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Monday, May 31, 2021

Interview with Aprilia Zank in WEB J OPA (as Poet of the Month)

 

Thanks to Nilovro Nil Shuvro - the editor, for this opportunity. (https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com/2021/06/ampat-varghese-koshy-talking-with.html)

APRILIA ZANK: According to the American poet Robert Frost, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Can, in your opinion, all thoughts be 'translated' into words?

AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I was a very logos-centered or word-oriented person till my son came along who has autism. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God kind of artist, very literature-based. Reading and writing was the big thing. But after looking at how he related to the world which is more in terms of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell rather than the three r’s and imagining his inscape and seeing his kind of operative mode and creativity and artistry text has become for me only a part of a larger picture to be honest and, though still my favorite part of it, due to my background in the Word, no longer any more important than other features like sound. To put it in a nutshell thoughts are to me, predated by experiences that are probably more holistically sensory, and expressing them through multimedia and hypermedia has become increasingly important for me and the present world. The growth of the internet too has ensured this as we now think more in terms of sound bytes, videos, memes, gifs, emojis, etc;, with the language being only a part of the whole. So, to sum up, Frost, no, things have changed.
APRILIA ZANK: The English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote: “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” Can you explain how poetry unveils the hidden beauty of the world?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: This goes back to Coleridge wanting to make the strange familiar and Wordsworth wanting to make the familiar strange, in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and vice versa, with both wanting to do both to signal the shift to Romanticism, but Shelley is also talking of something more, about not only beauty but truth, according to me, that for most men these things are hidden and poets help us to see them clearly, for the first time or as if for the first time. When we describe the beauty of a woman we love we reveal her beauty that is inner and hidden to the reader for example when we are poets in our poems. Same with the truth, that brings about a development in the awareness of people to increase their social conscience about causes by putting before them truths they may not have been aware of before in an aesthetically fitting way. Shelley’s own poems on Manchester and revolutionary ones and anarchy, and his Ode to the Skylark and his Ozymandias are examples that reveal to us both hidden beauties and truths and make the familiar strange and the strange unfamiliar. (I should have mentioned Cenci too, maybe)
APRILIA ZANK: The American poet of English origin W. H. Auden was convinced that, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” Do you think that poetic language should always be refined and cultivated, or may it also be rough and raw if necessary?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: A poet is in love with language and for him every word and nuance of it matters. Every poet knows instinctively and intuitively that no word is bad in itself but it is thinking that makes it so, to misquote Shakespeare. A poet can use refined, civilized and cultured language where it fits and rough and raw or ready language where that fits. In Sanskrit aesthetics, there is a word that can be translated as appropriateness which is auchithya, or as we say in Malayalam “uchitham” and this matters a lot to me, this concept. Sometimes we get somewhere in art by breaking rules too and it is the same in language as we are on a creative quest but if lucky or sensitive our handling of language will be accepted and appropriate either in the present or in the future and this is where we strike the balance.
APRILIA ZANK: Please consider the following statement of the English scholar and poet A. E. Housman: “Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.” Do you write or prefer explicit poetry with an obvious meaning or message, or rather more cryptic, challenging poetry?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I am one of the widest poets I have known with a breadth that is all-encompassing so I write both explicit poetry and cryptic, challenging poetry. It comes down to what comes out as a first draft often for me but there is one matter in which I completely agree with A E Housman and that is that we have to leave half the work to the reader in terms of form, meaning, content and everything else or the poem fails as we need to draw in the reader as a co-creator. I would thus expand on what he says to include other parameters and not just meaning.
APRILIA ZANK: “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”, is a famous quote by the German romanticist and philosopher Novalis. To what extent can poetry have a therapeutic effect?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Poetry is a two-edged sword. It definitely has therapeutic effects on those who write it and especially on women and children and it has therapeutic effects on those who read it too but it can also be used to cause wounds on those who sometimes deserve it and this part of it interests me too. Poetry is an untamed beast and can sometimes heal but also cause wounds even on those it should not as once written and released a half of its reception is in its perception. Here poets have to take care to be more on the side of the Force and not the Dark Side, to put it in Stars Wars terms. (laughs) Poetry should be a light-saber, in other words, and in the hands of Jedis who have not sold out in today’s world, to expand on this pop culture reference.
APRILIA ZANK: According to Salvatore Quasimodo, an Italian poet and literary critic, “Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.” Is, in your opinion, the poet primarily a personal voice, or rather the echo of his fellow beings?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Both, I speak myself in poetry and not just for myself, it is the flesh become word to invert scripture and unless it finds an echo in my readers who say you speak me or for me it fails. Poetry has to be an extension of oneself where the other melts into one too or it cannot be poetry that will outlast time or find much spread in geographical terms to other languages.
APRILIA ZANK: The American literary critic M. H. Abrams asserted that, “If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.” Do you also think readers need to be educated as to how to go through a poem? If 'yes', in which way?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: For a deeper understanding of a poem’s aesthetics readers have to be educated about figures of speech, titling, musical devices, and imagery as well as forms, genres, structures, and analysis or comparison or contrast etc., as poems are not just about themes or layers of meanings but “body” as MH Abrams puts it so beautifully and to make love to that body one needs to get hold of it properly first.
APRILIA ZANK: Let us now consider the words of the American songwriter and poet Jim Morisson: “If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” Can you please tell us how poetry can be/become educational?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: It is strange that you should club the word educational with Jim Morrison as his point, I think, was to set people free from the limits of education as it was practiced in his time, through the art of music, lyrics, poetry, and performance. Morrison knew what Gardner speaks of, that there are many intelligences and not just literary or linguistic ones or mathematical ones, leftovers of Greek philosophical subjects in schooling that were reduced to these three as primary, and his aim is to make poetry also reflect that times have changed and should take in technology and the past not limited just to Graeco Roman or Judaeo Christian frameworks but including others ones too like American Indian ones. He does this in his own lyrics to try to expand the frame.
APRILIA ZANK: The British-American poet T. S. Eliot claimed that, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Do you sometimes/often experience 'love at first sight' for poems that you have not understood immediately/completely?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Oh, yes! Poems have a lot of depth and to get the meanings one has to read them several times, but to love them one has to read them only once. They communicate to the neural synapses before anything else being a very sensory medium. I remember this reaction on reading Rilke and Rimbaud for instance and more recently RS Thomas, WS Merwin, and some others. As I get older some names escape me but the poems don’t.
APRILIA ZANK: Paul Valéry, a French poet, essayist, and philosopher, said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” Do you also think that the final 'embodiment' of a poem happens in the mind of the reader?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I agree fully with Paul Valéry as in my own experience being a poet whenever I return to a poem after weeks or months or sometimes years I see I could have written it better and make changes to it. There seems to be no final satisfactory version, even if sometimes the change is just a word. However, as the reader does not know of this and the care poets take over their works, (at least ones like me influenced by fastidious poets like Valéry) and so feel some of my poems are perfect and need no change. I rarely feel that way about any of my poems. Maybe one can about a couplet or a four liner or five liners, at most.
APRILIA ZANK: The famous British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie believes that, “A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” Should, in your opinion, poetry have a strong social and/or militant component?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I need to point back to my earlier answer of calling poetry a light saber here. In today’s world, no poet can be apolitical or not take stances or fight for things he believes in, or call out bogus stuff and keep to wanting to be secure and safe. This is my unabashed position. I fully agree with him. I am, for instance, against fascism, against minorities being persecuted, for autism, against caste discrimination, for preserving what is good about Christ’s influence in the world, etc. And all these things if opposed I have to point out that I cannot just stand and watch but have to take sides.
APRILIA ZANK: The poetic credo of the highly influential American poet Maya Angelou was the following: “The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.” Do you also think that your poetry addresses a large and varied audience?
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: I have written thousands of poems and my poetry definitely addresses a large and varied audience, including all who know English, all who are Indians or Asians, all who are human beings and all who are against the idea that they are human beings too as there are post-human and anti-human strands too in my poetry so I really don’t know anyone my poetry leaves out. It may address people in different ways but all may find themselves and their consciences questioned in it as well as find me appreciative of their arts, cultures, and other such valuable things. I feel this is how we can approximate universality in our times and in all my poetry books like FIGS, or Allusions to Simplicity or Birds of Different Feathers or Wine-Kissed Poems which is a collaboration with Jagari Mukherjee or Vodka by the Volga which is another collaboration with Santosh Bakaya I have tried to go beyond parochialism to being universal and mostly succeeded, or so I feel.
AMPAT VARGHESE KOSHY: Dr. Koshy A.V. is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. He has many books, degrees, diplomas, certificates, prizes, and awards to his credit and also, besides teaching, is an editor, anthology maker, poet, critic, and writer of fiction. He runs an autism NPO with his wife, Anna Gabriel. Two of his co-authored books published in 2020 were Amazon best-sellers in India and the USA, namely, Wine-kissed Poems with Jagari Mukherjee and Vodka by the Volga with Santosh Bakaya.
Dr. APRILIA ZANK is an educationist, freelance lecturer for Creative Writing and Translation Theory, as well as a multilingual poet, translator, editor from Munich, Germany and an Author of the Poetry book BAREFOOT TO ARCADIA. Born in Romania, she studied English and French Literature and Linguistics at the University of Bucharest, and then moved to Munich, Germany where she received her PhD degree in Literature and Psycholinguistics for her thesis, THE WORD IN THE WORD Literary Text Reception and Linguistic Relativity, from the Ludwig Maximilian University, where she started her teaching career. The research for her PhD thesis was done in collaboration with six universities from Europe, and as a visiting lecturer at Alberta University of Edmonton, Canada. Dr Aprilia writes verses in English and German, French and Romanian and was awarded a distinction at the “Vera Piller” Poetry Contest in Zurich. Her poetry collection, TERMINUS ARCADIA, was 2nd Place Winner at the Twowolvz Press Poetry Chapbook Contest 2013. In 2018, she was awarded the title “Dr. Aprilia Zank – Germany Beat Poet Laureate”, by the National Beat Poetry Foundation (USA). She has been an acclaimed guest at cultural events in Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Turkey, Singapore and Romania, where she read her poems, delivered lectures on various topics. Her poems and articles are published in many ezines and Anthologies of different countries.
May be an image of Ampat Koshy, fire, outdoors and text

TSL Pandorathon May 31st Last prompt also finished hurray!

 TSL Pandorathon May 30th Prompt Cockroach Sermon to an Insectiicde given by Santosh Bakaya for whom I have rewritten the famous sermon in T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral given by the Archbishop of Canterbury to cheer her up

"This is the way the world ends (for cockroaches)
Not with a bang but with..." pesticide (TSE/Hollow Men)
Murder in the KItchen
by C. O. C. K..R. Oach
Interlude
The Archroach preaches in the KItchen on Roach Martyrs' Day Morning, 2020
'Glory to The Almighty Cockroach in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to all cockroaches.' The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Dead Roach. In the Name of the Father Roach, and of the Son and Daughter Roaches , and of the Holy Ghosts of all the Roaches. Amen.
Dear children of the Almighty Roach in Heaven, my sermon this morning will be a very short one. I wish only that you should ponder and meditate the deep meaning and mystery of our lives on Roaches Martyrs' Day. For whenever we do so it is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Roaches; and on this Day we do this in celebration of our eternal ability to multiply and carry on endlessly despite the same. So that at the same moment we rejoice in our tenacity for the salvation of cockroaches, and offer again to the Almighty Roach our Bodies and Blood in sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the men and women who spray on us their bloody insecticides ceaselessly. It was in this same night that has just passed, many years ago, that a multitude of the heavenly host of the spirits of dead roaches appeared before the men at research laboratories, saying, 'Glory to the Almighty Cockroach in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward all cockroaches'; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once the Birth of our multitudes and our Passion or suffering at the hands of men and their insecticides and Death upon that Cross. Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overborne by mourning, or mourning will be cast out by joy; so it is only in these our cockroach mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason. 'But think for a while on the meaning of this word 'peace.' Does it seem strange to you that the heavenly cockroaches should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly our little cockroach world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices of the heavenly cockroaches were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?
Reflect now, how Our Almighty Cockroach Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples, meaning us, 'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of kitchens at peace with the cockroaches living in it, the wife at peace with the King Cockroach in her dustbin, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his singing to the children while cockroaches run freely over his table, into all dresses and into the wine and bread and out? Those cockroaches His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom and insecticides. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember then that He said also, 'Not as the world gives, give I unto you.' So then, He gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.
Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Cockroaches Martyrs' Day celebrate at once Our Births and Deaths: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen Roach. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of all roaches? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of all Cockroaches on earth; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the cockroaches in Heaven, for the glory of the Almighty Cockroach and for the salvation of cockroaches.
Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good cockroach who has been killed because he is a Cockroach: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good cockroach who has been elevated to the company of the Saint cockroaches: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world of humans is. A Cockroach martyrdom is no accident. Saint cockroaches are not made by accident. Still less is a Cockroach martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a killer, by making insecticides, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Cockroach Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of the Almighty Cockroach, for His love of cockroaches, to warn us and to lead us, to bring us back to His ways of not getting killed by insecticides. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of, who has lost his will in the will of the Almighty Cockroach, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to it. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the cockroaches mourn and rejoice at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saint cockroaches are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the future from which they draw their being.
I have spoken to you today, dear children, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Kitchen, the blessed Archroach Kitchenpest; because it is fitting, on this day, to remember what is that peace which he brought; and because, dear children, I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time. In the Name of the Almighty Papa Roach (not the rapper, nor a reefer), and of the Son and Daughter Roaches, and of the Holy Ghosts of all the Roaches. Amen.
Copyright reserved to TSE and Dr. Koshy AV who has lifted his speech entirely for his own nefarious 'cockroacherly' purposes.


Sunday, May 30, 2021

May 30th TSL Pandorathon prompt and my metafictional answer to it

 May 30 TSL Pandorathon - He sat bolt upright in bed. It was midnight and someone was knocking at the door Short fiction - 500 words.

Prompt given by Santosh Bakaya
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Who can it be knocking at my door, he thought, in the lines of the famous Men At Work song. Stay away. That was at the first knock. When it went on, he groaned and at first pulled his pothappu tighter over his body and head. But it kept on, a metronome or clock second hand or something. Shit! No choice but to get up and look. Who the hell would come to visit him. He had no friends except one, and nobody ever came to his room at the end of the corridor even by mistake except a cleaner or that friend to pass him some news, that too very rarely and he never came at night.
Could it be a raven? But they knock at windowpanes. Could it be a bhooth, preth, pisach, dana? But they don't need to knock.
He got up and staggered to the door at the twelfth knock.
Opened it.
There was no one there. Hell! He cursed all the gods, ghosts and devils that ever existed and went back to sleep when there it was again.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
It was 12.13 now! Thirteen knocks!
What the ****!
He got up and ran to the door so the miscreant could not vanish into thin air. Maybe it was hiding above the door, he thought. He yanked the door open and looked upwards for a hole in the ceiling , around, down at the floor to see if it had grown a trapdoor and found nothing.
Bloody --------
He was wide awake now. Better go and write on that prompt, he thought. What was it today? He peered at the screen in the midnight daze. Radhakrishnan would have written on it or Pankajam or Aneeta or Lucette or Roopam or Adi or Richi or Lakshmi... or Vinita. He didn't even know what it was yet, didn't remember but could find out from one of these faithful.
To his increasing horror and dismay he found he had already written on it and posted.
May 30 TSL Pandorathon - He sat bolt upright in bed. It was midnight and someone was knocking at the door Short fiction - 500 words.
Prompt given by Santosh Bakaya
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Who can it be knocking at my door, he thought, in the lines of the famous Men At Work song. Stay away. That was at the first knock. When it went on, he groaned and at first pulled his pothappu tighter over his body and head. But it kept on, a metronome or clock second hand or something. Shit! No choice but to get up and look. Who the hell would come to visit him. He had no friends except one, and nobody ever came to his room at the end of the corridor even by mistake except a cleaner or that friend to pass him some news, that too very rarely and he never came at night.
Could it be a raven? But they knock at windowpanes. Could it be a bhooth, preth, pisach, dana? But they don't need to knock.
He got up and staggered to the door at the twelfth knock.
Opened it.
There was no one there. Hell! He cursed all the gods, ghosts ever and devils that ever existed and went back to sleep when there it was again.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
It was 12.13 now! Thirteen knocks!
What the ****!
He got up and ran to the door so the miscreant could not vanish into thin air. Maybe it was hiding above the door, he thought. He yanked the door open and looked upwards for a hole in the ceiling, around, down at the floor to see if it had grown a trapdoor and found nothing.
Bloody --------
This was what he had posted!
Was he going mad? Did she really expect him to count the words?
Who the hell had knocked and how had he written of it (earlier?) and when?
Was there two of him?
Was it he who had knocked? How could he be outside and inside and also have posted? Was there three of him? (To be continued by the reader)

Saturday, May 29, 2021

May 29th TSL Pandorathon Prompt and poem on it by me

 TSL Pandorathon May 29th

When the ancestors left the photo frames prompt given by Santosh Bakaya.
My grandfather came down
And so did my grandmother
In the house now left empty
Then my Dad appeared
At the door of the room at the left
And my mother
In the doorway to the room in the middle where
She used to sleep
Where are the children?
The grandchildren?
The great-grandchildren?
They seemed to ask silently
The house lay empty
And gave no reply
But in the rafters
Laughter echoed
Of my daughters and son
Small
In the space above the ceiling woodbeams
That was a room in itself
Laughter punctuated by my Dad's
And Mom's
She had never seen them, her grandchildren
But now free from the photographs
Time and space collapsed
People could exist
Together
Of different ages
In two different places and times
At the same time
Memories coalesce
Dead people come alive
And meet, play, and laugh
With living ones
Young again
Or of different ages
No rules anymore
It was heaven
Moley, pass me that coconut
My Dad said
Framed, above, looking a bit like a bear
While she did from that upper room
Jo or Abi
While Ru ran around up there
While Mom, Anu and I
Look up from the dining room
Anu and my Mom had never lived under the same roof
She had passed away before we got married
Saying Dad, be careful
Don't fall down
Girls, come down
Throw it down, Dad
I'll catch it
Voices in the air
But he throws it out the door so need to catch
Only collect
Grinning his grin
Footsteps echo on the ceiling
The grandparents are sitting on the sofa in the front room
I wish every day
The ancestors would come out
Of the photo frames
And make the home happy

Second draft

TSL Pandorathon May 29th
When the ancestors left the photo frames prompt given by Santosh Bakaya.
My grandfather came down
And so did my grandmother
With my little sister
In the house now left empty
Then my Dad appeared
At the door of the room at the left
And my mother
In the doorway to the room in the middle where
She used to sleep
Where are the children,
The grandchildren;
And the great-grandchildren?
They seemed to ask silently
The house lay empty
And gave no reply,
But among the rafters
Laughter echoed
Of my daughters, sister, and son
Small
In the space above the ceiling wood beams
That was a room in itself
Laughter punctuated by my Dad's
And Mom's
She had never seen them, her grandchildren
But now free from the photographs
Time and space collapsed
People could exist
Together
Of different ages
From two different places and times
At the same time
Memories coalesce into one
Dead people come alive
And meet, play, and laugh
With living ones
Young or middle-aged again
Or of different ages
No rules anymore
It was heaven
This is heaven
Moley, pass me that coconut
My Dad said
Framed, above, looking a bit like a bear
While she did from that upper room
Jo or Abi or Tina
While Ru ran around up there
While Mom, Anu, and I
Look up from the dining room
Anu and my Mom had never lived under the same roof
She had passed away before we got married
Saying Dad, be careful
Don't fall down
Girls, come down
Throw it down, Dad
I'll catch it
Voices in the air
But he throws it out the door so need to catch
Only collect
Grinning his lovely grin
Footsteps echo on the ceiling
The grandparents sitting on the sofa in the front room
I wish every day
The ancestors would come out
Of the photo frames
And make the home happy.

TSL Pandorathon May 29th
When the ancestors left the photo frames prompt given by Santosh Bakaya.
My grandfather came down
And so did my grandmother
With my little sister
From up there
To the ground
In the house now left empty
Then my Dad appeared
At the door of the room on the left
And my mother
In the doorway to the room in the middle where
She used to sleep
Where are the children,
The grandchildren;
And the great-grandchildren?
They seemed to ask silently
The house lay empty
And gave no reply,
But among the rafters
Laughter echoed
Of my daughters, sister, and son
Small
In the space above the ceiling wood beams
That was a room in itself
Laughter punctuated by my Dad's
And Mom's
She had never seen them, her grandchildren
But now free from the photographs
Time and space collapsed
People could exist
Together
Of different ages
From two different places and times
At the same time
Memories coalesce into one
Dead people come alive
And meet, play, and laugh
With living ones
Young or middle-aged again
Or of different ages
No rules anymore
It was heaven
This is heaven
Moley, pass me that coconut
My Dad said
Framed, above, looking a bit like a bear
While she did from that upper room
Jo or Abi or Tina
While Ru ran around up there
While Mom, Anu, and I
Looked up from the dining room
Anu and my Mom had never lived under the same roof
She had passed away before we got married
Saying Dad, be careful
Don't fall down
Girls, come down
Throw it down, Dad
I'll catch it
Voices in the air
But he throws it out the door so need to catch
Only collect
Grinning his lovely grin
Footsteps echo on the ceiling
The grandparents sitting on the sofa in the front room
I wish every day
The ancestors would come out
Of the photo frames
And make the home happy.

Thursday, May 27, 2021

May 28th Candle in the Wind TSL's Pandorathon Prompt First Poem.

 Candle in the wind TSL Pandorathon Prompt May 28th

When Johnny's mother died
He cried, thinking, you were my candle in the wind
I wish I knew then what I know now
And I'd have been a sight better of a son
Ironed my own clothes late at night
Not given you sleepless bouts at the board
And all those other little things
I should have done but I let you carry my load
Johnny, there is no way to wind back the clock
But be as a husband, and father, what you were not
As a son, and there may yet be hope
For those new candles that they don't burn down so quick
Your wife, your children, be nimble this time
Don't let them burn out, and don't be slack.

TSL Pandorathon May 27th Flash fiction

 "You can't be wise and in love at the same time." Bob Dylan

TSL Pandorathon May 27th
Flash fiction
It was madness. Here she was, to all outward appearances a settled, married woman, and then suddenly she falls in love with this handsome young or middle-aged man abroad she only meets online though she knew him long ago in college as his junior. That is how it goes. When the heart rules the head or mind. She threw herself into it, heart and soul, at first, but then got scared and backed out when he wanted more. And more. And more. It was one thing to talk of Osho but another to give in to ecstatic dancing. So she stopped or he did as she was not ready to cross a line, she played hard to get, she said she only wanted to go to a certain place or point, she gave out mixed signals, but when she stopped talking or he stopped, both bugged but still longing, waiting, wanting, it became a game of hide and seek whereby she would stalk him on fb and whatsapp or vice versa, go on when he left but make sure he sees, go off when he comes on ditto, read posts, act, not act, react, not react, click selfies and post for him to see based on pics he posted of other women, get irritated for posting, get irritated at not being noticed, get pleased at being seen, shameful loss of control, shameless, damn, love was not wise at all, earlier it was torture and it still remained torture, games people play, I am not ok but pretending to be ok, the typical Indian wife predicament, a husband who was not up to the mark according to her, probably true, kids, guru, family, responsibilities, and the perennial existentialist question brought on by the internet which was one of today's age and time which was whether to have a secret lover tucked away online, something which could grow out of hand, or not. !?*&%$£"@

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

TSL Pandorathon May 26th Dinner-menu based poem

 TSL Pandorathon May 26th Dinner-menu based poem

The restaurant was called Nalukettu
I went there in a dream
Wonder how many would remember that old scene
The dwarapalikas were alive and dancing
And the table was set for one
As if just for me
They put before me the traditional customary plantain leaf
And brought first a pair of fish eyes
for starters, for good luck
Matsya kanyaka's or hilsa's
It could be one or the other or both
All the way from Kolkatta
It was going to be a many course meal
I could feel
Shoulder of lamb from Kerala
fried, dripping in oil
From Thiruvananthapuram
Breast of chicken
from Kottayam
The ham was from somewhere in Rajasthan
Then there was a mixed gourmet dish
Stretching halfway across the world
Camel meat from the Middle East
Smoking burnt black barbecue from New Orleans
Sirloin of cow and thighs of quail meat
A Texan delicacy
Legs of a frog for the end of the meal
from the underworld where the sirens sang and Circe lived
Then washing it down with condensed milk and tender coconut water
Stange menu in a dream
For dinner
I exaggerate not
I eat surreal nightmares
You can call me a cannibal
But it is all just sweet summer flesh
of cantaloupe and its seeds
cut in half in jest


Another poem

Death to all systems
Destruction to all structures
Music is an endless ocean
Purple rose overdose
Velvet haze fierce gaze
Only fuzz gives us the buzz
Hold your eyes
Make me ice/ace
What is life/lice?
Which suffice?


TSL Pandorathon Prompt May 27th Based on Bob Dylan's famous quote "You can't be in love and wise at the same time"

 TSL Pandorathon Prompt May Twenty Sixth

Based on Bob Dylan's famous quote "You can't be in love and wise at the same time"
When we were young
Your smile shone
a diamond in the night
the sun at noon
The distance
natural
between the sun
and earth
Drunk in heat
Just a nobody
Living off the light
The sun shone on it
The earth hates the sun
Inseparable love
Knowing the sun loves it
Knowing it will always be different
Far away the sun
Had other planets too
Spinning
The earth turned its back on it
Repeatedly
the sun and the earth met
Came and went
closer and apart
That's what lovers (don't) do
That's what love /doesn't/ do(es)
Love does what hate doesn't
Love can't be love and wise
Only constant
At one and the same time

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Pandorathon May 25th TSL Prompt Reverse Poem

 TSL Pandorathon May 25th Prompt Reverse poem doubly reversed 1

Ocean am I
You, not shore
Lighthouse are we
Ship still wrecked
Ship of love
Drowned waves deep
Deep waves drowned
Love of ship
Wrecked still ship
We are lighthouse
Shore not, you
I am ocean

Pandorathon 24th TSL Prompt Pantoum Ode and/or Tribute to Bob Dylan Nobel Prize winner on his birthday

 TSL Pandorathon May 24th A Pantoum

Ode or tribute on/to Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize winner, on his 80th Birthday.
It was a world made of love songs, of smoky hate and green-sleeved fate
It cut into the skin, till blood spurted out, visceral and feral
"Clinked, like a coin in the cup of the blind man at the gate"
Made of characters like the fictional Quinn, the Eskimo, and the real Blind Willie McTell
It cut into the skin, till blood spurted out, visceral, and feral
"You came up behind me, I saw you go by"
Made of characters like Quinn, the Eskimo, and Blind Willie McTell
Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, et tu, a dream and a lie?
"You came up behind me, I saw you go by"
I have been the joker man, forever, and for larks
Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, et tu, a dream and a lie?
"Look up in the hills, that flash of light." A dog barks.
I have been the joker man, forever, and for larks
In the world of the jukebox bars, the phonograph records will still gently spiral
"Look up in the hills, that flash of light." A dog barks.
I will hold you and dance again, to "rough and rowdy ways", Querelle.*
Image - Getty Images Dylan with Suze Rotolo from the iconic Freewheelin' shoot.
*from Genet

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