Pain and Poetry

I walk with my wounds
Pain winding me down
Up and down
And all around
Poetry
The shroud I lay you out
Upon the ground
The cast of all my pain.
I leave you behind
For others may need
My tale
As I walk away
From my wounds
As I walk through the hole in the shroud
Where pain clawed and tore
A flawless hole
Through it such light fabulous pours
I walk through brilliant
Walls
Where pain loses its hold
And poetry makes me whole
Or perhaps
Poetry is what still glues together
This broken chipped down soul.

Eyes Wide

Eyes open at the source
Wider than consciousness
Can hold
Eyes dreaming
Assimilating nightmares
Annihilating all fears
Sorrows have their own defence
The silken path of silent tears.

Eyes popping out trying to
See through madness
An universe behind the bland wooden door
Every intricate carving
With a coy cipher at its core
Each number each choice
Each year's explosive babel of voice

We brought it on
And then our once beloveds
Are once again
Forever gone.

Finality is forever
Are you there still?
Do you see or hear
Or feel?

And even asleep
Can you miss me?
And though death chilled corpse
Can you please bless me?

Or are you gone?
Truly switched off forever?
Once so alive so vibrantly on?

Eyes can shed only so much tears
Eyes grow stern with fate's deception or is it destined design?
Or something erratic anarchic beyond
Human comprehension?

Entropy of our beloved
Who ordered our lives
Balanced and brought beauty
Then died all alone
Their screaming horror misaligned?

Grief is a ringside spectator
The show of life goes on
Friends foes passer bys
On pretentious stilts
Prance to touch the skies
All of the while
Their skins dissolving
Like dreams
Steaming in my far off
Familial eyes.

God bless them
They who ordered our lives
And taught us love
Amidst disorderly chaos
Taught us to live amidst strife
God is the ultimate
Will to survive.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

And Then We Learn Love

If there's one lesson "Gone With the Wind", offers me then I guess it's not the adorably spunky and unimaginative (And therefore indomitable), Scarlett's motto "Tomorrow's another day."
More like we tend to ignore and undervalue what's truly ours.
And the person who stands by us steadfastly, becomes just that, the stand by.
We'll always hanker after the unavailable ordinary who assumes mythical proportions and significance.
Rhett Butler and Melanie Wilkes both  achieve their halos on martyrdom.
Sadly whilst Melanie is alive, and well worth taking a second look at, she is most conveniently hoisted up on a pedestal for due diligence homage to some distant deity. 
The ebullient Butler whistling up a storm of flirtation all around his beloved Scarlett is treated much like a buzzing mosquito swatted most energetically by an oblivious Ms O'Hara.
One has to literally die to get her man's attention.
And the other has to get all aloof impervious inscrutable and totally inaccessible to be coveted.
We want the drama. We crave tragedy. 
Anyday. We will trade comfort and warmth and  rush off on our fools' missions to win the hearts already spoken for or dig up one from the grave.
Why? Because We need to feel Special.
Not make someone feel special.
We need to feel unique.
Perhaps it's the man in the mirror we are finally in love with.
When we grow up we put away the mirror or it shatters and along with it our interfering egos.
And then we learn love.

Ten Feet Deep

Don't be soft
Don't take it to heart
Don't wear your heart on your sleeve
Just dig a hole ten feet deep
Bury it in and let it sleep.

Dont waste those precious tears
Don't ever let your face show fear.
walk  tall and proud and strong
Swaggering like your shadow's
So long.

But midway at midday
The sun will burn your pate
And if alas, you wilt then creeping home
Ever so quietly lick those wounds
Apply band aids, kool aids, retail  therapy or massages
And persuade yourself that such slight hurts might fade.

But make no mistake
Offering free confidences
In lieu of crocodile condolences.

Talk is cheap
And if you confide in "friends"
You may find out later
You have to weep
When sorrow bounces off
Unfeeling dead ends.

Your soul
Is  a spongy vacuuming hole
A big black drain hole
A light pulling sink hole
A bluffing killer's wink hole.n

To entrust your sorrow
To another
Makes it's a feast
An orgy of agony
A vicarious suffering
voyeuristic moaning.
Keep your sorrows
Like you keep your money.

And deep in the darkness
Of our own
stonewalled dead ends
Yesterday's sorrow
Starts to make sense
Assimilates meaning
regurgitates weakness
And from back door exits
Of black hole despair
Finds itself a new universe
Where laws are made to bend.

When we're ready
We will be able and willing
Majestic creators
Our own universe
Of choices.

And no one will ever
Shame us
For wearing
Our hearts on our faces
Because the best part of
This bodily temple of life
Lived in hope of love
Should bear triumphant  indeed
Such lucent grace.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

I Would

I Would.

It never comes back
The pure moment
Of earnest belief
The feeling
That nothing needs change
To render the moment
More perfect
Than it is.

I take it in my stride
In these trying dying days
Of wading downstream
Shaking the cloggy mud off
Imprisoned heels
For journeys need completion.

If I were to get younger
And not older
Then I would fling off
The youthful inhibitors
Fright pride and ego
I would reject
Both options
Flight or fight
I would choose
Love every time
With joy and accept
pain as a true
friend and teacher.
I would.

I would hold your hands easy
In the softest sinews
Of my heart
And let silence speak
Stormy stories songs of
Passion sorrow and redemption.

I wouldn't mock and jeer
Myself for choosing a morsel of
humble hope over allures of
Vanity fair, and empty
Crumbs of dead dreams.

Opportunities are angels
Offering assistance
And lending broad wings
Soaring on
Winds of change.

I would be peaceful
A prayer of perfect gratitude
For being in an interesting life
But not the picture perfect one.

I would heap marshmallow pillows
Under my head
And dream harmless candy floss dreams.

Of  my love's leonine mane in submissive bow
Hus puppy dog eyes spilling  topaz laughter
Warnings  in warm disarming silence
"Never take me seriously!"

And so heedful would I be
At curtains we would part
Graceful departures of the heart
No grand passion merits
Perpetual rotting, lifelong
Penance for unrequited
Love.

Carpe diem, My diadem,
Crazy pastiche of gems
Some paste and others
Brilliant diamonds freely given.

I would be softer gentler easier
On you, me, us...
The shrill cacophonous world
And should you turn cartwheels
For my attention
I'd shower you with
Hershey kisses
dreamy adulatory indulgence!

Life is the art of basking
In the sunshine of
A perfect dream
On a sunny beach
Where sunset unfolds red silk bolts of passion on the far horrizon on the right
And melts thick gold honey of warm sunrise on the left.

We must be completed.
If for only a day,
Let us still be eager
Flowers of tenderness
Against tough pebbles
Kissing gritty sands
and puckered sea shells
Solicitous seasonal adoration.

Rocking in my heart
Gentle as lullaby
Memories sift snatches
Of magic
Magic sieve moments
That take pride of place
And overthrow all notions
Of either endings
Or defeat.

The body of resilient silence
Cradles my bed
I'm landlocked and have
Lost my address
But you still serenade me
From beyond ice valleys and rifts
Of Titanic graves.

I'm a dream in slow motion
Flipping through distress
My axis of rotation tilted
Hearing strangest music
Like comforting dreams
Waves washing shores
If sanity were no more
I would've been dipping
Bowling over the horrizon
Into worlds of past
Absolution.

If Hades embraced me
I would still take my chance
Life is not of Heaven
Or of hell...

Ever Dipping at the trough
Again riding the crest of waves
And surfing eternally level
With the edge
Drowning all expectations
of static surfaces.

The comfort is
Not in knowing
But in the never knowing.

The knowledge
that there is far more
Beyond this present beachfront,
Of beauty and wonder.

That should a world
Of waves submerge us
Perchance a new Atlantis
May appear.

Thus I am comforted
And crave no more
For the return I crave
Is fated in my helical
Journeys through every
Cell and molecules and atom
Of my life, my being,
and the sherical celestial patterns
and pathways of stellar dust I've trodden
To view and comprehend
All I am comprised of.

The journey once completed
Truly begins.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

For Susan

Susan E Birch

For Susan

My heart's smiling just about now
Scrawling your name onscreen
Never met you can't even picture you
I confess I have rarely been
To your page or wall or profile
Call it what you will
Social media is funny town
Because I adore you still.

Kindness of course and a kindred soul
An attractive personality pure and whole
Always gentle but ready for fun
Susan dear friend You're someone

I'm truly grateful to come across
Because not knowing your kind
Would've been a loss

Smart capable very witty
But that's not why I sing your ditty
Easy to befriend
Honest free and open
Quintessentially nice
You dear beautiful poetess
Are indeed a prize.

Do forgive this childish rhyme
I promise! I'll try and do better next time!

Live to Tell

If you live to tell your tale
Will you
Let the scars show?
Will you
Let the pain and hurt
All of the people from
the unleavened past
Not so kind or good to you
Will you let them go
At last?

Or recite the litany of woes
And invoke the endless times
They committed thoughtless spiteful cruel crimes
Against them will you raise the flag
Black and barren, horrid corrosion's rag?

Or can you maybe
Forgive,
To forget the pain?
Perhaps you might not
Extract revenge
But simply learn
To live again?
Only because
You said goodbye,
Goodbye and god bless
I will not die!

Just because you cursed me
Ignored my muted cry,
Look again!, look well,
Because of pain
I am hammered from fiend fires of hell
And fine beaten into gold
Through stress by strain.

And now am I a sheet of music plain
Elemental
A veil of endurance
Into horrizons endless
Beyond your timid ken.

Still I live and sing
In still depths
of bottomless pools of pity,
And drink deep from
Crystal fountains of ethereal
Clarity
And inhale purity from pyrrhic
Sacrifices
Willingly made and bravely paid.

I am sacred and divine
My heart lit up with dreams
Devotional bliss in gallant stream
Flowing through in a gush of stubborn hope
I am
Neither blasphemy nor infamy
Neither heretic nor haggard witch
But the pale reflection of sun that  gropes out to reach
Stillest deadwaters of murky ditch.
I reflect the Seeker
One who sends out such
Splendor of Light to shine
All Nature proclaims
A friend of mine.
So loving a gift,
Is light and hope
None may disown
Its certitude.

If my life could be a tale
That you choose to read
Hold my scribbling hand
Let me lead
But let deepest love for you
my fellow beings
And gratitude and joy be guide
To the song I sing.

For hate dies lonely
And love lives
Marble monumental glorious song
That sanctifies both beloved
And he who gives.

(c)  Amrita Valan 2016