Weekly Challenge Slop 2018

Weekly Challenge

remember now
How I
Burnt my hair with cigarettes
Writhing with pain
At the ashes on my eyelashes
penance or lost first love.

Lying till dawn wide awake
On shag carpet  love's byre
First swan song
That one I couldn't keep
A secret.

He had crooned,
I will be two steps behind you
Always.
After dinner Def Leopard
In gravelly voice
Full of thrilling promises.

Dancing together
In his mezzanine room
I was silent jelly
Shaking woebegone

I knew I would lose
Him soon.

So I let him go.
I couldn't bear to
Hear him let me go.

I couldn't bear to know
He preferred someone else.
First
Breakup
Comically went quite well.

He gracefully shed tears.
It was more than
I could bear

Someone who so longed
For the fairy tale to be real
A semi shoeless Cinderella,
And the other one of
The pair
Never fitted too well.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Memorium of Friends

Though they came
In droves
They never stayed
And the remainder?
Always the piddling remainder
Troubling tormenting
Foam on the steaming cup
Of coffee
Quickly dispersed.

These golden flames
Of great friendships
Flicker to cast dark
Dramatic shadows
Of the Other.

Tempting you
To forgo ugliness
Revelling in the newfound
Joy of perfect company.

Till a loose string
Dangling irritatingly
In a beckoning manner
Draws you to pull
All unravels
The picture on the
Veil displayed
Fractures fades
In an instant
You see a face
Behind the veil.

That foreigner
Was never
Your friend.

Who knows why
Such people file past
Our grim and dreary
Existence?
I like to think
They bring a surge of joy
A current of hope
A strand of exhilaration
Before they break
The tie.

Life is such an
Unstoppable force.
What's broken
Can be mended.
What's thrown away
Can be remembered.

What's shunned
Can haunt dreams.

What's forgotten
Can become again
A primal surge
The urge for life
Reincarnated.

Friends are our
Other faces.

Reminder
Of great moments
In the making.
In forever.
In dreams.

Have I lost them?
No matter
I had good times.
Great times
Will be had again

In your memory
My friend.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Lonely Witness

Can't get the family of four Indians,  who drowned in the US out of my head. What a sad end of talented kids and a wonderful family.
Priyanka Indranil Saved by the grace of God....It was same week you guys had the accident.

There was a bridge
Over a stagnant river
Purple bruised with wilting
Flowers at its banks
Where its wet feet
Touched earthy shores

The beautiful hut laden
With hay
In a country village
Fat away,
Heavy conical roof
And quaint mud walls
Wearing pretty peepholes
For windows
The door had chalked markings
Auspicious symbols
Warding off evil

It wafted over
The four breezes,
From the corners if the earth
Ominous forebodings, evil
Silence settled on the hearth
Of this lonesome home.

The windows gaped like
Hungry hopeless eyes
The door waited
Like an usher
At an empty theatre.
But the loved ones
Would never return.

The setting was a stage
Nature play acting
Something was off
In this quiet Eden.

Meanwhile, far away,
The river had become somnolent
But only last weak it had reared
Medusa heads of raging fury
Swallowed whole a
Family of four.

They had stopped their car
by its banks
To avoid heavy rain.
Toppling over its edge
Unable to quantify
Or calculate
The hairline breadth
Between danger
Of oblivion
And oblivious safety.

The giddy fall
From dizzying heights
Of terror
The river sizzling
With greedy gusto
To swallow whole
An entire family.
Four souls
Taken

The mournful hut
Had stood witness
Faithfully,
In treacherous fateful
Silence.

I saw this
In my head
Sad sojourn
The last journey
Of the Dead.

(c) Amrita Valan 2018

Ampersand poetry

& more than lazing round
& More than carving out
A wedge or two of free time
From dull drudgery of housework
& montony of chopping scads of veggies
& Servings up scalding hot beverages
& Pottering in lava lined kitchen
& Stirring endless insipid lemonades..

& More than the triumphant savage peace
Of throwing out the confounded and confounding kids with the
Hubby,
To chase that doggone ball to darnation.

Much more than holding a cold canned soda
And devouring  Carl Sagan and Gauss

Is this birthing joy
Of  throwing together words
Patching up soul spots
Threading fancy loopholes
Of doubt and wonder

& Darning me some lines
Some Doppler poetry
Redshifting towards
New beginnings
Or to the utter lack of endings.

& Compressing my blues
In an up close and personal
With my amnesiac soul.

& Much more than anything else
I am happy to dream
Meshing past present and future
In my quantum slice of spacetime.

& Poetry but a legacy
Of primordial meanderings
Pleasurable reincarnation
Lazarus resurrection
A Nazarene's Rising
Whose birth is a special
Relative mystery.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017

Wee bit disappointed
Wanted to use more &. s.