Turn around

Pearls shine brighter
In golden light
This evening they glimmer
Basking in concealed
Light.

The frothy dance of lace and frills
Posies and bouquets,
Sleek corsages,
Creating crafty frisson, romantic thrills
And everyone is smiling, 
Doing face time
The pearls wink and blink
Grace aloof,
On my throat, a kiss divine.

I see that you've noticed them too
Catch you staring in the hallway mirror
Adjoining the den where the tribes have gathered
The wreaths and tiaras the brooches and clasps
The bow ties and tuxes the posh would be wasps,
Host and guests align
In primitive ritualistic tribe.
With their showcase rites
Their discreet diatribe.

My pearls are poetry
The kiss of bliss
Each reminds me
Of mystical peace
No I will not miss
The display or show
I can stand apart
Watch the eternal ebb and flow

The gilded gowns, pretty pouts
The suppressed moues and petty
Frowns
The clinking glasses the trilling lasses
I do love it this window dressing,
But these pearls are pressing
Too pure, upon my throat
Calmly aligned in chaos inchoate.

Thank you for the music
And musicians
The whole band too,
The Muse won't reside in
This merry soirée,
And so I must go.

Moonlighting porch beckons
Pearls bobble and dance madly
Releasing passion's power
Drenched in silver ivory fumes
Poetry's potent doom.

Freed afloat on wishful clouds
Wistfully I dream this night
Of immortal turn around.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Forsooth

By the Coffee Table

The familiar side table
Bearing glass framed photographs
Root identifiers, delineating
Source and well spring
Of present company.

The mother sweet, demure, diminutive,
Chiselled elegance, undiminished with age,
The daddy so  dimpled yet majestic
Cross between Don Juan and sage

Two doe eyed sloe eyed brothers
Searing  smouldering intensity
Crackling through the frames of time
Broad shoulders and tapered torsos
Their noses,
ever so slightly aquiline.

Like twin pillars of familial gate ways,
Daddy the mighty arch,
Or they, the mighty muscled thighs
Of Colossus,
Daddy the proud head leonine,
Mummy, steadfastness sheltered
the beating heart  inside.

And then the wedding pictures
Loveliness protected, coy and shy
Graceful gazelle ready to tie the knot
Affections bondage,
Brings forth my sighs.

The groom handsome fella
Complacency sitting comfortably on his shoulders broad
The lucky guy, who got acceptance
From Father's pride and joy
The prized suitor,Prince Charming
With golden ring,
A really suitable boy.

And eyes fell in perfect harmony
On the baby photos,
In the bottom right corner's
Sweet spot...
The cornerstone of marital lore
The inevitable essential afterthought.

Baby was a bright cherubim
All rosy cheeked with love
Her doll's lashes guarding
Precocious flash of eyes
Open and trustful
Ready for her due
Adoration.
A picture perfect life.

I was no fortune teller.
But upon the coffee table
I saw bliss
A speaking tableau
Of harmony Wed
To Serendipity's kiss.

Not all families are alike.
And no two are same.
Photographs release details.
Pictures are tell tale.

Smiling my veil
Of smoky confusion
I spoke under my breath,
And so,
they lived, forsooth...

Happily ever after.
For some,
Fairytales are truth.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Paen to Survival

I have been told I can't write poetry by an acclaimed Indian poet. So that's one bubble burst. Nevertheless let me write. For I can truly do nothing else.

If I say I won't write
My ego's dictates
If I just mute down this
Hopeless heart aching pain
Now tell me my friends
For I hold out my pen
What purer ink shall this
Pristine sheet stain?

I promise you birdsong
If that's all you'll have
The glorious joys of
Flowers blossoming love
I shall out etch out such rainbows
Carrying all my dreams
Let each colour dress up
The theme of your schemes
Let none jag out or drizzle
The hushed pain of my scream.

I offer you the agony
Of the Other, not my own,
It does not do to dwell on,
Ones own flesh and bones.
I shall show up the cost of
such desecrated Lives
That nevertheless struggling
Survive and thrive.

For all you like is victory
The survivor's odds
The psalm you sing always
crowns the fittest of the lot.

But,
Just a quick thought
Let it also,
not be forgot.
The words Jesus brought.

The meek and the humble
The lost and the defeated
Through faith and through love
Through forgiveness and mercy,
One day,
In God's net shall be caught.

I sing you my pain
Not to ask you for alms
Look at your neighbor
Offer one your balm
Your time and your company
Not your riches and wealth
You shall resurrect Jesus again
If you nurse one soul back to health.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Thank God

Thank you for making me so difficult
And thank you for the happy smile
Thank you for taking out the uneven blade
And shaping me in a whimsical while.

I never need be a card board cut out
I never need to be a stale cookie in the jar
I can be a me, that is a message and a lesson
Or an undercurrent lost in the passage.

Thank God for the lack of crowds around me
Thank God I can evade the pack of wolves
Surrounding me
I thank you Creator whoever you may be
That you created me to be solitary.

I may be a square peg in a neat round hole
But I think my four (or more?), corners and all
Allow me an edge over the smooth pretty Pegs
No bother at all about being Ken's Barbie doll.

I create a small space in my loneliness
Somewhere between sweet sanity and grace
And it's Brave not bitter, it's fierce to be free
Now and forevermore,
I want no one with me.

If He or She or It who made me
Comes forward to my face
I will bow my thanks and regards
From my little bit of space.

It is fun to be me, myself and I,
Where my identity, is  something,
solely I define
Where I change for the better
When I understand my worst
Where nothing but I matter
When I, put others first.

For compassion is born of grace
Grace is born from dark 's embrace
Without pain's favor,
There never has been
true happiness.
Thank you for these riches
A Magi's wealth no more no less.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Supra Lune

Sweet surreal evasive as the moon
Wandering overhead
Off tune half beat marching tune
In the morning of my future
I spy no friends from Luna
Free of mind and light as air
Brave  and always fair.

Sifting silk waters of the shadowy harbour
Green leaves their palms adore me
In the night of multiple pasts
I sojourn oh how they contour me.
I see my old friends holding mirrors
And each they seem to deplore me.

In the presence of such anachronistic tales
I simply want to cast off the veils
Of pretentious lure, of sweet allure
On the walls of presence to meld.
In this moment, this token now
This terrible gesture, this fest somehow
of living somewhere, someway I will bear
Thank God for this belief
This relief, no one else required
This sole blessing acquired.

In the evening of siphoned breath
I am rationed to a sword in its sheath
Beautiful steel will never reveal
It's edge
But gilded handle of gold I clasp
Tomorrow I will kill the dragons
And free my lady by the lonesome sedge.

Sometimes the lines are nonsense
But the feelings are not.
Sometimes in between two words
Some unspoken meaning is wrought.
This is my offering born of the
Silence and the dark
Kindest solace is Inspirations' spark.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Bazaar street

Bazaar Street

Slurry sultriness
Gleaming wet
Pavements draped with
Goods.

Slinky belts and unabashed bags
Smattering colours
Hoodies and tee shirts
Jackets and scarves
Goodies galore
And glowering bros
Towering over browsers
Survey the potential purveyors
Like unshaven predators
Eyes sparkling at possible kills

The flower seller's nose stud
Blossoming possibilities
Boadacious blood hibiscus,
Virginal jasmine and chrysanthemum
Or passionate Marigolds.

The strident cries of women hawking
Fare
And the repressed boom boxes of men
Growling,
"Sister, mother, come here!"

A few packing boxes of soft drinks spill over from the sweet shop into the road
A red faced man balances a look sides
Crate on his head.

Cookies crazily jog in motion to his hair
I wait for them to fall

Never happens.

Bazaar street

Bizarre beautiful adventure
Smiling with smelly dentures
And demure allure.

I pass over the soiled gutters the garbage and
breath daintily the faintly foul air.

Not for faint souls
But brave heart buyer
Of bacchanalia.

Bazaar street all smarmy and dressed-up
For Diwali.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Moods

Moods

Dawn's blue shawl has undertones
Sublimated vermiliion shades.
The woman impure who creeps back home to her twilight glade.

Dawn's wearing tattered blue today
And white cotton threads are showing
The aged crone cries alone
This morn of dead reckonings.

Dawn's draped in dreamy blue velour
Windy ripples in satiny folds.
This pretty maid has sprung from magic glade
And her days in gold foretold

Dawn creeps out of night's deathly shade
And grins a ghastly  frackish white
This old hag is no more.
Dead before first light

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

In the End

In the end
It's over.

That is why we think
In terms of beginnings
And endings.
The in between is very important
However
Utterly confusing
Bewildering
Trivial and trite and petty
Wisdom profound and deep
Wishful nothings
Settled for somethings
In the Middle
We find ourselves
Eligible
To try harder
Beyond endings.

Utterly confounding
The problems compounding
Trysts  with Trust
And tortuous torments
And then
The end.

Beyond beginnings
Beyond blue Dawn's
Pallid whispers
And vesper endings
Bloody ashen

We are found
Going round and round
Foundering in busy non being
In the middle.

If they don't all add up
The people the places
The notions emotions
These surreal surroundings
These sunny resoundingly funny
Non happenings
What is the matter
With where we are going?

Where are you
And Who is it
I fondly refer to
As "I?"

Fair play
Foul penalty
Life surfeit
With loneliness cursed
Cruel inequities

And yet the game
Goes on

Same as ever
As the day you were born
Same as ever
Larger than life
After you're gone.

The joy is intended
Resonance of faith
Birth child of doubt
Of criss cross
Heavens
Patterns in our eyes
Kaleidoscopic visions
Beyond endings.

Beautiful is my
Blue measured tranquility.

Beautiful is this brooding
Dome
Of name fame
And gloom.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017