamp
For outcasts
At Heaven's door.

Easter ahoy!
Lost like the island
Meaning forsaken
Such a cold wind blows

Lost at birth in the cold place
The heart rudimentary
Running hard on vestigial legs

May Man show mercy
As God durst once
And for those of us
You and I
Who curse our lots

Remember she
Who gathering her son's
Cast off clothing
Was Moving stillness
At the close of day

Hark how the thunder rolls mighty
Witness darkness in the afternoon
Easterly sun hath forget his course.

She's alone now in her nightmare agony
Awaiting the dawn of uncertainty
In quiet fortitude.

Hail glorious dawn that
Searches sunlit sepulchre
For the mystical body
Of a dead man's belief.

Who avowed and arose
Prophetic red rose
And sunlight shall glory
His name evermore
Posterns of faith
Guardian of gates
Easter our portal
Of everlasting hope.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016