Arpil 30th TSL Napowrimo Prompt by Uiba Mangang Weave your name and acrostics

 April 30th Prompt last one by

Uiba Mangang

where you have to weave your name into the first line and have an acrostic at either sides of the lines made of the first letters of your name. I have made the acrostic go down in the beginning of the lines and in reverse at the end just for fun.

Koshy, how's the mOSH pit, KoshY?

OSHo does not have anY answers. oH!

See how the feet leave marks in the wet leaveS

Have the birds gone south and do you still have your mojO?

Your obsessions overthrow and grow from acorn to oaK

TSL Prompt April 29th based on Sufjan Stevens latest instrumental album in five parts.

 TSL Prompt April 29th based on Sufjan Stevens latest instrumental album in five parts.

Convocations

There have been no convocations in my life so far.

But once I went for one for my daughter

The photographs remain

Of her convocation

In Bangalore, a school

I had barged in to for admission

And they had given my daughters shelter

A miracle

At a time when I had just shifted there for my son

Who had been diagnosed with autism

Angels littered my way and ended in that

convocation. There must be something to

This quaint tradition

Here Stevens calls together "a

Large number of people

For an assembly" that is not formal

Unlike the degree conferring one

To listen to his music.

Sonic scapes accompanied by swirls of psychedelic images

My daughter wore a white sari.

Stevens is calling us to an epic

As is this poem

Mini.

Meditations.

An album of 49 tracks

Of which the first ten are meditations

What does he meditate on?

He mediates on death

Father's, mother's, O Lowell O Carrie, his

by association, mine

and everyone's

maybe even God's

Let us stretch our imagination

It is about meditation

It is meditation

It is meditation on meditation

It is mediation

Lamentations

We lament

death

grieve parting

long for reunion

feel sad at absence

Sorrow over memories

Nothing brings back the dead

Except moments

Unexpected

The dead who live in us

The living who die is us

Sufjan's mother and father

My sister, father, mother, mother in law, sister in law's son

Who else died

I am familiar with death

This music creeps by me upon the waters

And we sit still by the rivers of Babylon

To weep

Waiting for exile from life to end

Waiting for our mouths to be filled with never known laughter

Revelations

I have had revelations galore

It tired me

If only I had been able to make them into

music

and not poems

Sufjan

it might have produced

a better result.

Poetry makes nothing happen

does not drive away

delay or make death depart

Revelations, it seems, are not enough.

The story does not end there.

Celebrations

After sorrow there must be a time of joy

After rain, sunshine

To cliche it

After poetry, prose

When you take stock of loved ones' lives

And come to terms with their departure

I am writing this not only for myself but my friends who are grieving

I am writing this bittersweet

I am writing this with the pain(t)brushes of autumn

I am writing this with hot tears of happiness

I am celebrating oxymorons

Love and death cuddle in my poems in music

No one hears

I am 'lost' in the celebration

I wonder if anyone will ever read these lines

Or listen to the music of the spheres in Sufjan

When nothing matters anymore except to go on

For the sake of loved ones

I celebrate

by lighting up black candles

to give light

for my loved ones

one step at a time

Incantations (One less and unreleased)

Njaan Malayalathil ezhuthaarilla

I never write in Malayalam

But if we come to incantations

I would say

Kaka/Crow

Rathri/Night

Iruttu/Dark

Velicham/Light

Swapnam/Dream

Nishabdatha/Silence

Deivam/God

Maranam/Death

Jeevitham/Life

Raudram/Blood-Red-Anger/Destruction

Madhuram/Sweetness

Kalkandam/Rock sugar?

The poem trails away into chants somnolent

Sound(e)scape

The poem

Ends

With a(n) manthram/incantation.

29th April's Prompt

Convocations- Dr.

Ampat Koshy

Convocations in five parts divided into ‘Meditations’, ‘Lamentations’, ‘Revelations’, ‘Celebrations’ and ‘Incantations’

based on Sufjan Stevens latest album. Write one or 5 poems using the 5 words in it

Be inspired by Sufjan Steven's album

https://youtu.be/Ivpq4VDFC1I

Convocations, the new instrumental album from Sufjan Stevens, moves like a two-and-a-half-hour electronic/ambient mass for our present age of anxiety and dread; its 49 tracks work through the stages of grief and gladness with emotional mood music that is dreamy, dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, and calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through isolation, uncertainty, and loss. Its five sonic cycles (Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations, and Incantations) replicate different stages of mourning, healing and catharsis, working both to soothe our unease while savoring a renewed sense of awe and wonder for being alive in these unprecedented times. Stevens initiated Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about death, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. That said, this is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain and separation, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime. It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it. ©2021 AKR P.O. BOX 1282 LANDER, WY 82520 USA ALL MUSIC PERFORMED, RECORDED, MIXED AND PRODUCED BY SUFJAN STEVENS © 2021 SUFJAN STEVENS MUSIC/ASCAP

Meditations live now. Lamentations live now. Revelations live now. Celebrations: April 29th Incantations: May 6th

TSL Prompt Translation from any language to any language April 28th

 TSL's Napowrimo Translation Prompt given by Gauri Dixit Take 3

I am translating

Sunita Singh

's poem

I take off my shoes and walk in

The gargantuan peepul scowls

its brown serpents stretching to the floor

as I move away

its hissing leaves shake in anger

Inside -

the red verandah floor

seems like alta on my soles

or blood

I enter the small room

metallic eyes stare at me

digging deep -

a hole bleeds

My translation:

Shoesooriyittu njaan akatheyku nadakunnu

Bheemamaya bodhi bhibhatsamaya mukham kaattunnu

athinte bhoomiyude niramulla paambukal nilam thodunnathu vare neelunnu

njaan maari pokumbol

athinte elakal pambukale poley irekkunnu

Akathu

chuvanna verandayude chuvappu

alta pole ente paadangalil padarunnu

rakhtham poley

Njaan aa cherumuriyil kayarunnu

lohyathulyamaya kannukal enne thurichu nokkunnu

entho ennil ninnu kuzhichedukkaan shremikunnathupole

oru kuzhiyil ninnu chora olikunnu

Take 2 of TSL's Napowrimo Prompt of translation April 28th

I translate

Gauri Dixit

's poem into Malayalam

Here is her poem:

You took away my clothes

And the shame that was caught in their threads

There is nothing

Do you realize

There is absolutely nothing

That you have on me now

There is nothing on me

That I owe you or this world

You took away everything

And left me a free bird

I need no rings

I need no wings

The sky is in me

So is the sea

Here is my translation:

Ningal ente vastrangale eduthumaatti

avayude noollukalil pettirunna lajjayum

ini onnum

ningal manasillakunnundo

ini yathonnum

entemel ningalkilla

Entemel ningalko

Ee lokathino

oru kadavum ini parayan illa

Ellaam eduthu kalanju

Enne our swathanthramaya pakshiyaaki vittu

Enikku mothirangal aavishyamilla

Chirukukal aavishyamilla

Aakasham enillaanu

Sagaravum

TSL Prompt Translation from any language to any language given by Gauri Dixit ( Here is mine)

 TSL Napowrimo Translation from any language to any language for April 28th 1 First Take

Written by Reena Prasad and translated into Malayalam by me (a work in progress). Thanks

Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan

for the help. And Pankajam Kottarath and Ra Sh.

Guilt by Reena Prasad

Guilt over undone things

hangs by a thread

swaying in the fan's summery breath

threatening to fall on, to crush, to maim

the floating joys of idle dreams

lolling on a straw mat beneath

കുറ്റബോധം (my translation - version 1)

ചെയ്ത് തീർക്കാത്ത കാര്യങ്ങളെ ഓർത്ത്

കുറ്റബോധം

ഒരു നൂലിൽ തൂങ്ങുന്ന

ഫാനിൻ്റെ വേനൽ ശ്വാസത്തിൽ

താഴത്തേ വൈക്കോൽ പായുടെ

നിഷ്ക്രിയമായ സ്വപനങ്ങളുടെ

നീന്തുന്ന സന്തോഷങ്ങളിൽ

വീണു

അവയെ ഉപദ്രവിച്ച് തകർക്കാൻ

ഭീഷണിപ്പെടുത്തുന്നു

kutta bodham (transliteration - version 2)

aadunna faninte venal shwasathil (choodunishwasathil)

otta noolil thoongi

tharayile vaikol paayude

nishkriyamaya swapnangalude mugalil

melle ozhukunna santoshangalil veenu

avaye thakarthu tharippanamakaan

cheyyatha karyangalde

kutta bodham

bheeshaniyidunnu

Copyright to respective poets

27th April, TSL's Napowrimo, Prompt by Nidhi Popli, poem by me

Prompt Name : Maybe they had their reasons-

Think of something someone did to you that you didn't understand at that time. Write a poem justifying their reasons, as you understand them now, with the benefit of hindsight

Nidhi Popli

We used to sit on those steps

moss-covered

or on the stone

ledge

It might have been granite

Memory is sepia

even in the mind

We would look at each other

Talk

Smile

Say nothing

Listen

Why did you put a circle around yourself

so that I never leaned over and touched you

or kissed you

with that story that was probably

an invitation, and not a fobbing off?

Or was it just the opposite?

Or just a story showing you trusted me enough

to tell me your secrets?

Whatever, the time went by

&

I am left with a petty regret

That I was too nice a guy

not wild enough to give a kiss a try

And you; too ordinary, staid,

and middle-class a town girl

only hung out in the sun to dry.

Prose poem written by me based on Kashiana Singh's TSL's Napowrimo Prompt A Letter to my Future Self

 

Kashiana Singh

's prompt for TSL for Napowrimo on writing a letter to oneself in the future as to what one would say if one did write that.

Hi old man,

I came back at a time when things were bad in the country. You remember? There was covid here, covid there, covid, covid everywhere and no jobs or lost ones and salaries halved and people struggling, ill or dying, ruined by half-baked rulers, not a drop of solace for anyone, anywhere. The poor suffered more and more of the middle class became poor but I wanted to see things through eyes that were no longer political. I heard people mourning, it was like the wind through vast tracts of once fertile land full of sheaves of paddy now desolate and barren, sighing, soughing, and I watched silently, avoiding adverbs as that was the way to go about describing what was happening.

I read the Bible and even if I did not the apocalyptic sections came back and spoke to me more than any other, haunting my memory, as a good metaphor for what was happening. But I was not ready to give in to the waves of despair all around, I was ever a fighter so one fight more, one more fight, again starting all over with nothing or whatever I had already made from nothing, with the help of God and whoever else had helped me along the way sent by him for which I was grateful. No man is an island.

I started all over again. It can be tough in a land with a wife, three kids, one having autism, two girls, where no one wants you as you are out of sync, you don't belong anymore but have to work your way back to belonging with new parameters and too old to do it in but I was used to it as long back I had penetrated to the core of life that anyway no one mattered to anyone and when you died you died alone, and it was a metaphysical reality. I could start over and over again a dozen times as I had already done and not worry as I was in the ground of being where it was all quicksand.

There were two kinds of people, the remembered and the forgotten, just as there was the rich and the poor, and I had always tried my best to live in such a way as to be forgotten, amused by the ones who tried to be remembered who did not seem to know that no one who became remembered became so as they wanted to but because they were meant to. Be remembered. I did not long for immortality, in other words. If I was meant to be immortal it would come to me on its own and not the other way around, I did not have to go searching for it.

So here we are, old man, the me who started all over again, something I kept doing, and the you I became. It would be wonderful to say that I made no mistakes or that it was horrible as I made only mistakes but the truth is however many times you start over nothing changes as you are more or less the same you, you make the same old predictable mistakes and do the same old brilliant things in a new guise that pan out well for you and meanwhile life changes around you and you adjust to it, the children having grown up and various other things that change.

Most of all the masterpieces that would not or did get written. Remember them? Given a second chance would I do it all different? Never. It was not perfect but it was not all bad. It was me through and through and it was all I had, it was all that mattered and I was happy with that. Do I wish we had previous lives or future lives, No, all rubbish. Just one is enough and you need to try to live it well. This one was good enough, is good enough, will be, sitting here and talking to you as your past, my future, in some unspecified scape waiting for our wife to come in or our son or daughters or someone else or revisit our shared memories and the new ones we are making even this instant like this moment. What more does one need or want? Nothing.

April 25th TSL Napowrimo Prompt by Asha G Kumar and the poem written by me

 TSL prompt for April 25th given by Asha G Kumar

Past, present, future.

A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu or Elastic time.

1.Past

Memories that are

drowning; water

The mirage was land

No oasis, no island in the stream:

My sad story-endings.

2. Present

It does not exist

she said,

the present

Her legs opening and shutting

I remembered

Twain

A girl opens her legs to catch a ball thrown at her

As she wears a...

well, sari in this case...

A boy claps his legs shut

to not let it drop

Awareness in, of the present, as Alan Watts said

was the only thing there was or is

Or no present, as she confidently asserted?

Who was right...

she or me?

It was never solved

The question has never been solved

It IS unsolved

Present continuous, still tense.

3. THE FUTURE

We always misunderstood each other

Or I did

Should I get back in touch?

After such rudeness (mine to her), what forgiveness?

Did she deserve it?

There is no future

There was no present

according to her

And

Maybe

there was no past, either

Only an illusion

a trick of the memory

a shadow that falls across the light

in rogue moments

speaking as if it had existed

and extends into the present

a dream child of a future: that

was, is, and will be

world without end

Amen

Don Yorty and An article

 https://vimeo.com/539742586

https://donyorty.com/2021/04/24/ampat-koshy-reads-my-favourite-chair-and-why-i-like-it/?fbclid=IwAR1Xlo_BU-8MWbB6-BnLrlY6vRH5z58c8dggOrn1nw80zFt8ZNFa_7EyssY

Erasure Poem from Margaret Atwood's Half Handed Mary prompt given by Gauri Dixit in TSL's Napowrimo April 24

 THE VENTILATOR

7pm

Help me down? You don't dare.

I might rub off on you,

like soot or gossip. Birds

of a feather burn together,

though as a rule ravens are singular.

In a gathering like this one

the safe place is the background,

pretending You can't dance,

the safe stance pointing a finger.

I understand. You can't spare

anything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawl

against the cold,

a good word. Lord

knows there isn't much

to go around. You need it all.

12 midnight

My throat is taut against the rope

choking off words and air;

I'm reduced to knotted muscle.

Blood bulges in my skull,

my clenched teeth hold it in;

I bite down on despair

Death sits on my shoulder like a crow

waiting for my squeezed beet

of a heart to burst

so he can eat my eyes

or like a judge

muttering about sluts and punishment

and licking his lips

or the crowd

their own evil turned inside out like a glove,

and me wearing it.

or like a dark angel

whispering to me to be easy

on myself. To breathe out finally.

Trust me, he says, caressing

me. Why suffer?

A temptation, to sink down

into these definitions.

To become a martyr in reverse,

or food, or trash.

To give up my own words for myself,

my own refusals.

To give up knowing.

To give up pain.

To let go.

3am

wind seethes in the leaves around

me the tree exude night

birds night birds yell inside

my ears like stabbed hearts my heart

stutters in my fluttering cloth

body I dangle with strength

going out of me the wind seethes

in my body tattering

the words I clench

my fists hold No

talisman or silver disc my lungs

flail as if drowning I call

on you as witness I did

no crime I was born I have borne I

bear I will be born this is

a crime I will not

acknowledge leaves and wind

hold onto me

I will not give in