Shedding

And the trees grow old
Growing leaves of gold
And the sky grows blue
Soft with eyes of dew
Shedding
It's a time of shedding
Hearts and minds and bodies
Dreams come and go
Back to picture perfect weddings
I loved you
Beyond all imagination
Wonders never cease
How the brokers
Put out their hearts on lease
Kisses gentle unto childhood
Rousing into wildest girlhood
Basking in womanhood
Miss the pictures
That scar the tissues
They break up all the strictures
Obviated social structures.

My song is not for you
My song is invisible skin
The heart encased in flimsy lace
That gentle covering
Protecting within
A typhoon a tsunami
A marooned abandonment
Wreckages of heart aches
Treasures beyond reckoning.

The trees grow old
And true
The sky glows
Into the electric indigo blue
Touching dark fabrics
Of unknown space
Fabricated universes
And all their joys and woes
Ripen crimson
And shed like phoenix feathers
Like powdery leaves
The ground floor plan
Of human happiness
The hall of eternal miseries.

I live like this.
Thank you for this mind.
Which grows alive
When eyeballs slice through blinds.
Let the blinds drop down.
Darkness engulfs all kinds.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Minutae

Minutae

I saw a ruddy ant
Brilliantly livid with venom
Climbing my son's shirt
Urgently flicked it off
While my boy oblivious
Big and beautiful,
Devoured pizza

And we watched it together
Clinging obstinately
To his green shorts
I dusted it off
With rapid precision strokes.

On the ground it ambled off
Looking for its mates
No doubt foraging fresh prey.

Now as I write
A darn mosquito
Mosaic eyes me
While foolishly injecting sofa handles
Searching for blood
In cellulose.
I eyeball it back
Warily.
Strategy perhaps to
Lull me.
Before it attacks from behind
Attaching to flesh
Whereever it is blind.

I am reminded of a pretty soap sud
At dawn
Washing up cups and dishes
Early morning song
Hummed under breath
I kept an eye on that pretty half bubble
Domed soap world
Imagining minutae
Of microscopic life
Under its fold.
Perhaps a genderless germ
Singing in undetected tones
Living life as it should
Under the hood
Anonymously, at the levels
Of tiny particles
Aroma and molecules
Of orderliness.

This universe
It strikes me
Is a wash basin of dreams
Gurgling down
The proverbial sink.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

If Saraswati

If Saraswati....

If I say
I need you now
I need to know
Can you hear me?
How?
Past lives echo
Chambers of our dissonance
While we sashay our ignorance
Parading nonchalance
Equivocal arrogance
Living it up languorous
In our fool's paradise.

The Cinderella paradox
The whole Pandora's box
Always hankering
After the afterthought
Chasing the trailing shadows
Lacing our afternoon dreams
The siesta simmering within
Putting an impossible shine
On our mendicant dreams.

I beg you.
Can you hear me now?
My voice box is shattering
My scabbarded heart
Ready to self harm
Forced to self heal.

Answer me this.
The riddle of our being
Lonely sentient things
In an universe
So vast
Blind to our brilliant
Brave thinking dust.

Answer my heart

I will fill up the vase of
My being.

With the flowers
The prettiest bouquets
Are those
Of knowledge.

Le Savoir Vivre
Save me

The final grace
Is going to my
Grave
Juggling gravitas
With relative ease

Please.
Save me.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018