Retrospect

I'm relatively new to Facebook. My husband opened me this account around August 2010 to generally show off pics of my new babies to eager kith and kin all over the world at the cheapest cost! ;)
I  discovered my old school friends.  Then acquaintances. I was content.  My world of one mommy plus two babies, parents, hubby and inlaws was suddenly broadened.
This doesn't mean that I was bereft lonely and friendless all my life till the advent of social media. In fact I turned up my nose at social media and refused staunchly to join Orkut MySpace.  I even lost a few good friends because I refused to use my ancient Hotmail account, preferring handwritten letters! :)
I have made many good friends. Close friendships for a lifetime.  But as these friends grew up, married and settled down elsewhere we lost frequency of touch.
I got so busy, wrapped up in my family, my occasional flirtations with jobs,  hobbies, pastimes, that they seemed to have become part of a distant magical past....childhood adolescence the college years.
Never thought I could reclaim it all through FB when I joined in 2010. Today I'm in touch with many of them again and joyfully watch from a distance their lives and families blossoming over time.
I didn't really start writing till 2013. At first it was a few odd notes to myself.  Some of my friends liked them. And emboldened I posted a few on my status. And started getting suggestions to join poetry groups around late October or early November 2013. These suggestions came thanks to FB algorithmic structures probably.
And as I tentatively joined a few groups...blushing hit the post button on the first poem I ever posted for total strangers, I discovered the magic world of "virtual friends." So kind so loving and appreciative and caring of my efforts. ..I was effortlessly drawn in by their friendly support.  Malavika Srivastava yes....you were one of my first virtual friends and it was such a reward to know you.
The first poem I ever posted online was Moving.  I think I will can it here today though the saga of my journey through Facebook and my fortuitous friendships there may continue...maybe after dinner is served, eaten and the real family put to sleep?
Giggles and smiles my friends. 
And here's the very first poem I ever posted on a poetry forum...in the fall of 2013.

Moving

Lead kindly light
I am ready for the road
Many silent nights I have waited
For skies to lighten
Today I trace my
heart upon the tracks
The wheel ready to roll
If it's downhill and disaster
So much the swifter
Lord
I shall meet you with my prayers
And if uphill I must
I place
My sole trust
It's an undertaken tryst
I must keep
this tale this story without an end
moving.

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014

Possibilities

Creep upon me tendrils of those
Senseless tenderness
Years unrecalled
From dimensions unlearnt
Moments of passionate
Loving madness
Slowly swirl and dissolve
Tears give me sweet second
Helpings
Life, love
Richness unencompassed
Soon forgotten
Once sunlight
Melts lucid flesh to dust
To give vagabond soul flight
Ionic particles spreading my
Essence to ether.

Do not yet panic
Love formulates particles
Patterns in the nascent air
We are all here, there and
Everywhere.

I will feel again.
Not this world I fear.
We will touch forbidden zones
Beyond the ether.
Where souls dance in each other's embrace
Make rooms in cocoons of
Wealth
Such safe harbors sparkling divinity
Brushing butterfly winged
Kisses of immortality.

Let me rain upon you love 
My sweetheart from primordial paradise
Shimmering paradigms beyond
Veil invisible
Death's invitation to lift
Joyfully to accept
And return where
We came together
To create time and space
Through love eternal.

There...
We meet again.
Till then adiós
Farewell I will know you
my friend.

(c) Amrita Valan 2015

Broken Blood Moons

Patterns of poems circle the air
Breathe and pulsate to
Form wreathes in my hair
Dreams woven tight in tendrils
Of loss
Loveliest memories in forlorn love locks
I feel the coiled circlet that crowned my tight pain
A crescent of yearning baying broken blood moons
Such lonely longings such lovely yearnings
It could flash freeze my frame
I come to and from the window
The moon looks bemused
So cool blue again..
Well poetic knight
You breathed love
Into my bower
But not your cold heart
My own words
Gave me power.

Patterns of poems
Sparking the air
Creating charge and attraction
Wording heart blood so dear.

Patterns of poems
That scintillate
Unspoken nights
Never written
But forever
Burnt on the mind....

(c) Amrita Valan 2015

Pro Life Pro Choice Or Male Voice?

Why are people less concerned about orphans and homeless street kids but so up in arms against abortion?
I conceived my second baby barely four and half months after my first.
When I found out I was exactly two months and a couple of weeks pregnant.
I had zero interest in aborting my baby as I wanted siblings close in age, (perhaps not that close!).
But the doctor preempted me and sternly said in admonitory tones, "You can't abort as the fetus is above two months", a small significant pause, and then on a triumphant note, "It's illegal."

Well I assured her I had no intention of aborting and that I welcomed the new life inside me.
Inside, I laughed at her somewhat taken aback expression.
To be fair, she was a nice old lady and probably just preconditioned like we all are as women, to jump through the usual patriarchal circus hoops.
Namely, feel guilty exercising freedom of choice, right of opinion speech or even thought as women, the moment the issue impinges on the interests of both the sexes.
Now years later all this pro-life, pro choice debates make me think...
It's's not a laughing matter that men invariably try to legislate and corner women into a subservient dependant position whether out of natural testosterone based aggression, or out of fear and insecurity.
Whether it's the right to voteto, to drive, to drink, to carry a child to term or not...
It takes two sexes to procreate.
What alarms the "Stronger sex", ( ;) ), however is the fact that the child can only see the light of the world through the  agency of a feminine channel.
And so they want to legislate that a woman who is carrying a child be compelled to bear it!
Why?
The reason is not religious or moral or ethical though people have been conditioned into thinking that it is.
It is the age old power play...the struggle for domination and the lack of trust between the two genders...lamentably of the same species, at the top rung of the evolutionary ladder to boot!
Because men are well accustomed to a patriarchal set up....and are, well..so patronizing, they assume, (much like  dominant superpowers), that it's their right and prerogative, nay, even moral obligation and responsibility, to set the world to order.
Not content to leave the continuity of the species to God and Natural evolution, they want to bully women into becoming perpetual unquestioning wombs and vessels of
continuity. 
And employing typically aggressive male tactics, they coerce, arm twist and use vehement propaganda. ..to bring women to their heels... rather like obedient animals. ..pets bred for a purpose.
Why else wouldn't they realize and acknowledge how much women long to save rather than nip a budding life?
And that the choice of abortion would be for independent morally responsible women an evil necessity, an exception that proves the rule that life is indeed precious, and should not be irresponsibly brought into the world?
As for teen pregnancies and uninformed multiple conceptions and subsequent abortions...those are not morally responsible adult women and citizens but misguided children. 
You don't legislate against them, you educate them. By spending money resources time and effort.

(c) Amrita Valan 2015

Beliefs

People who place a belief system above a person are capable of any amount of inhumanity given provocation or impetus.

Thinking of Jihads and crusades and torture for heresy blasphemy apostasy witch burning  excommunication and of course besides religious beliefs also the laws of inheritance primogeniture divine right of kingship.
Brothers slain at the altar of ambition, wives suspected of adultery stoned to death buried alive or locked up in dark chambers of solitary confinement.
Torture for treason.
At every instance a person has the ability to apply his instinct for mercy personally or succumb to  ingrained belief and the propaganda of the times

The Holocaust the Christian  genocides of Armenia and now Israeli extermination of Palestinians (and vice versa in the past), atrocities perpetrated by almost every nation and every people united, in a mob mentality against the perceived "Other"...could never have happened if the "Person" was placed above "Public" interest....and each life was held sacrosanct by every other life....

Then governments and ideologies and industrial behemoths wouldn't be able to drag us into wars for selfish shortsighted interests.

That is why probably the most important takeaway from Christianity for me is not humility or forgiveness really.
Those are to me, all narrow specific virtues gathered under the umbrella of
a broad divine dictum of universal brotherhood.
"Do Unto Others As You Would Want Them To Do Unto You."

And that's my core religion if it can be called religion. And yes, I'm willing to change even this belief, if it hurts my fellow beings!
How can an axiom like this ever hurt another I do not know...but say, I am a masochist and lean towards self flagellation and martyrdom, then though this is my choice of treatment and personal preference, obviously, I would NOT in this instance apply my belief of Do unto others....

Just a foot note.
I think any religion which supports physical self flagellation and causing physical injury to one's person as a sign of repentance is itself commiting an act of heresy.

To God who is above all religions and is
Sheer pure goodness...the positive life affirming essence of hope growth and continuity of this universe, and whatever may lie beyond...

"...This above all to thine own self be true..." and
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Love Eternal

Heroic in love
I believe
In pain and the valor of sacrifice
The grave glory of suffering. .

I'm no martyr
Believing in blood and gore
Self leaching
I believe in happy days
Green Elysian fields
I believe I believe  I believe
that I was born to love...

And each time release
At the tip of  sharp sword's edge,
Relinquished no regrets.
Nothing matters when love fades.

I level my gaze
To  your query
Yes I dare
And I answer to no one.

Not even you..
Lovely is this coming
Together
This never recurring breeze
I can accept the challenge
Of seeing fate dissolved in
Stellar tears
Orion, do you hear
The  piercing wail
of heart which met
your unflinching arrow?
And do you wear my tears
Elliptical diamonds from yesterday
On your timeless belt
For  tomorrow?

My dear, deathless fate immortal...
I'm not looking for easy getaways.

Oh I plucked the fruit
On an impulse, and I know that
I am damned.
Original sin...
Love eternal
In finitude of  Paradise.

(c) Amrita Valan 2015

A Woman's Song

Busy busy busy busy not a moment to spare
Legs aching breath hurting
From running up and down the stairs
There's no end to household chores
Errands to run
Deadlines to meet
Clean the bathrooms
The ceiling fans
Dust and polish
When you can
And do the ironing
Chop the beans
Cook three course meals
And then start to clean
Then clean and dry the cleaning mops
Lady you run around spinning like a top
Speed is priority perfection is not
A woman's labor is round the clock
Yet not monetized simply because
She works for her own
So it's a sin to weigh profit and loss
The inability to claim an idle hour
To dream of loving in flowery bowers
To write one's heart while grinding meat
Kneading dough on swelling feet
And my tears can only make me weak
A subject of shameful mockery
If I say I deserve more than this
Get out and seek a job
Do as you please
For you're not my own
My kith and kin
The bloodlines unbroken run
In patriarchal veins
I laugh and do just as I please
Fall in love again with ease
And then Demons wrath aroused
The claim must be made
Woman must be owned
Spoken for and said
You are not yours to Be,
You must belong
A possession of
One whose heart
Lost his woman's song.

(c) Amrita Valan 2015