Sirocco

Sirocco.
Hot whistling
Lust lava in the wind.
Piercing my lungs
Lacerated sand blasts.

My numb shoulder blades
Cutting the
edges of my
Desperation.
Bowing to
This defining wind.

Destroyer
Utterly destroy me.
Rebuild my ashes
Into your choice compost.
Spread eagle me
Out to the elements
On your
Winds of change.

Leave no trace
Of this faulty alloy
But recover
The essence of
My base elements.

Sirocco
I'm a survivor of despair.

Reuse me better
Than this time.

My friends
Are lascivious leaves
And they're chuckling
Rustling for one
Last dance with me.

Adagio
I bow to thee master
Spin me faster
One last time.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Everything so Hollow

Everything so hollow
Such an overflow of sound
Everyone so merry
Smiley bandages
On wounds.

One heart of mine says
Braver be
Brace yourself
Enjoy thus
Whatever may come
Just let it be.

And one part of me
Breaks
Each piece more beautiful
Than any poem
I have written
Like a hopeless mirror
it gazes, piercing my soul's
Mazes,
Shards of sanity
Abandoning futility.

And the sigh
Would break
Your empty room.

So let me bow out
With my heart
Of gloom.

See me
A happy profile
In happening times,
My feet are skimming, dead
Weight of collapsed tears.

Flooded floors.

I shall not escape.
Let me
Close the door.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

For the Poets

Coming back full circle
To mother ship
My favorite anchor
Safe harbour
On Facebook.

I am trying something
I don't understand
Poet's need a cornerstone
For their faith.

This forum
Became family.
Thank you for
Reality checks
For restoring
My sanity.

Uncritically receiving
Mind orgasmic epiphanies
The Creative urge
To discover
Roots of disaffection
To explore and explain
The disconnects
Between logic and Faith
Between love and it's reason.
To unravel the enigma
Of ecstasy
Discarding
Disenchantment.
 
I am dreaming
May flowers
December roses

I'm dreaming
Autumnal hallows
Bewitching covens

I'm dreaming
My innocent
Inner spring tides.
My April heart breaks
My October follies.

Poetic pastors and shepherdesses
You're the many branches
Of this beautiful tree of verse
I let go of
My fastidious bough
And descend
For your lovely arms
To catch me.

I fall through faraway lands
See fairy tales,
femme fatales and
Rapacious pirates,
A thousand ships
Doomed to
Sloops of war
Passing
Through dreary nights

My dreams are of
White knights
Upon black steeds
Unicorn horns crowned
With nuggets and pearls
Of wisdom.

I find The entire
Treasure trove here

My bridal trousseau
And finery.

For I'm wedded
To poetry.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

On my Terrace

Walking on my terrace
Every evening before sunset
I melt my worries into blue grey skies
and steal rose pink crayon blushes
to warm my night.

Venus ever true glimmers
A Coquetish nose stud
On some etherreal woman
Veiled by Rayleigh particles.

Should she reveal herself
The sky would become
An Orchestra
Painted in Rainbow serenades.

I feel ultraviolet, elongated
Stretched into infinity's
Neverending clasp.
Snared by brick red fire walls
shimmering dissolute,
On the Western front

The lady's timeless castle
Trembling towards
Nightfall.

One with your mystery
Aligned with nameless memory
feeling the expanse
Of your  divine mindscapes
In flux,
Alterations of phases
Synchronous with
Our soulscapes.

Perhaps my blue sky world
Is your mind games
manifest as
Rooftop of my reality.

Perhaps the entire Milky Way
Is but a singulat thought
Zapping through a trail
Of neurons
leaving Starlit corridors
In it's wake.

I descend the staircase
rapt, 
Soul satiated with
Our twilight rendezvous
My Passionate encounter
With your elegantly staged
Evening mystery.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

For Baby

For Baby

I don't want to punish anyone
But Life is it's own legal tender
Why was my breath cut off?

I waned before I waxed
Because the wealthy must be taxed.
And I was the poorest of us all.

Imagine my parents bowed
By the empty hollow crib
They hadn't a pillow case
Stacked with notes
Or time to exchange
Their paltry bit
Of cash.

Tender them their desolate rights
Father and mother of mine
For one brief lonely night.

I lost my life, my  legacy
Doctor
You lost your
Human rights.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Generational Pathways

The more I see this world, and it's machinations, the more I see the petty intrigues of fellow humans, the more frightened I get.
The more scared I am, the more wary I become, absolutely retreating into myself, afraid to interact, frozen half life.
I smile like the proverbial Cheshire cat, an enigmatic Sphinx  of coy artifice.
Full of small talk, light inconsequentials.
While inside I sink into a despair, that I won't acknowledge.

Where is the wonder, the promise of joy  in companionship? Which bubbled over only in the growing up years?
What the hell am I doing, dancing around daguerreotypes, making delicate figure eights around complicated people? Pas de douxs of compliance.
Then I come home and open the doors to the wonderful honest and inspiring world I inhabit with my children.
They're innocent, and straightforward. Their hearts are oceanic, full of loving energy, ready for adventure.
We play brain Vita, cut out a paper tree, or do origami houses and boats, lick the last crumbs of plum cake together.
True togetherness is such tenderness.
A crowd can encapsulate you with it's cold containment.
My mommy moments with two adorable boys who adore me unstintingly, only make my heart long for longer stints, more opportunities.
To see this story through.
I know we are parents. Doomed to love an eternity in a few short decades.
That we will see only half the life of those we gave lives to. Gave our lives for their very best interests.
That we will never see the end of our conjoined stories, or be there in a spiritual capacity to guide, hold up and support them.

I willingly cede my cute beauties. I have survived this harsh fact.
Inside your temples of consciousness I find an abode.
Where through your evolution, I will be refined.

And this me will walk the world again.
Better than before. Clothed in new garb.
A new body, a transformed face, an altered mind.
A higher dimensional consciousness.

I will not know I am I.

Yet in my journey I will seek and search out all the old familiars, the sanctum sanctorums  that formed the essence of all my existences.

I will know myself again. By all I befriend.
Befriending, I will learn anew.
I will be aware this time, not afraid.
By teaching my children to cast out their fears I will cast out mine.
As I straighten their little backbones, I will walk taller.

And into this marvelous sunset of  insubstantiality, we will gaze our unspoken admiration, our unspeakable love, of how far we have come, of how high we have reached, surpassing each other's expectations

Generations, are upgrades, wondrous stairways of double helical actualization.

The pathways coil inside. We shall ascend to overcome, all that limits us today.

To be contd
(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Your Lovely Mind

Your mind

Your mind so young and tender
will weather a hundred storms
As you age my lovely boys
i hope you learn
to stay kind,
Be gently strong.

I need your minds
to be mature enough
To hold the real gold.
Forgo the allure of things that are
Meant to tarnish and rust
Like iron cold.

keep it real
keep it pure
sacred inside
Those fragrant doors.
So my memories can be your balm
In stormy sorrow, a vial of calm.

For one day my sons
I will be far away and gone
There'll only be odd things,
Without end,
that hold my scent.
My trail of junk
You must discard,
But play it by the ear
keep whatever thrills you
That's ethereal and dear.

It breaks my heart, sons,
That we won't meet again
my face dissolves in ruins,
Braving raining pain.

But my sons
your minds are sacred pages
Retainers of sombre traces
The incense of long burnt ashes
Of the rites of lovely
Loving passage.

That perhaps, you will keep in hiding.
There Forever
I will be abiding.

Perhaps not ever
To be remembered,
As I really was, but as
Through your misty eyes
And feeling hearts,
The threads of my distant life
will have been recast.

And long live my lovely boys
with grandchildren grateful
At their knees,
Eager hearers
Loyal bearers
Of many a tale to tell,
Now and forever
Soft hearts regale,
A time will come
When only memories dwell.
A time will come
When All wondering
Itself shall Cease.

We are time tested
Tender narratives
Floating in the breeze.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

I want to See

I want to see years ahead.
Light years ahead.
I want to see alpha and omega.
The beginning and the end of the Universe.
The beginnings within the endings.
The endings coiling about the beginnings.
I want closure.
The end of the story, the Heart of this strange Affair.
I want my story.
Beginning, before my birth,  concluded only when the ramparts of Time and Space reveal
their true nature.
I want to unravel this mystical connection between I, and Us. 
The intertwining between My sentience, and absolute Universal silence.
I want knowledge of the cause behind my presence, and the reason for your absence.
I want to see you all again,  through the mightiest arc of Infinite space and the entire gigantic span of time.

Oh, to be so contained, within the cruel coil of mortality.

Who Am I

What am I?
Am I just a poetry maker
A people pleaser
A word romancer
Arranging little compositions
little litters of alliteration
Making love with pretty phrases
Forgoing the face to faces
Seeking the heart behind facades
The mind behind the masquerade
And yet the hard truth and fact
People react to First impact
and thereafter they sense the core
And slowly the shapes alter
More and more.

Things change people change
Alterations minute
Dance the game
Action is where it is at
Words don't have a clue to that
i sit back, I take my time
Churn up pretty words
that trill and chime
You pick and choose
A fancy verse
I blossom upon your blessings
Or wilt at your curse
Who am I ?
What am I?
Live for your words of praise,
Do I?
For your approval I preen and pose,
If I'm ignored,
Do you suppose,
That I shall die
A poet no more
merely a verbose unreal bore.

Who are the people who
Play on words
Who artfully arrange
To touch heart chords
the beat makers, the pace setters
of poesy
Am I like you?
What do you see?

Please tell me
For I need to know
The strange substance
At my core
Once the words
Are out and about
Ink on paper,
Will I be done then,
And be no more?

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Human Ants

Lifetimes allotted
An ants measure
When human mind
So rare
An eternal treasure

We who live
We who believe
Bear witness for existence
Seek purpose
Without relief

We who feel
Moulding and shaping
An Universe
In our minds

Maya morphing
To Reality
Yet Reality
So blind.

Like Blind seers
we weep
At the portals
To stars

So Fatefully Near
to the Gods

Yet so Far.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Welded

You're insubstantial
And I
am welded to you

You are barely there
Eking out a frugal store of life
Out of meagre supplies
And I
Am welded to you.

You're a fragile breath
you are in a state of vacuous lent
denied succor,  vital air
Mother, incognito,
You are hardly there.

You walk in some dizzying faint
your eyes hard bright as chips of ice
Mine own are frightened, penitent
You are aloof twice removed, hesitant

The farthest you go, my Dearest
I weld my heart to you.

My promises unspoken
Unheeded
To be forever
One with you.

Hear my silent cry
bear my broken echoes
universe of fated follies
Twinkling
As they die.

You take away souls
Parsimonious ferryman
Abridged are we
By your ghoulish jetty,
But before your ether bridge
We daring stand
Fast we hold our familiars
On faith ingrained
This love
Won't be vain.

Farewells
We refuse to
Understand.

Welded from dust to flesh
To pheromones
Wedded forever
Betrothed are we
On frenzied fateful dance
Of hypnotic hormones.

Welded by grammatical genes
to articulate blood and bone.

Mother I carry you
On and on
Holy Tabernacle a dreaming Covenant
Never, ever be gone.

You're lost in corridors
Whose corners we yet,
cannot choose to turn,
Tossed in storms
Your frailty betrayed
Forever alone, undone.

And in another city
in my room of resurrected woe
I restore your doom
Rebuilding sorrow

On and on Mother
The chain unbreakable
Ductile and Malleable
Thin beaten sheets
Of beautiful pain
Golden luminous dreadful strain,
Hideously strung out
to net an entire universe
Voided
In Loss...

Not the only begotten
Son of God
We all bear
the beatific cross.
The epicentre of loss
that holds full measures
Of erstwhile gain.

She taught me
His immense pain
to lament
She now herself walks
Agonized avenues of
Gethsemane.

Indestructibly I
Shall share your pain,
Forever I
am welded to you.

 
(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Farzeen and Amrita

Chill. Negotiate bridges when you come to them. Walk  use a stick, hey crawl on all fours.
We will find a way.
Plan ahead. But know that rules change, games change.
Life emulates the tight rope walk. Pace yourself.
Don't look down.
Don't star gaze.
Keep those eyes straight ahead.
Touch down. Take a breather.
Close your Eyes and dream awhile.
Sleep to Heal.
Tomorrow is an affirmation.
Life is Celebration.
The key is courage kindness, love and laughter.
Or whatever levers open your lock.
I'm free.
Born to light.
Nurtured in darkness.
And in both hands I hold them.
As friends and guardians.
No nemesis, no fear of retribution.
Only lessons, life sessions.

Well...
Here's a collaboration.

By my friend Farzeen and I. She wishes to remain off FB.
So I'm posting our joint efforts with her permission.

Farzeen:

To know there's more to life
Unsure of what it holds
You know, it's hard to find
The secret will unfold😊

Amrita:

The secret is a truth within
The roots reach out
Drawing moisture in
Lovely locked in memories
Inside us we hold the keys.
Heads held high, sunward stem
Nothing shall remain the same
And yet as things change
The change reflects
A quiet return, a homebound trek.

Farzeen:

Return to peace and love
Where the soul starts its journey in life
Ups and downs were yet unknown
An innocent life of a child
Moments with loved ones can never be taken
Cause the bonds last for life
Yet there are secrets that cannot be told of What life had in tide
Life unfolds, it seems that past is not your own
It all this while and yet it's lost it all
Go free yourself
Let your secrets give peace to your inner self
Life is dream
Enjoy the now
Happy with the thoughts
Of the years bygone.

Ode to Ooty

Ode to Ooty

Blue blessings touch mountain tops
With merciful mirage
Bestowing grace the manna clouds
cluster what heavenly choirs
Are these?
The indescribable softness
is in itself a kindness
Upon stony earth bestowed
The waterfalls of lucid grace
The lakes dappled serenity in calmness
my speedboat centred in paradise
I surf ice water in my mouth
My cheeks frozen ecstacy
I am not just alive
I'm far more than it
One am I
With the birds and trees
Redwoods dappled with broken knees
I delve through barks
and shine through arcs
I'm breath of life
and immanent breeze.

Calm am  I
Soft as a silken canopy
That shades earth
With sun spangled parasol
I'm the incessant chirp
Of crickets
So cheekily cheerful
Dispelling the importance
Of unease.

Beautiful are you
God's own land
Heavenly heights of
Softness frosty calm
terraced chocolate brown slopes
topped by delicious icing
Delicate are your blue tinged skies
Laced with puffy pearls
Showering sequined grace.

Charmed enchanted
Bewitched utterly
Ooty,
You quaint endearing
Place.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016