The Ladder

The Ladder

The ladder stretches
Halfway through heaven
Makes skyline accessible
blue and white breath kissed
Loose ends, tying up
remembrances too vast
To wrap up
In the stoppered
time capsule
Of one life.

The terraced memories ascend
Into sun's smoky descent
Our blood livid against
Fierce skies.
Against the wall by the black plastic
Water tanks
The ladder gapes
Grappling with answers
to open ended questions
Of my unconscious soul.

I grasp silver railings
Of childhood bliss.

I am almost there.

Sliding to the bottom of
this mystery.

Ascending the ladder
That welcomes and
Ushers in
Loneliness
Thrusting me into
Intimate realms of trust
and truth.

The legacies,
If only we knew,
Of blissful eternity.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Slop Weekly Challenge

The tale be told
The woman alone
His birth the mystery
Her faith behold
An insular nativity
An island of pity
A sea of wolves
Carousing drawing
Lots over his bones

The women behold
The Man the Magus
His cross upstages
All our sins and sorrow
Out of our reckoning
See Lady beckoning
I hold this lamp
For outcasts
At Heaven's door.

Easter ahoy!
Lost like the island
Meaning forsaken
Such a cold wind blows

Lost at birth in the cold place
The heart rudimentary
Running hard on vestigial legs

May Man show mercy
As God durst once
And for those of us
You and I
Who curse our lots

Remember she
Who gathering her son's
Cast off clothing
Was Moving stillness
At the close of day

Hark how the thunder rolls mighty
Witness darkness in the afternoon
Easterly sun hath forget his course.

She's alone now in her nightmare agony
Awaiting the dawn of uncertainty
In quiet fortitude.

Hail glorious dawn that
Searches sunlit sepulchre
For the mystical body
Of a dead man's belief.

Who avowed and arose
Prophetic red rose
And sunlight shall glory
His name evermore
Posterns of faith
Guardian of gates
Easter our portal
Of everlasting hope.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Poem for Mrs De Bhaumik

On 28th March. (My mother's birthday)

 
Poem for Mrs De Bhaumik
Once of 6 Mayfair  Road
Very nice and fair of face
Who dwelt in her quiet abode.

Children two. Husband one...
And always a maid or two
A flower vase a looking glass
Daddy's doe eyed sweetheart true.

Heavenly plans plotted ill health
Took away precious mental wealth
But heart's gold it couldn't touch
Or at least not so very much.

Today's dwelling is not so grand
Though still on prime viable land
Sixty eight years of experience
Life of a long suffering saint.

Someone's caring mother someone's beloved wife
Someone's adored daughter,
Oh! In lost days from sweet long ago,
in some faraway life...

Long lost past, few steadfast friends
Now these are silent days
Of sweet self denial
Time's autumnal lent.

In her now a purity
A frostbitten beauty
Spare clean frame
Cleansed of dubious ambition and mottled dreams
Life's mighty and meaningless games.

Only a sharp clarity,
Annals of  duties performed
Chapters of debts repaid ten fold
The messy challenging chapters closed
A soft focus eventide bubble around her.
A halo benign of rose kissed gold.

I hear you loud and clear my lady mother
Such a gentle lonesome song
Please let me tuck you
And these your softest wondering evensongs
In gentlest leaves of my gaping heart...
Gashed with wounds wondrous
Stigmata of sacred love.

At her home...Mrs De Bhaumik 
Receives birthday wishes
Dreams a dozen chiming, upon stolid ring after telephone ring.

For quietly insignificant little ladies
Leave deeply tender tracks
Upon innocent hearts tended in their merciful hearths.

My poem for the lady is for now complete.
For now,
Because I suspect,
I will be writing to her,
My mother,
For the rest of my life.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Lost

Lost

I have lost touch with myself
Barely feel me in my own skin
My opinions are not my own
Borrowed skins stylish trends
I copy donning vain feathers.

My attire reflects my attitude
An acuity of emptiness
Vapid valleys of half baked notions
That beg fruition
In similitude of perfection
Your understanding coveted craved
And such a
pulchritude of rotting
Semi decayed ripeness
In the very germination.

Slow steadfast surety has been forsaken
Faddish and mad march hare leaps
Of faith undertaken
Glib logic which turns coat as often
As you could wish.
And the world's eager as I
To please
And wishing chair activists
Gnaw well flavored wish bones
Dry and dessicated
As the dead valley of dreams.
Read the Kadish for my kind
We are surface activists peeling
The orange rind...
Unraveling desecrating devouring
Without appreciation or satisfaction
And everyone and everything may appear
As you like it to be seen.

So I'm not important
Even to myself
You can fashion me as you will
And do me over at
Makeover parties
Eliminate me at -sleep over parties.

The clock chimes
Midnight...
Rats rule from pumpkin coaches
and Cinderellas
Fish out oil tycoons and hedge fund heirs
Without looking at the mirror.

And if you did peep
The charm wouldn't reveal itself
To be this witches brew.
For honesty was never portion of
Magic potions, in age old cauldrons of
Infamy.

Talk is cheap
Tongue grows stiff
Caulked with caution
Forked by treachery.
Cheeks hurt stretching
Into rictus smiles
Waxing.
Waning.

I.
Have lost myself.
Wonderland awaits.
The false world  of Oz.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

A Poet is a Beast

I devour mildewed
Morning's cup of emotions
Chilled in the attic
last night's blue moon
Peeped inside
My disturbed sleep
Brewing a cauldron of
fateful dreams.

Haunted household
Mismatched rooms
Suites of beguiling deception
Each turn of the staircase
Arrays of derailed decisions
Derangement definite, if
Delayed.

The gorge rises to
Make a bolus
Baffled belittled bulimic
to eject reject and purge
The enemy within
To husband energies
Muster reserves,
Master the madness
Within.

Grief growing looming
Like an idea burgeoning
Into black hole singularity
An ominous
Aperture
At the end of
A one way street.

A demonic urge
To annihilate self destruct
For what greater glory or
Lesser
For what futile fulcrum of
Balance
For what dead breath of
Remembered fresh air?

The poet is a beast
Languishing for
Forgotten scents
Evocation sacred
Of what never was
yet
Must needs be.

Two fairy wings
Clawed apart
By demonic obsession
Googling eyes
Hungry ever after
Greedy for more
Than a tale can hold.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Kill me Quietly

Kill me Quietly

Kill me quietly
O love child
Hope you never
Hope.
Hope guillotines
Day in day out
Daggers of danger
Dance
Offerings of shredded heads
On coarse bloody necks.
And we totter out
To meet tomorrow
Dolls made from sorrow.
Oh what a brilliance of
Need in the sheer necklines
Of Hope ...

The pavement reels
Weeping earth carisions
By degrees
To face the sun of
Non entity.

Non existence, dynamic
Beckoning
Towards such perfunctory
reckoning.
By celestial decree
Angular movement of angels
Through the three hundred and sixty
Hallowed degrees
Each turn in defiance
Of this meaningless carousel.

My animus weeps its
Animal apologies
For non being in existentia
The earth  tilts
Another degree.
Another's will and notions
Droops me to driven
axis.
The earth tilts drunk on power
This very sun drenched non minute
Annihilating all notions
Of stasis.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Un Lessons

Un lessons

Unsuccessful unwanted
Unloved
Causeway of fears battling regrets
Battered battering ram of hatred
Oh life,
You shine well
Lying diamonds in the dust
Grit and tinsel locked in lust
And ever after crumbling
Drainage of batteries leaching
Dreams that rust

Gold mocked, touched up?
Matte finish
And finished all.

Famished and thirsty
At the picnic feast
Where the rolling hills
Hide away from me.
Snug getaways
Secure safe houses.

And I hear your tinkling glasses
Magic Kingdom passes
Crystal clear laughter
By the fountain ever after.

And all the lucre of your luck too
Shall pass away.

Will you then be me
And will you hold my hand gladly
And walk along the path
Of us castaways..?

Or will you be interested in
Your alter ego
As a reminder
As a lesson
A living manual
On the Dos and Don'ts
That destiny designed
for a few
(Edited with glossy illustrations),
While sending off
Others
For a quick
Or lingering crucifixion?

Will we rise again?
Shall we say
Thank God
For our own
Good Fridays?

(c) Amrita Valan 2016