If religion is your language, I'm willing to talk it.
Only you have to respect, I speak other tongues too.
If faith is your watchword, I glory in your vision
But mystical friend, please realize
My soul might have another mission.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
This poem's for two friends, mentors and fellow poets, different in their writes, but imbued with courage luminosity and magnificence.
Serkan Engin Ajit Sripad Rao Nalkur.
Brittle and brilliant and brave
Blaze in brilliance always
May nothingness above you bow
At your sainted steadfast vow.
Glide with wings of power
above the cloistered bowers
and abstract ivory towers.
Always always arise
tear the ramparts of lies.
What you see
Is from heights above
And you dream of a
Brave new world,
Awash in the
Glory of Love.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Green the color of life
Green are Greek islands
by cobalt sea sides...
Green is fennel and cardamom spice
delicate lacy fronds of ferns aligned
Forests shower wistful green sighs
my heart grows green buds
Blossoming fecund light.
I wear pink and purple with finesse
And go out jovially,
Garbed in its heady shades.
But
Within my heart
Sprout inner eyes
throbbing green green green!
All else is lies.
Green alone...
aloe Vera or
Emeralds...
Curious oceanic ice.
Green,
What's your blue yellow meltdown
Doing to me?
I see green eyes floating
In white clouds
Jasper studded snow
I see this green earth's
Paradise
Carpet river's aquamarine flow.
In cold lake havens,
Dark green octopus waters
delight my October soul
Marsh moss and lichen
Rich symbiotic stores.
Green mosaic streaks
On cool marble floors
Pellucid joys
Penetrate my core.
My pewter soul
My copper turns green
when you oxidize me
with your flames of sin.
Green your beloved skin
in velveteen shade of onyx leaves
In cool Amethyst glade
And green malachite
Your relentless eyes
Evergreen our souls
And Jaded green
Our lies.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Up the ladder
Down the ladder
Fay and steeped in
Conflicting content
Mindless minutes
Ticking to glory
foggy notions
rise unwary.
I'm unplugged now
Off the ladder
Chasing butterflies
In the park
Creating some mind space
Some much needed emptiness
For grace to enter
offer solace.
I like you
Toothless baby
I like your trusting smile
What do you think, huh?
Bogged down big people
We lack style.
Give me a beat baby
I want to sing with you
your sweet gibberish
Is what appeals
Heart melting it
Is,
And time to time
It's all I need.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
When new to fb in 2010, was delighted to see all my scattered friends offered on the same social platter, with pictures and videos to boot!
Mad and frenzied friends requesting followed till I had nabbed each long lost person, who ever had had a walking role in my uneventful life!
Though I wonder now how many of these "persons" I eventually connected with on a personal basis, and how many remained exactly what most fb friends are designed to remain, "personae", may I add dramatic personae?; 😉
Coz all you ever see are the cool things or the glam stuff or the hint of a sob story inviting the advice of a hundred agony aunts.
I quite understand this.
The reverse phenomena is a perverse desire to inflict one's acquaintances with mundane details only. Items had for breakfast, that breathtaking walk to the bathroom, and the menu plan for lunch.
That's nice if you're a foodie which I am, so cool with that.(barring the bathroom bit).
In 2013 I rediscover poetry after a 17 year hiatus! And make some really exciting distant connections with diverse talented poets all over the world.
Now starts a second phase of frenzied poet collecting.
Someone I won't name messages me good advice regarding putting copyright on my poetry.
Advice taken I receive a request and accept. This person goes through my friends list and informs me i have 80 odd poets in my collection! ( Early 2015...by now it's crossed hundred probably!)
I'm left gaping at this end, at the audacity. Person was finally blocked after he accused me of ingratitude for accepting medical advice for a toothache, yet failing to keep in touch thereafter.
Well I used to raid my hubby's medical cabinet for painkillers when that dreadful wisdom tooth ached, and if someone knows the names of a few painkillers, I'm eternally grateful, but that's no reasonable basis for keeping in regular touch. Or being called ungrateful.
Rant done with, this year I'm become far more circumspect.
Two reasons. I can keep accepting requests.
Or I could try to be nice to the friends I have.
Deleted loads in December and exited FB for few months.
Returned in April to find 50 odd requests waiting.
Sadly not one has ever bothered to read my poems, or the poetry of my friends or written any. Or simply because one mutual friend has accepted them, they felt free to ransack their newly acquired friend's list of friends and sent out "fresh" 😉 requests!
Talk about a Ponzi scheme!
Barring of course a handful of well meaning erudite souls who I have frequented on common friends discussion threads. Nothing but respect for them.
But now I'm a FB pro not an ingenue! Plus I am far too supremely content with my current culled down list.
And expansion isn't my game plan anymore.
Finally my dull brain has caught onto the fact that, however many friends and poets you collect, someone else will Always have collected More.
And yes, I most contrarily reserve the right to request where I haven't a single solitary mutual friend! If I like the mind that wields the pen.
That's about it. Capping the candour with a rueful smile.
And some tea for this terrible insomniac. I have an aunty somewhere in America who loves me to death, Who I "request", ☺ 'Please dont scold!"
Lots of loving hugs to the very real caring friends and soulful connections i have made on Facebook and hearty pokes to the enthusiastic pokers.
And my very best to the wunderkind of FB, the super adorable goofballs. They're the wise.
They're the Magi! 😋
The frail flower upon its stalk,
The wave, wild against a rock,
the sun as it dips anew
Baptized by an endless blue
Rapt oceanic lore revivified
In lovely splendorous hue
Spellbinding tales hidden stores
Treasuries veiled from view.
In transition reposes faith
Starlight the flickering gate
the passageway through space
Shrugging time's embrace
Wondrous pink gold froth
Soft sunrise has wrought
Foaming ocean's brew
Guards Atlantis from
Our view.
Experience has brought
Whatever ageless heart has sought
Leap of faiths with fear fraught
Caught in cold oceanic draughts.
Existence still has taught
Life's laws
Repeat this universe
reflection of its own
As the flesh delineates bone
And objects in the mirror are
Ever closer than they appear
See through faux parallax
The truth gapes its wonder
Through shining cracks.
Capturing the prism
Bending refraction
Through indices
I wonder why
Can't you see
The spoon won't bend
it's me?
The universe
Is my verse
Transience our
Mortal pass
Let fate be blind
And faith be master
The flower must
Fall to dust.
Trample gentle upon
Past regrets
This flowering
Shall forever last.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
My childhood has tall sunlit forests in it
Woods lovely with evergreen trees
Rallying willowy branches
Around my guarded spirit
Grounding me into still waters
With roots dark and deep.
And oh! the sunlight
forever frozen,
Creaming green tops
Of silent stately trees.
I am allowed such vision
Gracious blessings,
Yet if I look with
Too much longing,
For too long,
Or too dark too deep,
my gilded glade
My fairy woods,
Inside my golden head
Focuses
Ominously
Into parodies of
presence.
Misting
Around particular details
Not a fade out
But a wry dimming
And the woods turn
A shade darker...
Veiled bridesmaid
Of brilliant
Evil.
I ignore the omens
and dive in deeper faster
Through clenched brows
Pauper's fists of memories
That can't contain
themselves
Their luminous essence
stronger than
Mere reminiscence.
The woods halt
Darkness falls
the leaves shed
Flailing arms arrested
Barren green miasma
Curiously blackened
Lack lustre
Les miserables.
I mustn't venture
Beyond the boundaries
Of happiness,
Serenaded copses
Natural honeycomb serenity...
To pick out the borders
The borderline fringes
Let the devil take them,
Those weedy weevils
Of inconsequential details.
I accept that
Access allowed
Is not unlimited
Though the scope
is infinite.
Infinite Good
Indeterminate woods
Beyond sensual reckoning
Open eternally,
infinitesimally
Beckoning.
This spirit must attain readiness
the soil of suffering
Must be watered
the soul steadied
Devoid of lust
Into sufficiency
Before heading
Steadfast towards
Forever
new beginnings.
Go where the sunlight
Never ceases
where only darkness freezes.
Praise be.
Leaves living
Like light
Lilting peace.
Go forever into glory
Inherent,
Outermost incredulous
Indefinable space,
Annexed and conquered
Inside...
Ever so
May you be.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
A friend of a friend of mine says this on a thread discussing women shaking off the shackles of beauty through photography.
"My guess is men are insecure about money and women are insecure about the body. In other words, wealth is power for.men and physical perfection is power for women. Power leading to status in society of course."
And I went into lengthy discourse just to prove that's no way to think, but it was futile.
I realize that on reflection, this is a comfortable adage people have been fed and bought into it wholesale. Like Beauty being a woman's capital an odious old Bengali saying. Or A BEAUTIFUL face has Universal victory.
My question to this gentleman should have been, "Is This what you want to teach your daughter?"
If physical perfection is the medium of exchange for obtaining power and status in society, then God help women and society.
Why laugh at Monica Lewinsky, when she is the logical product of this sort of thinking?
Another opinion of his was that a woman could attain a Barbie doll figure by working hard for it.
This is genetically untrue, and the "hard work" involved?
Dieting, slimming fads, obsessive exercise, perhaps leading to anorexia, bulimia and mental health problems.
Women be yourselves. Fat or slim be happy. And honestly losing weight for good health should be the priority, not good looks.
We don't need to Look Good at the cost of Feeling Bad about ourselves if we cannot measure up.
Feeling good should not have to be related to how we look. Remember how as children we came flying outdoors to play frisbee or French cricket dressed in Huckleberry Finn outfits, wet hair slicked back after bath? And we enjoyed just as much as the pretty girl in designer jeans did. And clothes, shoes, accessories and the perfect body or face were neither a barrier nor a passport to feeling good and making friends.
That's freedom and empowerment in society.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Fickle life
Relative span
Decades dog eared
Adorn the man
Red ant rose
Redeem thy day
you are the lifespan
Of a million ways.
Today's bud
Will be no more
ancient one
upon your deathbed
Lined and wrinkled,
done for
See the petalled core
Put down your feet
Kill a thousand lives
What dies
Is not even
A morsel of meat
Morality
Is it numbers
Or is it size?
Life is precious
Life the valued prize
After being recycled
Off with the old memories
A newborn sun shall rise.
The crows caw
At dawn
The doors of warmth and Light
Return
An ancient joke
Avid wisecrack
Thy funeral urn
The tabby Sphinx
Crosses your careful path
All your planning
Shall fall apart.
The cards are laid out
What a dead man's deal
Still we feast at the table
Of our final meal.
Fickle life
Relative span
Decades dog eared
Adorn the man.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Her tall angular frame
Hid hips soft with desire
agonized she trembled
Her parting lips betrayed her
She shook from radiant tip to toes
screaming,
Her networking nerves
Segued
A crescendo of redeeming.
Light was the night
A brilliant sparkling delight
the Rubicon revealed
The Madonna unveiled.
Soft lashes sighed relief
dark eyes were dawning
Brimming with flowers
What a song in her moaning.
Her moon petrified
Froze she in that moment of Joy
Then came Spring
The thawing of senses
Motherhood invoked,
The clandestine birth of
A hallowed boy.
The raw reprisal
The Way of the Rood
Foretold in cradle
But the world
Misunderstood.
Whatever's immaculate
Isn't in conception
Oh Hallowed one
why such
manmade deception?
Born of woman
Son of Man
God given grace
Forgiving us all
His Grace become.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Write me a poem please do
look see how i spread words
cast them up in the air for you
wish you had wings
That flutter like my heart
Rise like an angel
or dove
Catch a small grain or two..
Write me one poem.
Please do.
Life that's all I ask of you.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
For Ninja Josh
Baby you're the one
My sun my moon
My tears are fetched
But they won't run
Because baby
You're the one
Your smile shines
Dispels unkind lines
The treacherous cuts
Ingratitude hurts
But baby your eyes on mine
One on one
Can bring a trembling smile
sweet son of mine
God sent you because
Beautiful boy
You're the one.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Mushroom sprouts overnight from
Wet and mouldy shelf
All the others, were paper lined
And so had dried
But this one I lined with a
Flowery plastic sheet
The damp heat collected underneath
What amazed me was
how fast it grew
When I was doing the dishes
Last night, nothing in view,
But at dawn
Over my kitchen sink
freshly budded from the shelf above
A slender stalk gleamed deadly white
About my index finger's height
And spread it's poisonous hood or wreathed cap
One side serrated white
and the other, a ghastly black.
I told my husband
Should have left the cell videocamera running
Captured life in rapid motion budding and. growing
Called the kids showing off my prize
Proud as if i had grown it
The toadstool or mushroom
Got tired of me prancing and preening
Keeled over, again I didn't capture
It's sudden wilting.
Being afraid of the deadly stalk
I put on my gloves and tore it off
Why if I had taken a picture of it,
Would have bored you further to death
And not just
out of your wits! 😄
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
A small tan butterfly huddled besides my door
The rain and wind has perhaps driven it to
search for shelter
Tired, tiny and frozen without a flutter
A butterfly in a diastolic dream.
Smouldering silent symbolic beings
spirit guides their unspoken langue
A silken dance that cries
metamorphosize
Metamorphosize
If Reality's outmoded suit of clothes
a velvet gown worn out to a ball that
Will be no more,
If glass shatters and the slippery slope
Sends you shoeless, to soulful shores...
If life a similitude, of what's to come
Metaphor to point to us the symbolic door
To the gateway, a swift turn of the key become
An ear to the ground
Hear the hooves beat
Before the final horsemen arrive
Become,
Becoming all you can.
Till cocoon cannot hold such potency
And shreds shedding brilliant light
Beautiful surreal butterfly
Spread aether wings over soulful night.
There she clings a dappled creature
Tender to our sslightest touch
Fly! Fly shrieks unspoken,
High ever so high...
Before death turns
All dreams to dust
By and by.
Rise to scatter
Scatter the blue
Reaching out fulfill
Mad wanderlust
When mortal flesh so frail
fails, our soul
our souls' brave butterflies
Arise at last.
Ask not why!
Leap out to
Love and die.
Leap out of sonorous shells
Of supine skins
Casting skeins
spellbinding dreams
Leave, dull drab empty casts
To become the sky
Breathless deathless
To the last.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Cat Story
This morning I got stalked. I was preparing breakfast, walked into the living room for a moment and saw a sand and chocolate streaked tail disappearing behind the sofa.
I froze in fright, while my mind put two and two together and realized it's only a cat, and a small one at that.
Though hidden behind the sofa in my vivid imagination it had assumed fearsome proportions!
Vague thoughts of cancer or diphtheria caused by cat bites or was it rabbit bites, made their unwelcome appearance.
I hissed, "CAT, OUT."
Didnt work.."whoosh... hoosh" I tried next.
Why that particular sound should be interpreted as marching orders by the feline species I can't say.)
Cat stayed put.
I called loudly for additional assistance.
"Luke!, Josh! Come see, a cat ...CAT"
My lazy cat napping toddlers who had just had morning bed milk and were only clutching on to bed out of sheer perversity promptly leaped out all goggle eyed and woozy footed.
This made the cat creep out cautiously undulating in a sinuous cat walk.
It then pussy footed across my clean shining floor in wary wave like motion.
Right across the floor to under the sofa on the other side.
Which having tasseled draping on it, rendered McCavity into invisible mystery cat!
Lantern jawed and shaky hearted I ordered luke to get his red plastic cricket bat.
TAP TAP THUMP ! I was prospecting for some serious golden fur here as I tapped the bat all around the sofa...
Or perhaps detecting landmines in the catacombs of Iraq.
This cat was challenging me to only catch as catch can..
Slowly dragged the sofa to the middle of the floor.
Puss cattily showed its self, glassy hateur in gleaming eyes.
Somewhere deep down, the evictee evoked a sense of shame in me.
It was not much bigger than a kitten after all. Back in my childless and kittenish days I would've bent to stroke it, or left a saucer of milk on the stairs.
How ever that was then and this is now.
I am a hard and heartless mama these days.
I tapped the bat close to the cat's Sphinx like visage to announce: Illegal immigrant I deport you to....uh...Catalonia, Catskill mountains or wherever you cats may wish to stray...
The cat meowed reproachful meows at me turning every few steps to give me a baleful eyeful, as it sullenly slunk away.
Catatonic at its audacity I shooed my boys in and firmly closed the door on my four footed stalker.
However by evening our paths would cross again. In a cataclysmic event on my Richter scale.
Just back home with my boys from a jaunt in the park, sand in our eyes, cold wind in our hair, from an approaching thunderstorm..
I unlocked our door and as the kids went in the first fat drops of rain fell.
About to go in, I heard the dread sound.
Faintest preliminary meow.
Then multitudinous more meows....a cavalcade... a crescendo of meows.. meaning loaded torrent of plaintive meows.
Oh My, The Cat was in trouble.!
I promptly laid kittens....
Looked up to see cat trapped in a tight corner.
Having jumped somehow to the roof of the next house, and then slipped out through one of its windows, onto a narrow cornice cat found its entry point blocked .
Someone must have closed the window. And left the house unaware that there was a cat stuck outside.
Trapped on the ledge it was crowding the edge looking to clear the distance with a mighty leap onto the balcony above ours.
But not daring. It probably wouldn't die but left on the ledge for longer, the cat would certainly be wet and miserable.
The people next door didn't seem to be there. The house was dark and still.
It was a strangely built house. There was an immense gap between where the cat was stuck and the floor below.
No windows below the ledge, only a sheer wall.
Sighing for the second time that day I closed my door on the cat.
Then promptly started looking for a Wooden plank or a board, anything to bridge the gap between our balcony and the ledge upon which my hapless Tenzing was squatting against his will.
Could only find my mop stick and my laundry basket.
With an idea glimmering in my musty dusty brain I took the basket, told kids to stay put, and ran up the stairs to the floor above which was level with the ledge.
Cat gave me a lover 's serenade right then and there. Shivering in cold anticipation of the freezing rain that would follow the poor itsy bitsy four footer was grateful to just see me. Have to admit that swelled my ego, and Mother Teresa like spirit.
Was transformed. from "felinophobe to "felinophile".
I gripped the balcony railing with one hand and cupped the laundry basket firmly to the ledge with the other.
And braced myself for the impact of cat intelligently leaping into basket of would be Cat Messiah.
And then being ferried across by moi to own balcony.
Heart quaked with fearful what ifs!
What if the cat jumped in too boisterously and the basket slipped out of my hand?
It would be a three floors fall!
Or worse if upon impact banana fingered bundle of nerves tipped basket over! With catastrophic consequences for cat !
Up on the ledge is better my mind screamed...
I was a human basket case holding a basket for a crazy cat in a mess.
Then Tenzing who was dilly dallying testing, or rather surveying the waters, (the basket that is), peering in deeply, trying to judge its depth, decided he would not jump into what seemed to him a bottomless sky blue pit!
(My laundry basket being pale blue-white with filigree like designs)
I was now praying "Cat jump!...Jump in Cat!" over and over again like a mantra.
Cat mewed in despair then with deadly determination it trod upon the basket rim closest to the wall edge and prepared to leap like a tiger!
I gulped a bundle of nervous what-ifs again and with its animal instincts, it sensed my fear!
In a trice it cat footed back!
Upon the ledge again!
Rain had started falling steadily.
I was worried about my babies below alone now for a quarter of an hour .
I kept cajoling the cat to get into my basket.
Tenzing threw me a long drawn dreadful meow.
I had just turned my back in despair when I felt rather than saw it!.
While my rescuing skills were clearly non existent clearly I had hidden cheerleader potential.
Turning I was just in time to see the cat crouch, arch his body in a powerful leap and land softly noiselessly on my balcony !
He had not just cleared the gap but managed half an extra foot in desperation.
Hallelujah!
The brave kitten was now a proud confident cat!
I the cat maker rather like the king makers of yore ..though paving his initiation rites of passage had reduced me to a wreck .
My adventures with Tenzing hopefully over, I trudged back downstairs adoring cat firmly in tow brushing against my finicky feet.
Some kind soul had left it a bowl of milk at the foot of the stairs. Firmly ordering it to drink I closed my own door on the cat.
For the third and last time that day!
Thus finally ends my cat story!
All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014
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