Upon the Cross

Upon the cross
Of torture
The
Centre of the universe
Head of starry crowns
most high
Wreathed in thistles
Blood draining down
Now bowed limp with pain

If he had looked up
Would have seen
Blue black skies
sullied by divine rage.

With his tortured vision
Bloodied blotches
Whirlpools of  manifold
darkness
Faint fading light...
Whorls of mysterious compassion
Gearing to receive embrace

Instead he is silent withdrawn
A pin point of focus
Focusing all
Human pain
Igniting compassion
For ages
Generations to come
Fathering human
Mercy...

Ascension above physical senses
A soul shooting up to dizzyingly beautiful heights
Far over
Frail human horrizon.

How horribly wounded
Too terribly mangled
Eyes a butchery
Of blood streaming
Like future adoration
Too far gone
To look up and see
Salvation.

He only looked up once
Just another
Tired human in dread pain
Dreaming of his eventual realease

Eli eli lama sabachthani?

No one
Not a soul
No gentle mother's hand over brow
To wipe sweat yet
Tears washed out
Those suffering eyes
From which
Burst forth
A last deluge
Of mercy
For human plight.

Generous gentle brave heart
He cried
For our forgiveness
Interceding with his
Divine Father...

Father
Forgive them
For they know not what they do.

Afterwards
When you and I walked away
from holiness.
Leaving behind his lifeless lonesome figure on
Stricken cross....

Afterwards when dumb beasts
Cried out
Lamenting
Human creed

Afterwards
When He was gone
The terrible skies wept.

In Credo Deum Unum
Screamed the rain. ....

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014

Because I Love You Like That

Love love love
Immortalized me
Because thoughts die
And words die unless
Preserved for posterity.

Actions are fleeting
Time is a movie screen
Everyone of us know
Feelings of love
Are not
Called for.

You may from birth to death
Live
You breathe
eat and sleep
You form herds to survive
Based on affinity
You learn more
Empathize
As you sense common needs
Aspiring to security
Comfort safety.

The unknown scares us
So death the final scene
Becomes a common bond
United in fear
We learn to revere
And create Religion
And Gods.

Death  creates a desire
For perpetuation
Our hard earned knowledge
Becomes a library
A relic we hand over
To our offspring

What is this Love?
Our miniatures
Create wellspring of affection
In breasts
Human kindness flows
Desire to protect provide
Admire rear..
Arise.

But I ask you again
What is this love?

This strange awe
This fullblooded awesome fear for their future
This gentle sorrow
This great beauty of mad loving
This gigantic magnificent pity
That awakes in us

Bigger and better than
All of us
Where every tear we gulp down daily
Throttling taut fright
down our pallid throats...

Where longing becomes art
A thing of beauty
Where we know
The gentle little lives
We're kneading into shape
Are malleable clay
We are each moment
making or breaking

Also the darkest hours
Reveal last hours
Of our lives
A deep dark scarred insight
Like second skin
knowledge unsheathing itself
Unspeakably.

This dear darling
baby boy
View through the
Withering glass
Projections
Of his deathbed...

I will not be there to sooth his wilted age.

When I'm mere history shelved
In wreaths of cobwebs
Glistening through helpless glass  walls
He will
Lie
As if in peace

His face lined and skin taut
With careworn pain
Fine veined translucent again
Frail porcelain shell
Wheezing in sleep
Just as he does
Now
My little angel...

Sweet baby sleep
You
Will have grandchildren
Too
If lucky enough
In love ...
You will watch the deathwatch
And worry your heart like this.
You will
Love too.

What's me loving you
And you loving me?
Will no record of it exist?

I don't mean children...
Think...
are they our answer
To death?

With hard labor
We bring them to labor
Through life.
we call it
Our labor of
Love.

Love is a terrible flame
Never light it
You can't snuff it out
Again

Only life does that
With
Cruel swift mercy
Death.

My child soak up the
Lullabies.

Life is lovely cradle of death..

Crazing chasing razing
the very sentience it creates.

The depth of our feelings is
Fire unconsumed
Deeper
Than the deepest core of the
Depthless bleak universe

Stretching into eerie
Emptiness under the lonesome street lights
The road runs on...

Perhaps we will never
Meet again?
Though how much this heart
May break with the love it spills
Churning its blood into
Streams of vivid adoration

Though it
Might take lifetimes without number
An infinity to declare fulfilled

And though
All that time mirrors and channels are
Illusions of itself

And a second under the sun
Is life well lived
For a microbe
And a Brahma
Only dreams...

Life is going to remove these tags
Rob us of identities
Labels removed willy nilly

And whether in Brahma's dream we meet and merge
Or pass by
Without recognition
of each other's
Vital touch..

You will never be you
I will never be me to each other In the  lifegiving
Embrace of womb black night...

Your warmth that replenishes me...
Temporal unsustainable Instabilty...
Sheer insanity
That keeps us sane
It will run down deplete
run away from us
Then
why and how
Do you love like that
My love?

I hear it
High above my howling
Heart
Where a mighty wolf rages
At a dead disc moon...

I hear it
Like a faint echo strengthening to fade...

And something somewhere heals
I hear you say

Because
I love you, my Love
Like that.

I know we're bound
to meet.

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014

Prayers against Inevitability

Introspection a soul search throwing up answers all vaguely disappointing.
He was born to be a star yet he was passed over in favor of an aging has been.
Offered a lowly side role to accept which wouldn't be a career advancement.
Dreams dying in his hearts as She walked away from his life.
He just knew it. "She" wasn't ever coming back.
The love of his life since he landed in town with bit parts as body parts of famous thespians. ..
He had once landed hand and body shots for this particular actor who had supplanted him.
Supposedly both had long sensitive "piano" fingers.

She too came out of nowhere became a small time starlet but as his girlfriend she came to the notice of Mr. Aging Piano fingers superstar.
Now that she was in a starring role opposite him...opportunity knocks but once....they both had discussed how it had to be grabbed with eager fingers....
Eager long fingers lingering on her shoulders...not his....
He introspected...dark and bitter like chocolate. ..while his palms lay fingers pressed against the silent windowpanes...
Two Prayers. ...against
Inevitability.

(c) Amrita Valan :) ;)

Undertow

This life is a life
Which for the life of me
I cannot understand

I believe that there are kernels within kernels
Joining
That there is a life
We lead
And there is th seamlessly at life
Too
Which leads us
and life there also is
I firmly add
Which lives more vigorously
By hiding behind the
scenes
The full frontal life we lead
It's mere camouflage
And a world of life
Teems behind our eyes
Dreams
Teasing us
Chasing out
Gold from sand
Shoals of
Reality

I want that life.
I want that life.
I can get it
I can see it
When I kill my mind
And close my eyes
There's a body
of life
There's life
A subtext that hides

Like behind these very words
I write
The poem writes about me
As I write.
Not what I said...
But
The poem is the undertow
Of waves breaking
In my head.

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014

Baby in a Crib

Nobody can do what he can do
Bring you me and everybody
Together
In love
In peace
In grace
In harmony
Blessed blessed blessed be...
This was his will
And His Name
Savior Messiah
Masiha Christos
More than all the human blood
He shed
I adore him
For the divine tears
He wept
Forgiving humanity
Bearing all our crosses
By forgiveness.

Reverend star bright over Bethlehem
Lighting up a humble stable
Caressing the crib
Where a gentle baby lay
Long long ago
This silent
And most holy Night.

Merry Christmas dear friends and good night...

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014

Crushing on Cruise & Waxing Nostalgic & Metaphysical!

It was the summer break between grades 6 and 7... I was what 12 going on 22?
Leafing through the tabloid Sun (a  Delhi cousin's who was on a visit), I saw this pink faced young man... intense eyes flashing a dazzling a power grin..
A very top dog look!
It was the hit movie of 1986 of course...Top Gun.
And I got smitten!
It was next summer between 7th and 8th grade that the movie was screened at ICI club.
Those days U.S. releases did not get screened instantaneously in India,  intensifying the longing further for Hollywood blockbusters.

Heaven to see a cocksure Cruise on screen as Maverick..riding into the danger zone, playing with the boys...

"You Take My Breath Away" could have been written for all of us love struck threshold teenage girls back then.
I remember dreamily trodding grass on our garden overlooked by  my bedroom window !  Walking in a worshipful circle to the Top Gun anthem blaring from my stereo inside.
Tears of ..heavy angst and a somehow befuddled inspiration clouded my eyes as  an aeroplane  overhead sped past noisily!

That's what's so awesome about crushes! It inspires heroic daydreams none of them pragmatic nevertheless...it inspires.

I was not just drop dead gorgeous like Kelly McGillis in my idle daydreams.
I was an astrophysicist!
I was a fighter pilot!

Later I was disappointed and disillusioned, who wasn't  with their childhood idols, (barring Bruce "the boss"Springsteen), but he is still a colorful enigmatic personality. .
And  chances are I feed off that charged charisma just a little bit even now!

Or could I have done this?
Dedicated a blog to this er... middle aged couch jumper ? Lovably loony, this man is going for broke finding meaning while most of us have given up on any particular belief system in this nihilistic random universe of ours!

He is maybe that slender sliver of quixotic hope that perhaps heros exist and myths  are real, ubermensch not entirely impossible in a rapidly metrosexualizing material world.
Perhaps in all this anarchic entropic mess of a probability driven Douglas Adams universe /es, there is actual intent..and nothing is random after all.

Perhaps in all probability there is a sensible question after all that begs the ridiculous answer 42!  ;)

Left Mapother and Cruising for Meaning!

Supreme cad or ostrich or blind bat the sincerity and intensity is praiseworthy in tom, I see him as a warrior a crusader a pioneer and a would be denizen of his personal vision of a brave new world which may be wonky but Tom's heaven on earth.
He cares for the impact of his actions but does not act to elicit reactions, it is not all a PR act, but a  private  highway to a personal heaven, which happens to be a splashy media scoop as well.
So flawed warrior with achilles heel or not Tom there is something loveable about you.
You are not Michael Douglas marrying a trophy wife, or Brad Pitt going for the Bigger Better Deal, you are a man on a mission impossible,unifying life love and faith with an embrace of religious ardour .

Cant wish you success but what a singular drive. That I can admire and emulate in my life.