Monday, April 30, 2018

Glowpowrimo 30

prompt for #day30 for #glopowrimo, 

Examine the breadth of poetry you have written and find those crutches. acknowledge them, articulate their significance in your life and writing, and craft a poem using this word bank that captures the universal or meta concepts of your reasoning for writing, giving each a purpose beyond repetition.”

Exploiting all my personal weaknesses.

Big words, foreign words, Fringe science, exotic colours, hysteria the works

Rich tapestries of emotion

Woven into lavish cashmeres

Opulent Afghans 

Embroidered affectation

They're too rich

Too ornate

Yet I revel in

The medley of colours

Soft cerulean blues

Remind me of the sky over 

Dal lake

Ivory green 

Reminiscent of meadows

Of Bengal in afternoon sun

Vermilion red of wide eyed bride

Serpentine gray rivers of pensive meditation

My carpet of dreaming melancholy

Draped on Deadwood floor.

Give me another time

Another distant clime

Spacetime warped reality

Where honeycomb visions

Of mosaic dreams

Lay to rest

ghosts and apparitions.

Give birth to fecund notions.

Lolling about in green hued light

Of emerald glass

Silver sky overhead

Slate greys of deliquescent lake

Reflections of magic memories

In Calypso glades.

And le homme bleu

The ornery ghoul

From Mulholland drive

Creeps under my door tonight

Shall I be captured

Trapped in time's tinsel box

Shall magical trust in courage

My soul unlock?

All these various threads

My magic carpet weaves

Je fais rever
des rêves tels que ceux-ci.
(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Glowpowrimo 30 First one

Glowpowrimo 30 :The first one that was suggested by Amit.
Shall also attempt the one Lucas  and Orooj  suggested after this one...

(4) Write a humorous poem that has serious depth.

My first love was early on
I was thirteen
Boys were Slugs.
Dirt bags.
An incomprehensible species
Who made love to cricket balls
With bats and endlessly jabbered
About scores and innings.

So when I glimpsed an
eighteen year old footballer
In black leather jacket
And happily enough, rimless glasses
I just couldn't take my eyes away.

He validated my interest.
By possessing a deep voice
And crisp clear enunciation.
That he was not just good-looking
Made me preen at my own
Perspicacity.

Oddly enough, his elegant mother
Had been my daddy's
First Love too.
Unceremoniously rejected
For an athletic type.
But. 
That's another story.

They had become good friends since.
Hence tea and breakfast at their place.

Now even funnier still,
The exact moment  I gave away my heart
Was when he looked deep into my eyes
Rimless glasses magnifying the
Intensity of  romance...
And said with utter conviction,
"Eat your omelette."

Sigh....This boy, man child kept me happily occupied in spare hours
Of my teenage life.

Though he never suspected it.
I was steadily dating him till sixteen.
In strictest secrecy, in fact,
Even without his knowledge.

In dreams fantasies and midnight confidences to a few good friends
We lived vicariously.
It was a fair exchange.

At sixteen, I heard he had got divorced.

But his dauntless brave heart was not
Stymied.
He was pursuing another.
He brought her over
For my brother and me
To appraise,
Give the once over.

That didn't work out too.

And then the next...

That's when he decided
I was old enough to be
His confidante..

At my confessional,
He professes  eternal undying love
For her.

And said,
Piping icing on the cake,
"If only you had been my girlfriend,
You would have realized what deeply
Devotion I am capable of.."

I melted into his puppy dog eyes
But my mind was aware
Of the irony...
And Flexed mental fists
At him.

The next news flash
My brother delivered
Was his second divorce.
From some would be rock chick.

"...A charming humbug..."
My brother summed up
The love of my life
With an indulgent grin.
Glib Translation:Men
Will be Men.

But Kudos to Big brother
For finally breaking us up.
In my solitary mind of course.

I pondered.. and realized
Charming humbug was just apt.
But I needed wanted
Had prayed for a hero.

Just then, our then house guest,
The charming humbug,
popped a sleek head out of
The guest bathroom.

In perfectly modulated plummy voice
He shattered my soft dreams
For good.

"...Darling would you fetch me the black collared tee with orange piping?...
It's in my overnighter."
He crooned.

Since then
I have shamelessly followed
The trail of broken hearts
He left in his wake
But steadfastly shooed him
Away from my dreams.

I couldn't afford
A wardrobe malfunction.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo 29

(3) Write a poem on the theme "saudade". Saudade is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present. It is not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. It differs from nostalgia in that one can feel saudade for something that might never have happened.

I found that the Portuguese actually celebrate Saudade day on 30 January.

My kind of people.

Shy sweet diffident

Caring and pure

Sensitive ever aware

She was loved yet, 

Somewhat closer to the door

Than the inner chambers

Of our blessed family circle.

Why?

Fatherless at thirteen,

flawless beauty

A tad too well educated

For her designated duty

A middle class Bengali

Bride to be

As soon as her widowed  mother

Could find a suitable boy.

We don't have debutante balls

At least not back then

When we only aped the west

In baking cakes and puddings.

More's the pity, law of nature dictates

A pretty face is coveted, suitors abounded, her beauty was just budding.

Things didn't end so prettily for her.

She hadn't been brought up to bend

Her instrument was deemed too fine

Strung up taut

Like her violin or sitar.

So humble in self assessment

So proud in dignity and family heritage.

The boy's mother declined.

The suitor honour bound  pressed his suit,

A tad lukewarm. 

She shivered in disgust

Her fine antennae shuddered in mistrust.

Not until your mother accepts

She checked out of his life.

She left.

 To meet her 

One true love

Her Father.

The only man

Who kept the faith.

She was my beautiful aunt.

She was and is

My visceral saudade.

I keep seeing her shadow

Cross me by

In corners of 

Ancient heartbreak.

Like light borne

On luminiferous ether..

And my oh my

How I smile 

Like I could die

Teeth gnashing the skulls

Of agony

Whiplashing my cheeks

For being a thoughtless

Child.

Remembering the memories

Our childish parodies

Of serious Tagore songs

How we would choke back giggles

Tears running down our eyes

You don't know the gift you had

Till it's gone.

She is Alone.

Knowing her, she is 

Stuck at the threshold of

Heaven's door 

Waiting for a sign.

I hope my grandfather

Holds her in his arms

Clasps the gem

He treasured.

Sweet dreams 

Pretty lady

Though on hard floor 

You made your bed

Pillaged your own beauty

With pills your pain allayed.

Three days your rotting corpse

Closed doors and windows

Alone surveyed

Aunty too hard...

That last lonely bed.

Come back as 

Loving daughter

Or a vivacious niece

Though in this life

You're cold instead.

My eyes that were

Too hard and dry

You gifted them tears by and by

You shattered my

World of cold intellect

My pride in utter self containment

You proved to me the lie

My austere refusal to cry.

 Missing you 

Memories old and blue

And memories new 

That would never be made

Wondering what may have been

If an aunty adored could have 

Found in me, a friend?

...

But no, 

Your gift was to die.

Your gift was goodbye.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Glopowrimo 28 revised.

Glopowrimo 28
(2) Take a line or two from your favourite work and write a poem of your own continuing from there. After you finish the poem, rewrite the opening lines on your own.

For in and out, above, about, below,
Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Played in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

Omar Khayyam

"....For in and out, above, about, below,
Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Played in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go..."

Our parents strangers and birth but a dream
A forced descent as we arrive with a scream, 
Life a controlled trajectory around the sun
Glued to Earth, the vale of tearful streams

Caged and aged by gravity,  our eyes
Turn their gaze
Oh to be free of Time's tyranny in an infinite space,
Duties and responsibilities tasks and travails
Earth is a hard relentless place.

Trapped in a globe with opaque skies
Our dreams portend blind reality's lies
We are fish in a stagnant bowl
Round and round we. swim but no shore espy.

The mind seeks answers the heart holds hope
Towards truth we ever blindly grope
Alas today's truth is but tomorrow's lie
Divine purpose beyond our narrow human scope.

Oh to travel close to the speed of light
In a nanosecond see day change to night
To connect the farthest points of emptiness
To know tis all but a cunning trick of sight.

For...in and out....above...about...below
Blindsided by daylight's dazzling show
Played in an universe which outraces light
No Meaning, No Salvation, no Creator takes our bow.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo 16

Day16 April16th #GloPoWriMo
Prompt: take a part of you that died,walk us through how it came to be,and left you.mourn it,miss it,write it back into your existence.

Nothing ever really dies
For everything
Comes out of nothing.

Nothingness
Is potential
And potential sets this stage.

Action
Inaction.

Imagination
Reality

Action Reaction.

Growth isn't progress.

Capacity to absorb
Assimilate
Failure is.

We can tweak it around
So much so
The world hails it as success.

Hope died
When I gave up
On life.

Wasn't the other way around.

Stealthy sure footed thief
Ambition
Detested my Pollyanna notions.

Took away a few things
Somethings nothings
Everything.

It's inner space that counts.

Inside me
Matter annihilated
By anti matter.
Worth by
Banality.

Funny how things just
Pop in vacuum.

Bubble universes
Tawdry dreams
Tepid tragedies
Noone can see.

Strangest of all
A time, a season for
Everything.

A few decades later
I pulled myself up
By my bootstraps.

Deciding
If Hope
Was not to be
I take thee
Anti hope,
Despair.

And weave out
Cautionary tales
Snake ladders
To survival.

Since then
Nothing much has happened.

A few broken sparrows adopted
Christened, iin due course
set free.

To fly out of my ken
Put my lack of wings
To shame.

But when wings were broken
Beating hearts brought
Beaten wings
To my window.

Beaten by life.
Transformed.

Broken hearts,
Broken wings
Are  the same
Beautiful things.

Fragile porcelain
Treasures.
Glued together with love.

Nectar churned out
From poison
Beyond measure.

Yes.
Something came out
Of my nothingness.
My defeat.
Loss of courage
Loss of hope
Loss of self esteem
Vision and confidence.

Acceptance.
Indomitable steel.
Zest.
Existence.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Friday, April 27, 2018

The Sea

The sea.
(pardon my weird poems)

The sea is saffron
Like blood sacrifice
The sky blue sky
Makes me wanna die
The wind is chilled
Like soda pop
Let curtain death
Upon me drop.

The ground is glass
It's grounded glass
It cuts the strings of my shoes
And heart.
The road is a mirror
Of metallic blue
It tells me what I gotta do
Crash me darling
Into absinthe crimson hues.

The sun is sparkly
Like a chortling babe
CeeBeebee days
Are back again

In the night garden
Of this cosmic dream
I hear unpetalled flowers scream
Turns out they're stars
Binary beings!

The radio blossoms
It croons and moans
Like a bakelite flower
in an appliance store
it sings Lady Gaga
walk out the pretty
swing doors.
Its Eden on earth
its yesterday once more.

The coffin crumbles
wafer of ashes and earth
my brittle body now
smells like dirt.
my tongue elongates
like Kali's Shame
feet first I lie
The china rose sighs
mother
when shall I see you again?

in a dream
a broadcast requiem
i hear replies
of ghosts in the wind
i hear melodies elegaic refrain
we will meet
again
only
I will be the flower in
ypur pretty bower
and you Will be
a rosy maiden
for an hour.

we flit and float and fly.
Till in ashen dust we lie.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo 9 Calm before the storm

Glopowrimo 9

Calm before the Storm

Quiet sober and silent
I'm waiting working out
Things in my head
Trying for solutions
To your decision
To non cooperate.

I who used to raise hell
Bite off the heads of  bullies
Am silenced by your sluggishness
Your apathetic matter of fact venom.

Your bite is fatal

Your bark is subtle.

I am defeated by oblique ambushes
Grinning guerilla warfare.

I wait.

I maintain calm.

I pray.

I cry.

I meditate.

I die.

Each day.
A bit of me
In the gutters
And cesspools of
Self esteem lies

And my confidence,
Daily dies.

But I'm not sure why
I am still alive.

I'm not sure why.
A defiant damsel inside me
Says I must try.

I just cannot die.

I will not.
Tolerate your lies.

Not anymore
Will you prick out
My  hapless gore.

I am now the eye of a
Ominous Tsunami
I am Ill fated
Untimely
But I will strike
Your shores
When you least
Expect me.

Perhaps you're swatting
Ants at the picnic
On your pristine plot
Of private beach
Full of pride
In property and righteous
Piety.

But you don't know
The calm deception
I have kept frozen
In chilled larders of revenge,
For your sweet consumption.

Doled it out daily
In bitter doses
With eyes glazed, open,
Staring like sin
Full of faux contrition.

Now bow low and deep and pray
A calm before the storm
Were your Glory days
Of crushing me
Like an ant at
Your picnic.

Before this night is out
My fury will take you
You won't get a second chance
Save your last tarantula dance
Three flashing strikes
Like lightning bolt
I will smite.

Annihilation
Total Destruction
Your extinction
The end of this game
My stormy signature
Underneath your name.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018


Glopowrimo 9 Calm before the storm

Glopowrimo 12

Day 12. April 12.  #GloPoWriMo.
Prompt  - 'this is’nt a poem
                   this is a cry of the Rohingya,
                   this a river of blood.'  - Bina Sarkar Ellias
                    

This isn't a poem
I'm removed distant detached
A remote observer
A dispassionate wordsmith.

Not a lover of displaced refugees
Fleeing the only home
They know
Running on empty
Desperate days
Demonized  lives.

I'm ensconced in a cosy home
A comfortable bed
My spouse chauffeurs me to supermarkets
To malls and movies
And casual coffee dates.
And the occasional poetry reading
Amongst friends.

I'm a poetess of pain.
Mine alone.
I'm a hopeless romantic.
In love always.
With myself.

What do I know?
Of displaced people or
Of frightened children?
Of terrified mothers
And fathers who have
Lost all hope,
In the humanity
Of their brethren?

I sit upon this one.
I pray upon this one.
I cannot bear to read.
I close my eyes
To editorials.

In bed I lie awake.
Waiting.
Incubating.

And it's growing.
A fecund egg
Of misery.

This childbirth will be
Difficult.
A breech delivery.
I abhor cerebral forceps.

I invoke the Muse
Of the helpless
The patron saints
Of the hopeless
I usher in Angels
Of lost travellers,
the homeless,
The displaced.

St Anthony
Archangel Raphael
Fill my mind
With understanding.

Magnify their pain
In my veins.

Till my efffete ears ring
My shallow heart pounds
And I can scream this
I can get it out.

This Not -Poem,
This Hate story.
This Genocidal
21st century exodus.

Let me shriek
A demented widow
A hungry exhausted orphan
A tormented  father.

'Save us
Help us
Find us
Find our home.'

This is
The cry of the Rohingya.,
This is a river of blood.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018



                   
.

Glopowrimo 15

Day 15 GloPoWriMo prompt by Steffen Horstmann: Choose a newspaper article and write a poem which only uses words which appear in the article: (Only the title and the punctuation are mine, the words are from the article - source link below)

On Xenophobia

Always a double bind
Within
Difficult to find acceptance
Abroad
Met with prejudice
It was this observation
Filling the dearth of information
Creating conversations
About the outsiders perspective
The other extreme as well
Ingrained in the community.
A more open approach
An increasing prerogative
To bring conversations together
To give reassurance
A safe space, a
Coming together
To discuss their experiences.

You are not alone.
Both in India
As members of the diaspora
Within the community
The outsider's perspective
At the end of the day
It is everyone's responsibility
To create
Safe and inclusive
Public spaces.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Words chosen entirely  from the article In Faith and Love
By Meghna Majumder
The Hindu
Metropolis
Friday, April 27, 2018

Glopowrimo 27

GloPoWriMo 27

(1) Write a poem in epistolary form where you address someone beginning "Dear...". The body of the letter should have elements of magic realism.

Dear son,
The clock's hands curled up
In a frightened namaste
Refused to show the time
Freezing my life that instant
Into still photo frames
Flashing crashing
Through beloved minds.

Adios before hand
A second before
The minute hand
Enters the zone
Of Nada...
Nothingness.

Because letters cannot be penned
From the continent of clouds.

Still glance upwards,
See me building
Tall mood castles
Along with other
Guardians of the mote.

Another time
Another party
Another day
Looking up at
Loose jet contrails
Oftimes will you think of me
Pearls beading your jet orbs
With lustrous beauty.

For mystery roads
Snake up
And I'm aloft
Surrendered.

The earth holds up
Heaven's Ossiary
Itself on an elephant's back rests
Which takes support of
The turtle, who stretches an infinite neck
Looping into the distance
To survey heaven's grave.

I'm sorry.
Au revoir dear son
I will descend if and
When gravity calls
And space time bends
Just right for me to alight.

Till then
Eyeball to eyeball
Glassy eyes stare down
A billion turtle years worth of pain
A Kalpa in minutae
The sad saga of
Our Human Love
In a soft soled
Brahma minute.

Adios
If you hear my static pain
Buzzing on intergalactic radios
Call it microwave radiation.

We shall have contact.
In pockets of imagined universes.

Love
Father.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018












Thursday, April 26, 2018

Glopowrimo 26 The Journey

My journey 

Is not one of steps

I haven't covered leagues

Or miles.

My journey is 

Coursing through the dark

The invisible curvature

Of light 

Traversing, tracing, illuminating

Blindness of virgin mind.

Heavy footfalls

Loaded grief

Zillion questions

Gazillion unasked things

Of such a flight

Without wheels wings or 

Radar, is my journey made.

I cannot chart a destination

I have not mapped

My journey's eternal quest

Infinite lust for answers.

The journey begins again,

Where it ends

The journey is

My birth and death.

||

Flower beds at dusk

My milestones mark

Your thorn embedded in my heart

Blazes, torch searing thickets dark.

Penitent copper skies dictate

Moods of love amalgamated hate

A breeze my burden blows away

Travelling light at the end of day.

Sapphire skies at soigne dawn

Floated with crystal clouds of morn

Zephyr's whispered wistful  breeze

My trusty compass bearings these.

The journey is never point of origin

Nor endpoint is,

The journey a cipher,

A flux,

Disequilibrium, 

Imbalance

Movement,

Overlapping equipoise,

Entropic cyclical disintegration.

Never merely repetatative

Permutations of patterns

Spiralling outwards
No singularity

No end locus.

On our stellar pastoral journeys

Devotional rosary beads,

A bundle of atoms

Weaving through dark matter

We cannot ever start Or stop.

Till Amaranth earth goes dark

And shimmering, 

Sheltering, reclusive

veils tenebrous drop.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018.

Slop Weekly Challenge

So shall it be
Says our saviours.

Bards and poets
Messianic prophets
Of Times to come
And paths to healing
And Salvation.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Ending the day

Ending the day
I feel fay
Tired evil surreal
A bundle of nerves
Barbed indomitable will

An incoherent heart
An inchoate mass
Of tightly coiled pain
O I feel today
Explode in my veins

Varicose comatose
Sorry pose
Excuse please
My lack of poise
Or this humble prose
Jumbled up
To resemble poetry
Mangled like my soul carve
Voodoo dolls in my skull
I'm tired of this ship
That's rotting
At the hull

Ending the day
Feeling like a ray
With no endpoints
From which mysterious source
To whence
My destiny
A date  blind
Alladin's cave.

Giddy
Eve to  Adams
Preferably Douglas
Meet me please
By the restaurant
At the end of the universe

Ending the day
With a whimper
Requiem for
False big bangs
Everywhere.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

PS everytime I 'compose' a poem on aset theme like a good girl, out comes tumbling
Skeletons of 'poems' haunting my closet. 😂

Glopowrimo 25. Moon

Glopowrimo 25 Moon

Walking in the park with my boys
'Mamma Moon', one cooed and cried
I sighed, and obliged, by looking up
Silvery Selena, at me then laughed
And coyly hid behind a damask cloud
Evanescent maiden, demure and proud.
A hint of light left in crescent shape
Siilver collar on pitch black crepe
Night sky a negative of her radiance
Veiled visage by silvery eyebrow laced.

||

One evening
On a road trip to Chennai
The golden sphere
Large as a vesper sun
To our west appeared
Dipping and curtseying
Bobbing up and down
As our long roads snaked
Us out of Bean town
Alien vista from another world
Surreal moonlit landscapes unfurled.

|||

But the moon of my dream
The moon of my heart
From my bedroom window
Its dizzy journey starts
Playing peekaboo behind
The lacy fronds
Of coconut tree
The moon shines
On far off beloveds
And it does shine on me.

Silver vaporous beams insane
I draw my curtains
Against my pane.
Chiaroscuro nights
Daguerreotype dreams
Too long have I gazed
On her face it seems.

For much longer I simply
dare not gaze
Your majestic mystery
captures my soul
I am forever lost
In your luminous maze.

  |V

A snow owl wings by
The darkened skies
Silver silhouette
Rimmed by
Charcoal light.

Twoo whit twoo
Don't look up too long
Mortality's peril
Portal to madness
Death by moon song.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

My Own Thoughts

Thanks to Sunita Jugran
Finished part 2
Here's the full poem.

Feeling peevish.
Daily poetry on demand
like poetry on a tap
Can just run out of steam
Or become a belabored
Rhyme scheme.
I will write on a whim.
I will not assign a theme
'What dreams may come'
To my hearth
'What lies beneath'
Unearth
Well I see creamy golden slopes
Where sunlight with green leaves elope.
I see God's creation awash with light
Shadows accentuating their delight.

I can feel the earth turn on its plane
Yet another dizzy degree then
We are star travellers
Illuminated beings
Our perceived rest
Is mighty motions
Of greater things....

(Contd....Part 2)

To come
Or yet to be dreamt
The universe is a
powerhouse,
Of things potent.

Our thoughts and prayers
Ideas and feelings
Our daydreaming castles
Inner meanderings

Are pluripotent cells
Stemming new worlds
Expanding  limens of
Universes untold.

We are genies in a bottle
Till our power is tapped
We are Djinns of thought
Around our consciousness
Reality wrapt.

Lookee! the candle flame flickers
The shadows grow wicked
The evil stepmother
Snow White's incapacitated

Alladin's Magic tent
Transformed to palace overnight
Look how we create illusions
Reality from light.

Let there be light
Spake a Word
So true
From Nada
Came chaos
From Chaos
Sense grew.

Living is an
Act of will
Living is dynamic will
To survive
To revive
Even  trees that
Stand still
Replenish the air
We breathe
Life is movement
The flow of will.

There's never any standing still
We power our private universes
Ideas are our fuel
Our emotions and thoughts
Create and empower
A  Supreme Collective Will.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo 24

Day 24 April24th. #GloPoWriMo

Prompt: "celebrate your dreams,the manifestation of your soul,the atoms of your want,the fragrance of your psyche"

I celebrate my dreams

In moments of quietude

In some private breathing space

Where I'm an empress of solitude.

Not that I fulfilled them

Yet my dreams untarnished remain 

I dote upon my dreams all the same

Perhaps if not this lifetime, another then?

For I am both what I do

And what I must need recant

Every molecule of my being 

Reflects both my Reality 

And the very atoms of my want

I celebrate each manifestation

Of my soul

And underneath the phenotype 

That I articulate

The fragrance of my psyche calls

The genotype of parallel fates.

So lay it out on the blue clouds

Shrieking ecstasy into winds bearing gray doubts

Intimate secrets overspread my coded skies

Thank you Universe

For the Dream that never lies

But holds up a true mirror

You could've been

All that you desire

And the fire in your belly

It hurts so good

You know that you are

All of it,

Beautiful beyond utterance

Ardent above articulation,

The  supreme extrapolation

Of nuanced manifestos

Hidden within.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Monday, April 23, 2018

Glopowrimo 23 Forgetting

The force of Forgetting is

Negative

But no less powerful than 

Remembrance.

I know this now

When sufficient overflow of memory bank

Necessitates random deletion.

These days

Prized choice memories

Are vague blurred filling my mind

With unease.

They had defined my world

How did they fade away and

Vanish?

What I thought writ in indelible ink

Lo, had become invisible ink

Then....

No amount of heat or stress applied

Could recall their essence

A true and total disappearance.

Some things stay

The colours of mummy's sari

The day I got married

Some things

Poof! The magician Time 

Waves away.

I rack my brains 

On a funny wishbone

Obstinately I cudgel the grey cells,

Was I in the front seat of the car

With my designated driver, (and first

Boyfriend),

Whilst my gorgeous rival darted coy barbed glances

From the recesses of the back seat?

The heart knows now

It hardly mattered then,

But then,

When Forgetting was a necessity

It kept the flames alive.

Only when 

My thirst quenched

And I put out the fire muse,

The mind began to recognize

Devaluation and erase

Agonized remembrance.

Truly...

The act of Forgetting

Is quite a force

To reckon with.

It keeps me awake at night

Wondering what have I 

Forgotten?

What has the heart deemed

Unimportant

And erased from mind's slate?

And finally,

The act of Forgetting perhaps

Is painless.

But, the memory of obliteration

Of something once vital 

That has been wiped off 

obliviated, expunged,

Is not.

And Forgetting, 

I may still remember

The heart pangs of what

'I forgot.'

(c) Amrita Valan 2018













Sunday, April 22, 2018

Glopowrimo 22 A sonnet :City at Night

Glopowrimo 22
A sonnet : City at Night

City girl am I without a shred of doubt
A life lived in high rise apartment blocks
Childhood memories of nights eating out
Chinese South Indian Italian all the works

Parents believed in entertaining folks
Night times were spent in park street restaurants
Or rolls from corner shop at home with coke
To this day I'm a  jolly bon vivant

The streets at night to sleep were defiant
Hustle- bustle the name of urban games
On the corner shop we were reliant
For the last loaf of bread we always came.

City nights spent in backseats of dad's cars
Sleeping oblivious to the glow of stars.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Glopowrimo 21 Window

Glopowrimo 21 Window

I'm far away
In a land
I don't understand.

I look out
Through the looking glass
Of my tinted Windows
During the day
I am an invisible presence
Watching all who pass by
A dark presence
Behind darkened glass.

I see boys on bicycles turning tricks
Hands off bars, or an upraised wheel.

I see my husky neighbor trundling to
Work, head bent forward
Matador meeting oncoming bull.
A full week's worth.

I turn away from the madman's gaze
He can't see me
But you never know
They see things we can't see
Third eye open
They scream gibberish
At our world of make-believe.

I turn my head coquettishly to
survey my straggly mane,
As the raucous flower girl hawks
Jasmines, marigolds and
Carnations in a strident demand
For income.

I shrug at the bland glass
I don't have the kind of hair
Her flowers can adorn.

The window mirrors my
Wry assessment
Accurately.

Suddenly I'm no longer
Looking outwards.

The window closes in
To survey me.

It's become a seeing eye
That defies my disguises
Spies  worlds within.

I make a feeble moue
It's a pitiful silent retort.
Laughter creases fine age lines
Guardians of twin windows
To my soul.

Look at me.
Please.
But don't see too much.

Now I shall  draw the curtains.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Friday, April 20, 2018

Glopowrimo 20 II Rainbow


Glopowrimo 20 Rainbow

The raindrops shimmered jade translucence
Upon ebony grilled balcony.

The chill air was like a charm
Hydrating dessicated soul sap
Refreshing dusty recesses
Jaded nooks of b-rain.

It was only after three,
But the cold dark afternoon
Explored my heart's musings,
Exploding them with glee.

The only thing missing was
The wistful wishing
And hoping upon a rainbow
Girldling the bashful sky
Kissing the very ends
Of  the earth,
A promissory dream.

And I died a little
I cried a little
In my mind
This was the blindside
Of adulthood
Even rainbows hid
In smoggy woodsm

The sun winked salaciously
Through potent clouds
More rain would follow tonight
But for now
Braveheart beams were out.

So I got my rainbow after all
An arc so blessed
So bracing
The earth embracing
Seven sister colours
Having a celestial ball
While we terrestrials dream
Our hearts bleeding out
To match the red cheeks of light
The rain missiles put out.

I made the most of
My impromptu rainbow.
Took some orange for a glazed
Sheen on my happiness
A smidgen of yellow joy
As frothy frilly lace.

I saved up the indigo blue and green
For dreams that allure.
Violet I wore
Serene silent and demure.

My rainbow days
Of multitudinous paths
Shone from the
Cascading  fountains
In marvellous arcs
My thoughts thrown in
Like shiny coins
Wishes upon
Days gone by.

Where there's a wish
There's also a way
White light seen
Through a mystic's gaze.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo 19 Thoughts cascading with the speed of an avalanche

Glopowrimo 19

Thoughts cascading with the speed of an avalanche

The fan whirrs
Metallic clang maroon haze
Flat on my back
Gaze transfixed
Limpid lizard matches
My stare
Truth or dare
Will it or will it not?
Leap upon my chest
I'm a quivering  bowstring
Scared thoughtless.
Lizard glances disdainfully
I'm dismisses with
A swish of serrated tail
It's gone through a wormhole
In the Fan's mounting device
To haunt my alternate
In a parallel universe.
Thought cascading with the speed of an avalanche
I see her. A jedi warrior
She shoots a tongue of flame
It's burnt to a crisp
Incinerated into thin air
So they have technology
Molecular, atomic disintegration.
But what could she be wearing.
A gray metallic sheath
Mercurial changing hue
And texture.
Mermaid scales to feathery down
To liquefied satin.
Now it's charcoal velvet
Like her eyes.
Now she is looking straight through
The veils of dimension
She can see me.

Hello, i softly uttered
A murmer in my mind.
Thought waves crashing
Over unknown slopes
Causing rifts in the
Weft and warp
Of Space -Time.

How many ripples in
Both our universes
Have we created?

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo 20.Blue

Glopowrimo 20.Blue

You're mine.
Ensconced safely.
Please stay.
Never go away.
From my blue walled room
Hung with
milky frosted ceiling.

Freeze within my
Indigo mind
My ebony window panes.

I am blue with pain.

Your eyes are blue
With a pure fire
Of avenging angel.

If you were tinged with blue
Your skin would speak to mine.
Your flute would play upon
My desires.

Burning my red cheeks
With hot kisses
In the deep blue night.

Bluer than my soul
Is your deeper understanding
Of what Blue signifies.

Velvet nights
Mysteries of
Inalienable rights
A certain  destiny
Inescapable light.

You're Krshna

You're the blue eyed God
Transmuting from midnight blue
To Black velvet as Kali
Inscrutable
Even in my dreams.

But luminous
Tender compassionate.

Across meadows
Where darkness gathered
The Baul croons
Your song...

Amplifies my blues
Into the barren wooded horizon.

Stay.
I have gathered your
Aquamarine eyes,
Where laughter dances
Like foam on blue waves
An agate sea of
Desired divinity.
Bottomless depth
And infinite distance.

Sustain me on your shores,
Under Ananthnaga's
Eternal hood.

For i am electrified
By my devotion
To your deep blue gaze.

You alone have the pass key
The notes of my life song
The refrain of my silence
The tears from my third eye
Your royal
colours scream.
I keep
Your peacock plumage
In my boudoir of
Indigo dreams.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Glopowrimo 18 Summer Haikus

Glopowrimo day 18

Haiku on summer

(Or rather a chain of them)

Waking up early
Birds chirruping in sunshine
It's hot already.

Jug of lemonade
No hot drink can quench this thirst
I need a bucket.

Hanging out in malls
It's cooler window-shopping
But purses beware.

An ice cold shower
Loose tank top, bermudas flip flops
A quiet evening walk

A kiss for baby
Out in the park, kids enjoy
Free days of summer.

Slow motion sunset
Red gold fury, skies blazing
Summer days die hard.

The longest shower
A temporary refuge
Skin soaks in oceans.

Dripping sheets shrugged off
The still air like a furnace
We are baked clay dolls.

Sultry night dreams
Stars throb screaming lava lust
Love making slurry.

Dawn's sweet soft sunlight
Racing against the cruel day
I'm up and running.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Monday, April 16, 2018

Slop Weekly Challenge Plight of Syria

Plight of Syria

I am no expert,
No war and imperialistic
Policy afficionado,
But even I can begin to see
And beginning to see
Tears I do weep
My eyes have sunken
To the depths of a broken heart
I cry for young children
Oh Syria
Is this the way new life
Must start?

How hearts have shrunk
Power hungry policies
Of greedy war mongers
Craving fat slices of
Middle eastern pie
One by one they decimate
Ancient Arab nations
Sooth! We only
Liberate people
From their fate.
Sometimes, sadly
We can offer
Only Death.

I have been an amazed witness
How a civilized First world of wealthy nations
Can concoct evil end plans
A caucus of infamy
Erases and rewrites history
Casting as Hero
Only the abject yes man.
Only the sham Straw man.

Assad's war crimes, more than 30 years old,
At a time, when he was a doctor in Great Britain
Seemingly discovered as he opposed
The Lybian Arab Spring...
Suddenly there were concerted efforts
To defame and indict him.

Aren't they all authoritarian
Middle East regimes?
Why this subtle differentiation
On a Spring time whim?

Regime change at any cost
Chemical false flag attacks

Denial of rights
To a once stable government
To defend its people or borders
As Al Nusra and ISIS looted raped and plundered
And still went by the name of "Freedom fighters",
Paid mercenaries and thugs from
Far and wide
Posed as a nation's heroic liberating pride.
Should we be taken as allies
On this unholy ride?

A hundred missiles For seventy dead
Oh Shoot a guided bullet
through my weary head
Can't do this unreal maths
Can't absolve this plotted sin
The blood of Arabia
Runs ever thin....

Even as Mighty
Israel guns down Palestine
And Saudi Arabia won't let
The dissident win,
Heck! they won't even let
Their brothers in.

Strange allies
Strange principles
Strangest of all
These false savage days
We are sinking in....

Hailey/Haley's comet has struck again..
Shock and awe, old
Vibrations resent
In Nikki speak
Are we locked and loaded then?

No way out....
Nothing left to God or Chance...
Think tanks reserve this last dance.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Friday, April 13, 2018

Asifa

Hey you. My friends. Just a thought. Never Stoke a male ego, simply because He's a man.
Never make special allowances for masculinity.

Though our cultural set up inevitably encourages women to give men the benefit of our artifices and soft skills, to treat them with kid gloves, and  coyly offer them the red carpet treatment.

Please let's not do that. Men won't expect it.
If mothers don't bring them up that way.

That's the most powerful force for good or evil, determining  how a man turns out to be.
The other gender, is probably most potent as the mother gender.

I tell my sons as often as possible, they're just as special as the girl next door.
No more no less.

When you make allowances, when you cater to male sense of privileges and feelings of entitlement...You never know the extent of harm done.

You never know what expectations you're building up in them. Inadvertently.

That...
Women are soft, malleable.

They're clay dolls, putty in our playful/philandering male paws?

Women just don't know their own minds.
So if they say "No", you just gotta lay down the law, dictate to them.

A woman's No is a "Maybe Baby."....If you can just convince me by brute force.

Failing that psychoanalyze them as neurotic hysterical hags or loose  bag of nerves.

Failing that, jeet at them, or cast aspersions on their character.

So the most intelligent among us women will get treated as a birdbrain in the company of quite ordinary men unless she toes the line.

Invisible of course. But unfailingly passive, and deferential.
Accompanied preferably by a lot of breathy giddy giggles.

We women are emotional vessels after all.

Seeking fulfilment through masculine appreciation admiration and validation.

Lets not treat men badly.
Let's not treat them special either.
Men have a buddy system.
Women I don't really know about your much touted divine ya ya sisterhood.

Seems to me that a solely emotional approach to loyalty and solidarity, to principled behaviour is bound to fail.

Feminine bonding is only half the answer.

Fallible since vulnerable to emotional click baiting.

Susceptibility is always  sensed and taken advantage of.

Will you fail to stand by her, the unloved lone woman wronged? Because she didn't bond with the rest of the sisterhood?

Let's just be rational, matter of fact and pragmatic in our interpersonal transactions.
How we treat other human beings,  or react to them, should be based on mutual respect, tolerance and compassion.

Which should ideally have nothing to do with gender.

I want to say this. Kids are innately wise. They befriend brains or beauty or brawn but never over a kind and good heart.
And kids know that brawn could be the pugnacious baby sister, and that the boy child can also be a beautiful being.
Brains are queer inventive things that can adapt and assimilate vast differences.
And find a way to joyfully coexist.

We are a species. Homo sapiens. Not a race. Not a gender. Not a colour.

Mostly not a religion.

Gosh.
Sleep deprived sleepyhead signing off. 🤓

Glopowrimo 13 Petrichor

Glopowrimo 13 Petrichor

Annual homecoming, a tedious affair
Packing the right clothes books and toys
Making allowances for Calcutta weather
Hot and humid, dry in April
Bit of Ozone crackling in the air
At cusp of  May
Soon cool breezes and darkening skies at four
Presage monsoon's advent at our door.

Lightning slashing our skies  apart
Thunderbolts incessant, stop and start.

We came equipped with singlets and shorts
Then brought out hoodies, and canvas flip flops
For my dear daredevils to dance in the rain
As dry grounds slaked their parched up pain
Quenched their thirst and soaked in luscious  fat drops
Pitter patter, as they pelted non stop!

And what a lovely parting gift from the gentle earth
The wet rocks and clay soil  opened up their veins
fragrant fluids and oils oozed upwards from nature's heart.

My boys sniffed in the petrichor
Dubious faces unsure, I smiled
To see how new things are received
By the youngest denizens of earth...

At first not so pleasing but incrementally
Over our life span,
Somethings become a fundamental need
This recurrent reassurance of
Continuity,
Life goes on in contiguity,
Completing the circle of life,
Every thing in nature harmonized.

Arousing fishes in the river the petrichor scents
Reminds them how now is it's time to procreate
How it guides the thirsty camel to divine desert oases
Subtlest fragrance for their eager noses

And I bend to scoop the mud in my revering palms
Touching my ancestors in moist mingled  balm.

Petrichor... Soul sap of the Gods
Petrified scents set in stone cellars
Reminder of life juices permeating
Our fragile flesh and bones.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Glopowrimo 10 Darkening Bright

Glopowrimo 10 Darkening Bright

Oh tender child of mine
Care of my autumn life
Sum of my entire life
Late arrival
Precious guest
Heart's beloved mine.

I remember every sunny day
Clear in memory's haze
Your toothless chuckles
Coos and gurgles
Your balled up fists
Your winning lisp
Your cozy snuggles.

My cute hooded clown
On skates you race around
Now you skitter off on your bike
And I'm left all alone
Lost in the
Darkening bright.

I have no blindfolds
No rosy glasses
These days of gaietys'
Sunny classes
Wil fade away
To obscure wonderlands
Inexorably, the Age fairy
Waves her magic Wand.

The rooms will fall silent
The windows close in at dusk
Without merry faces popping in
Like sunny corn from its tender husk...

And all I am left with
Are memory's silken awn
To thread my spare autumnal loom

But for now
This glorious morn,
Blessed reprieve,
My children's laughter
Splashes in the breeze
And their bright eyes
Bring in such dazzling light
May this brightness never cease.

But already alas
There's a soft tint to the light
Subtlest hint of predator night
I feel the fuzz on my neck
Stand upright
Sombre Premonitions
Heralding silent nights...

Hark now, my Muse
Pay heed
To the darkening bright.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo prompt 8 Trees are Saints in Disguise

Glopowrimo prompt 8
Trees are Saints in Disguise

Just a momentary glimpse
Into an alternate universe
Populated solely by trees
I felt palm leaves
Fan my face
And the broad dry red leaves
Fall from grace
Ashoka trees
Peepals
And Mango trees
They were like people.
All alike
Slightly different.

Each leaf shape
Spelt character.

They fanned caressed spread out
Offerings of breeze and shade

Each branch bowed
Under the collateral burden
Of its weight
Like dutiful householder.

Or reached up to the sun
Supplicant for all our
Collective fates

Sometimes I swore they reached
Out in mute tenderness
Offering benediction
And grace.

If trees are not the
Intended sole occupants
Of this, my universe
Where humans seemingly reign
Top of the food chain...
A quiet suspicion
Something's not in place..
The more I look
At trees...
I see how they both outrace
And embrace
The Human race.

Trees are signifiers
Dignified serenity's sage
They stand up in place
Static, rooted...
Even as they succumb to old age.

I feel flash forward
images...
Concentric circles
Like rings on the trees
Constancy, faith, endurance
Acceptance, submission, patience
Steadfastness, Aspirations
Of reaching high places
Without desertion of roots
Home bound always..
With every year
A new aspect permeates

Such is their beautiful wisdom
In their silent sacred days.

Trees are saints in disguise
If we only unmask our face.

(c)  Amrita Valan 2018

Savage

Savage

Savage mutilated
Abandoned
Gashed up Geisha dolls
Slashed up rag dolls
Hacked up stacked up,
Resurrected hash tags.

Poor souls
Abandoned
By Guardians
Of girlhood
Protectors of falsehoods
Covering up savagery
In veils of silence.

Savage hands held them
Barely out of their cradles
Shared and shredded innocents
Satanic rituals of horror
God's natural order perverted.

Meanwhile
False souls murmured
Rueful utterances
Doling out solace
Alas! Such
Deceitful regrets
When punitive measures
Are strictly prohibited.

Savage lies
Savage ties
Blindfolded tender marionettes
In a savage world they die
In pools of blood to lie.

Our bright little baby girls
Lie in recumbent poses
In soft frozen despair.
Savaged by beasts
In stasis forever.

... Meanwhile
Those cold ugly beasts
Politicized ape-kind,
Goliaths and  goons,
Who let them loose
From their polarized lairs?

They
Who did....
Must not be named.

They're the ones
Most frightening
Smooth polished toffs
Thugs with agendas
Mouthing concerns
Sheer propaganda

Most heinous false souls
Self designated protectors
Guardianship betrayed
Womankind beware.

Mothers, wives and sisters
Daughters
No Girl child spared
For in this savage garden
Lust uncoiled and erected
Hisses, and unchecked,
Fanged, venomous,
His head rears.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Glopowrimo 11 Scattering

Glopowrimo 11 Scattering

Sorry. I have gone a bit weird from sci fi to esoteria 😃

The magus
You

Spellbound, enthralled,
I

You waved your hand
I heard the swish
Of an invisible wand

Whipped me into
Loose confetti
Dispersed my remains.

Was It still me?
This loose
Scattering
Of atoms and molecules
That vacated my selfhood
To fly every which were?

Or
Was I the insipid
Vacuum
Left behind
In my shape?

My love agape tumbled
Through multiple universes
My senses still bound
To this indifferent landscape.

I moved worlds apart
Turned oceans and continents
Upside down
To regain my bearings
To
Reconnect..

Whoosh...
I am still
Scattering
Spellbound
And lost

At the whim
Of your idle evil wand.

The only difference
Is I know now

I am not here,
Nowhere am I
Till I recall
Myself correctly.

Black Jedi knight
Master Mage
When I have
Gathered myself...

My core

Will crumble
Your essence.

For my soul
Is
Indestructible
Indivisible

Though for now
Worlds
Flow in between.

You will find me
At your gravestone
Placing flowers
By your head.

Shredded petals
He loved me...
He loved me not...

Not.

Answers like old sins
come home to roost
When we choose
Rebirth from
Forbidden Ashes.

Dispersed throughout the
Cosmos
My causality
My soul scattering
Shall converge again,

To annul
Your displacement.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Glopowrimo 2 Sonnet Colours

Glopowrimo prompt 2
Sonnet colours

It's long overdue. Missed this one.. sorry.

The first flush that mounts your ivory cheeks
Delicate rose tinged on saffron cream
Demure downcast ebony lashes speak
More prolific than all my  poems in reams.

On sudden impulse when thus you tilt your gaze
Steering eyes of becalming lucent jet
My heart skips a beat lost in blissful maze
I am putty in your hands my fate.

When in simplest movement your pearly hips undulate
I thank God, in a fervour all His creation praise
I wince in pain, because this dire thirst to satiate
Myself, like Lazarus a thousand times, He would need to raise.

Colouring my pages of untouched pristine white
Lady you usher in snowy sunlit dawn and darkling night.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Lately...Death

Lately...Death

Death has been occupying me of late.
Befriending me
At my own behest.
In a way I'm not sorry
One likes to keep track
Of destination's
Due date.

Souls keep checking out
Of Hotel earth
From suites hyperborean
Or down under
From the big fat
Equatorial belt
Bulging with excess.
Relentless release
From hyperbaric chambers
Enriched with compressed
Oxygen
Relevance immaterial.

But life breath
Isn't soul food.
Sometimes a vital bit
Is missing.

Sometimes the earth
Is just hungry for brute
Ablutions in blood.

Sometimes the tension between air
And ground snaps
And tears off the wings
Of Icarus
Metallic birds plunge into
Gorges
Flesh rips off
The soul.

And they're set free
To fly.

Even if fragile and fay
They don't know
How or where.

I'm running a list
In my mind

How Many Ways
Are there for
Us to die.

This is
Deathwatch.

Social media has a way
Of bumping into us
With death notices
Suddenly
The living page
Turns obituary

Time frozen
Left like a grain
Of sand
For sea to wash away.

The brain humps down
To a piece of meat
Inanimate unappetizing
It never says
I was once capable
Of twisted turns and convolutions
Of coursing through neuro synapses
To create a palpable
Network teleological
And taut
Integrating fact with feeling.

It never iterates
Its erstwhile capacity
Of thought or love
Greater than yours.

It never demonstrates
The demons wrestled down
The indelible mark of hurt.

The brain hunkers down
Like a grainy grey pretzel
And blandly eyeballs us
From formaldehyde jar.

I cannot hold the heights
I was aware of.

I cannot preserve the depths
Of mysteries I
Wallowed in.

Why I cannot even hold
The love I felt within.

The most profound
Inner part of me

Now has become the wind.

I
Am
Death's head
Doorway to
Gehenna
Entry to
Hades.

Friendship with me
Is not an option.

We are blood brothers
Life and I

The day we are born
We cry...

An oath
Is uttered.

And it will
Be honored.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Glopowrimo prompt 7 I call you by my name

Glopowrimo prompt 7
I call you by my name

Sleeping with me on this floor
Are two huddled shapes
Goodly bundles of soft flesh
They're like somnolent angels
My tiny fledging sons.

One lifts his little flute like nose
To draw in life breath
I trace his lips, blossoming bliss

The other dreams tranquil butterfly dreams
In Quixotic lands
Caterpillar days of
Oblivion.

He scrunched his tulip nose
Into my tweaking fingers
His cupid bow curving into
Lop sided grin
His eyes wet moons
With visions unseen
I melted,
Liquid laughter within.
 

My very innards are skin tight
Drums
Stretched by a strange love
And my eyes are canvases
Upon which you paint
Fresh horizons.

And my ears?

They don't hear the outside world
Anymore
Pulsating to your
Adamantine heart beats.

I call you by my name
Which will go on
When these senses, mine eyes
My ears, my touch and taste,
My fragrance haunted brain,
My flesh and blood and breath
Are gone.

You're the voice
Of my silenced memoirs
Whistling, whispering
Roving in the sweet winds
Of future.

Sons...
I call you
By my name.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Friday, April 6, 2018

Didu

Two beds against two walls
Two green walls facing each other
And covered with photos framed
Of kids who had grown and fled the coop
Some pictures of their beloved dead

I am three years old jumping on and off one bed
I watch my parents enter solemn
Through the front door.
Their eyes soulful red rimmed
Downcast head
In their hands
Yet another photo
To hang on the green wall today.

She is so gorgeous
Eyes brilliant smile like revelation
I admire the heavy garlands around her neck
And vaguely recall
This black and white visage
Used to walk around these rooms
Silver haired sepia skinned
Jet eyed ageless maid.

Around these green walled
Little rooms
Where my grandmother stayed.
Her mother-in-law who once lived
Now looks down
Tender delicate benediction
Frozen in eternal motion
Above our heads.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo Prompt 6 Betrayal

Glopowrimo
Prompt 6 Betrayal

Vulnerable to such fabulous feelings
Are we
Who call ourselves human.

A mere flicker of eyelashes
Betray us.

Our beloved reads erasure
In our eyes
Before it happens.

The hurt remains.

And the hurt is recorded.

We both lock it up
In tight treasure chests
Hiding from ourselves.

Forgetting
Those who are hurt
Hurt others.

Those who are betrayed
Carry the silver coinage of
Shame
Pay it forward.

I have faced countless betrayals
Now I am Judas.

I hang from the Magnolia tree
Nightly.
Brightly.

A scarecrow
An effigy
Of my pain.

It wrecks my features
My eyes are swollen horrific
Magnified ebony marbles
Lava streaked irises.

I look like a grudge
Waiting to strengthen
Waiting in silence
For malignant ripening

Streaming out of control
Flooding the course of
Our repugnant ways.

The chest still hurts
The pus is self destructive.
Love cannot accommodate
Betrayal.
Unless it forgives
And accepts.

Perhaps one needs to be
Betrayed
To learn to redeem
One's best.

The wine ferments
And tastes bitter.

The wine ferments
And tastes better.

These days
I think I could learn
To bear betrayal
Like Radha
Grace in solitude
Till the end of
My days.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Glopowrimo Prompt #4 This isn't a poem

Prompt #4 This isn't a poem

This isn't a poem
This is a hammer stroke
Chiseling void
Beating my space
Smooth against unruly time.

This is nature versus nurture
This is an aneurysm
Bleeding out my future
This is anything but
Lines that chime
To elegant rhymes

This is discord
Disconnect
Discomfort.
This is deep vein thrombosis
That numbs arterial rain.

This isn't...
Self expression.
This is Discovery
Retrieval and
Perhaps rescue.

Perhaps they know.
The Gods that be
This isn't 
A statement of purpose
Or intent.
This is Morse code
SOS
Set in a dream.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo Prompt 5 When love became a four letter word

Glopowrimo
Prompt 5 When love became a four letter word

Looking at the moon
Golden goddess half veiled
In speckled black veil
Bridal brilliance enshrouded
Black crepe widowing her
In envelopes of shame.

Shameful this night
When truth wants to hide
In hideous black hole clouds
When the head is a shotglass
Of fire and brimstone
Scorching the barren ground.

Bizarre these lies
That ends the great adventure
Of Trust and transcendence.
The barking dogs palpate the night
The endless howls of
The end of love.

Betrayal and deceptions dissolved
In salty rims runout
Of excuses
Turning and tossing
Can't unmake this bed
Of blood gorged nails.

Dark alley grave land
Liquefying the landscape
Embedding entombing
Cerebral cemetery's bedroom.

These are semi detached nights
Rapacious rooms
Of split level gloom

Gradually spiralling down
Unthreading the weary loom
Of intercoursed lives
An exponential entropic doom
Right from the start point
Of no return...
Nowhere else to go
When Love became
A four letter word.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Glopowrimo Prompt 1 Ghazal where the birds have gone

Glopowrimo
Prompt 1 Ghazal
Where the birds have gone

My mother, born in village hut one Monday morn
Whilst grandpa toiled in fields, baled hay that morn

Fair of face, full of Selena's luminous grace
They named her "Moon", she brightened their day that morn.

By lush fields or village well she amidst nature dwelt
Amongst birds, bees and trees, a wild fairy day those morns

Happy her life, at sixteen upset by fate
The young man she'd wed came, to take her away that morn.

To city lights, high towers, narrow terraces condemned
Mother sighed, "where the birds have gone? Pray stay this morn."

And I, Amrita, the daughter she'd named from a charming book
Wept, "like you, Mother, the birds have gone their way this morn."

(c) Amrita Valan 2018.

Glopowrimo Prompt 3 Blindness

Glopowrimo
Prompt 3 Blindness

(Sorry to do in wrong order. Trying to catch up.)

Suddenly she lost her sight at five
Her world turned to pitch black overnight
From God's vivid palette of colours bright
She was denied.
Forever black with no Greys or white.

The little girl was far too small to think
To ponder her loss, she could only wink and blink
Back tears of silent muted fright
Her inner landscape populated with
Silvery ghosts of light.

Every once in a while through fogs
Of Sepia dream
Muted colours in horror screamed
Bleeding a story of blue vivid skies
A golden sun and moon, a chorus of stars
Who knows who cares
If she thought they were wanton lies
And not the memories of bygone days
And not the trailer of promises unkept

Then came a sad day
Then came a safe day
When finally she forgot
And quiet and childlike
Accepted her lot.

The Gods cried then
Silvery star lit dew
Their own eyes blinded
By the ethereal hue
Fate is a fantastic fount
Of faith
The girl grew up and grew wings
Of wonder and flew out through
The gates
Of the dark walled garden into
A pool of light
Knowledge, hard work, courage
Made her persevere
Till through sightless eyes
She could see all right.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018