11 POEMS BY DR KOSHY AV INCLUDING DETENTION CAMP - PUSHCART POETRY PRIZE NOMINEE SERIES 5 - WITH PHOTOS BY ANITA TRAVIS WHITE

Linked by the Spirit

Anita Travis White (Summerwind) – Photography 

A V Koshy - Poems

1. Face

I see your face through the mist.
It melts away like that of a ghost.
I want to reach out and touch its soft lines again
just once more before you fully fade away
but there is nothing there
and my tears fall on thin air
except for a few drops that scald my hand.

2. Holes

White holes punched in a concave blue-black background

A hammock of a moon to sleep on as my bed, bound

Free, to the sky, a red horizon; not an airman's warning -

The dark foreground; in the distance the black trees swarming.

3. Crescent

the moon, half- covered by the dark

the Dali/Bunuel eyeball slit by the knife
the moon, made of green or blue cheese
the moon is your left breast, pock-marked
the moon is your buttock, a water-melon's pitted skin
the moon is "bang a gong"
the moon is a wash- rinsed, hand-scoured, thought-scarred Hitkari Indian plate 
the moon is roti, chapatti, and choodappam
&
the moon is a fresh, steaming thattu dosha
the moon is, now i want to, oh f***!

 4. Detention Camp

This is what was left after the event
Storm clouds lour above in pathetic fallacy.
Outside the frame, the boots were patrolling
Crunching gravel, dragging guns across the ground
The sound like sharp nails across a chalkboard
A few minutes they had let us meet
We met at the fence and could not slip through
The watchful eyes of dogs and chained horses
Despite the huge gaps. It was Dachau, it is Gaza.
It was Siberia and any other such hellhole.
Against all odds I made love to you there
standing up, on either side of that fence
and then we were mowed down.
Souls that fled to the skies while the crowds gathered
below and the tornado gathered force up above
in an imitation of the cry of the earth
longing for the day of justice or its end
when the sons and daughters of God would be sent
or fire would destroy the earth once again.

5. Bled

Bled of the colours of blue, red and white
to foreground and background
Orion, the hunter
spread on a ground
of two dimensions
is now a cluster of white dots on a black blanket
on a level with my eyes
and I remember
three stars
a deer, a scorpion
and the other myths
The sliver of a silver hammock moon is gone
the black grass, the blacker swarm of trees
the red dawn
I feel suddenly I am standing in the cold breeze
under that paper sky, lone in the vast
shivering and hugging my bare shoulder-bones
and wishing, Orion; that you would warm me out of my fear
of the Nephilim waiting to be born. I wish you were down here.
Orion.

6. Haiku

The giant wash calls.
Around, the flatland. Unmossed.
The raised flagpole strikes.

 7. Black

 Dark body

Those ghoul-like hands
Fingers hair point
Behind, Discworld whorls
Neon scratches lit
Purple violet blue white curved streaks
Tunneling arch to our unknown world, pact
I delude
In the delusion
You enjoy, deluded.
With that eerie-wondrous door
No wonder. We make entries
With no holds barred, almost
While the azimuth spins. (Companion poems to Anita Travis White's image given above.) 

8. Haiku

From the forest floor

Passionately upward
Love sweeps your sky

9

WE came from a galaxy

where a planet teeming with life
had two suns.
I was one, bright.
You were the other, full of light.
Here
I remain in fatal eclipse, unseen
and you, you shine
as if you're the only
one
Your dark side faces me
that I light up gladly.
It is
as before
ever beautiful.
The next planet
may reverse our roles.
We measure out infinite love now
undying, in cosmic time.

10

They heard of it in different places
that his spirit had left its body
and jotted down their memoirs
which they gave to his biographer
along with whatever else they had
of memories, dreams and some fibs
for he had been famous in some circles -
underground, cult and others
She, trying to piece it into one
and breathe into it flesh and blood
began to go slowly mad
at the twelve gospel shards in her hand
which she read again and again
When she could no longer take it
she summoned his spirit up in a seance
twelve voices answered her in her trance
coming as if from the master of high romance
She made herself do automatic writing
and thrilled at being made love to by his ghost
the ghost of a man in whom everything had warped
into different times, places and imagination
till he could no longer distinguish between
reality, dreams, imagination and lies
and those he spoke to couldn't either
thinking of him, separate any of these strands
or see about themselves how they stood
with him, because he spread a fog over them
Though lost in it, like him, they found he entranced!

11. Shahjahan

Look out of the window, imprisoned
at that cold, white, beautiful
surface - dome, doomed -
and know that for a monument to love
to live and breathe forever
you have to suffer
to pay destiny back for the slaves who laboured
to build it up for her while you, in denial
caroused and daily with your harem cavorted
Pray daily five times a day
now. Sit and stare dry-eyed
blank of mind, unable to go anywhere.

Love cost/s (you) a lot, Shahjahan.

Images all rights reserved by  Anita Travis White 2013, Words copyright Koshy A.V