TSL's Pandorathon May 9th Poem by Koshy AV

 Pandorathon #9 – 09-05-2021 - When the stars found their glow being reflected in the gutter.

with Santosh Bakaya

When the stars found their glow being reflected in the gutter

A man in prison began writing from the depths

When the moon cast its shadow on lovers

Romeo and Juliet died tragic deaths

When the sun was setting over his son

A god cheated and send the latter to his end

When a flower was in the field, an iris

Blue, in the world eyes and irises were blinded

I looked for hope in a world where there was none

I found it still, but only in star-glow in a gutter

Sara's poem and its translations

 Sara 3 - A slogan

My mother was defintely a 'womanist'*. Without knowing it. Though I have titled this a slogan, in her papers this three- liner has no name.

Women arise awake

For no war is won

Without a fight

(c) Sara 2012 - 2/93

औरतों -

उठो, जागो!

कोई भी जंग

लड़े बगैर

जीती नहीं जा सकती है!

Sunita Singh's translation of my mom's war cry of a poem!

औरतें बेदार होती हैं

लड़े बागयर

कोई जंग जीती नहीं जा सकती

Aurthein bedaar hoti hain

lade baghair

koi jang jeeti nahin ja sakti

transcreated and transliterated by Bina Biswas.

സ്ത്രീകളെ, ഉണരുവിന്‍, ഉയരുവിന്‍,

ജയിക്കാനാവില്ലൊരു യുദ്ധവും,

പോരാട്ടമില്ലാതെ.

translated by Ra Sh Ravi Shanker N

sthreekale uyaruvin, unaruvin

jayikkanavilloruyudhavum

oru porattamillathe

transliteration by A.V.Koshy

নারী ওঠো, জাগো

কোনো যুদ্ধই জেতা যায় না

লডাই ছাড়া।

naree otho, jago

kono juddho-i jeta jai na

lorai chara

translated and transliterated into Bengali by Madhumita Mukherjee Ghosh

Nari jagi ja tu

sangram bina

kebe hue kichhi hasil?

Odiya, transliterated by Sudam Panigrahi.

Pengale, ezhunthirungal, unarungal,

Oru yudhdhavum vendrathillai,

Porattam illamal.

Tamil translation by Lakshmi Venkatachalam

Gauri Dixit translates my Mother's poem into Marathi

स्त्रियांनो, उठा जाग्या व्हा!

कोणतेही युध्द

लढल्याशिवाय नाही जिंकता येत.

Susma Sharma Gurumayum

Nupioibasa, mikap thok o, hougatlo

Lan da joi oidabani

Lanthengnadradi

(Manipuri)

With extreme gratefulness to the translators. The copyright of their translations etc. belongs to them.

*

wom·an·ist (wmn-st)

adj.

Having or expressing a belief in or respect for women and their talents and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class: "Womanist ... tradition assumes, because of our experiences during slavery, that black women already are capable" (Alice Walker).

n.

One whose beliefs or actions are informed by womanist ideals.

Mother's Day Post

 Today is Mother's Day. I think.

So I want to write down this memory. The last week of my Mom's life I was working in Alwaye with my father-in-law, which is six hours from Thiruvananthapuram where my home was with her and Dad. I had my first job and would go Sunday night and stay in Alwaye in YMCA and come back on Friday. It was just two weeks I had been doing this if my memory is correct. So as I was going on Sunday the third week she asked will you come back by any chance before Friday? I said no Mom, will come back on Friday as usual, can't come mid week no? She said ok with her usual Mona Lisa smile that I could never fathom. So that week one day I was standing in class teaching Rabbi ben Ezra by Robert Browning which I had never before and it went "Grow old with me/ the best is yet to be/ the last of life/ for which the first was made."

It ended with these words: "So, take and use Thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

After teaching I went to the staff room and a message came that my mother had had a heart attack and was in the ICU due to a cardiac arrest via the phone. My father-in-law and mother-in-law took the car instantly and drove me down. I knew she was gone before the next call came because of the poem. Sometimes God lets you be right there with your loved one as he or she is dying and sometimes not but my comfort was the words of the poem which is why I believe God can speak to us not only from Scripture but at opportune moments through literature by great poets. The poem is a startling parallel to my mother's life in some ways who was a deeply spiritual person.

When she asked me if I would go back midway in the week by any chance did she know or did she not? I don't know, of course, I will never know, But the fact that I was teaching Rabbi ben Ezra while she was breathing her last makes me feel she did as it was a poem I had neither read nor taught before but as if made for her and to make me know what was happening somehow. Did not seem like any coincidence, strangely enough. I am not trying to put an(y kind of an) aura around this.

You can read the poem if so inclined.

TSL's Pandorathon May 8th Prompt Conversation between a Crow and a Parakeet

 TSL's Pandorathon May 8th Given by Santosh Bakaya - a conversation between a crow and a parakeet.

Crow: I am humble kin to Raven

eulogized by God and E A Poe and Ted Hughes and the Native American Indian

Parakeet: I am a member of the parrot family

They put me in cages, in groups, some of us

The humans

They are fascinated I can imitate their speech.

Crow: In India, they make much of me

I even appeared in children's stories

Parakeet: We exist beyond all this

They may go but we remain

Crow: Yes, but doesn't it irk you

to be bred and kept behind bars for ages?

They do not think me, fortunately,

So important, thank the Great Crow in the Sky for his mercies

Parakeet: The Great Parakeet in the Sky is probably not so powerful

As the Great Crow in the Sky, I guess.

In their story in Greece and India you are intelligent though ugly

Some believe you to be their ancestor

I have no famous tales on me

Yet somehow caught their attention

As I, unfortunately, can mimic their chatter

So meaningful to them and meaning nothing to me

Their Praise God and fuck you mean the same thing to me.

Although when I repeat it they wonder if I know that!

Hehehe, "what fools these mortals be"

Something I picked up from them from a chap called Shakespeare

Crow: We are all mortal

Parakeet: But they hanker for immortality

Crow: A strange concept

Parakeet: Let us stop discussing their ways and means

Foolish tyrants

Let me sing and you caw to a beat.

TSL PANDORATHON MAY 7th PROMPT DONE AND DUSTED

 May 7th TSL Pandorathon Prompt given by Santosh Bakaya to write a story of three hundred words beginning with The next day it would happen all over again.

BeCKeTtRipoff

The next day it would happen all over again. The attempt to close the gap between who he wanted to be or wants to be and who he was or is. It was only an illusion, perhaps, that the gap could be closed or that there was one. All these ideas one gets brainwashed into believing or picks up or is passed on from the environment or one's upbringing or beliefs or ideals or just from others that there is something called perfection and someone who is perfect and one should strive to be that or become that. That one should attain to something or the other, some bullshit about sitting under a peepal tree or having an angel give you a book or being born of a virgin or twice-born or an avatar to make a fresh start. Or some such other bother about being loved, finding the ideal one to complement you and be the yin to your yang. Something that would make you fulfilled, realized, actualized, enlightened, set apart from all the rest of mankind forever as one more of the many others who had made it while the others had not so you could feel a tad superior. The waking up the, quest the journey the voyage the not finding the not reaching the sleep the dreams the waking up the attempt the sweating the swearing the nightmare that night in the sleep etc. Till you stop seeking. Or don't. Creatures of habit, dogs tied to their chain or vomit which is habit, as B had said, lost souls swimming in a fishbowl but not gold, just fish meant to die, to twist PF, afraid to stop seeking as there was no idea what would happen if one did and let go what would come to fill the vacuum of no longer trying. To not let the same thing happen the next day again, so it would happen the next day again. Torn between two lovers, wanting it not to and wanting it to, o apostrophe ah interjection and all the rest of it. No idea if it is three hundred words yet or more or less who the hell counts. Just believe you are one step away and one word closer to, no, not home, just finishing the daily prompt, then rest listen to music, go back to sleep, and one move closer to where you are supposed to reach, where they want you to reach, where you were told you had to reach though as to that no idea at all that you have to reach anywhere or that there is any place to reach or time to reach it in.

Pandorathon TSL May 6 3 poems on the prompt when bookmarks come out and talk to each other on the books they were in given by Dr Santosh Bakaya

 When book marks came out and talked of their books TSL Pandorathon 2021 May 6 with

Santosh Bakaya

His Bible is well thumbed

His thumb or forefinger is the bookmark

(Earlier old men and women would lick their fingers

and turn pages,

though that had nothing to do with bookmarks

or book marking)

His Hard Times by Dickens

Has pages the top corner of which is folded

To make it easy to find them

His dictionary is dog eared

His keyboard is dirty and dusty from overuse

Not as you may think from being not used

As for bookmarks

Well, he does not use them much

Except for one in his Dad's big letter red leather-covered Scripture that was a ribbon

And a silver one in one he got his wife

That haunts his memory

So talk of them or them talking to each other

Has to remain imaginary or non-existent

The poem anyway has been written

Bookmarks Talking 2 with

Santosh Bakaya

May 6th Pandorathon TSL

Pressed flowers and leaves

My sister would keep them

My mother too

Dried flowers

And leaves that had become

Skeletons

In poetry books, novels and other books

Even record books of chemistry and zoo-

Logy and physics

They filled me with awe

And a certainty

Not given by

The leather or the paper ones

However beautifully made

That the divine was there.

Book marks Talking 3 with

Santosh Bakaya

Pandorathon TSL

with/for

Tikulli Dogra

To write is to read what is

Written and

To rewrite to

Try to fill in the gaps.

I love bookmarks

My friends, some of them

Make them

I love and honour their effort and artwork

This has become an evolving poem

I love the idea they come out at night

And talk to each other of the books

They are kept in

I love the kookiness

My imagination is not constrained to think of

edible bookmarks

And ones that beg for more life and you not to discard them

And complain of the books that they are kept in

Or like them

If I was one I would like to

be made of a mix of ribbon

and leather and leaf and bark

Maybe a single petal of a rose

Hide of a deer sounds too cruel

But one that has its markings on paper, maybe

I would want to be kept in the Bishop's Candlesticks section

In Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables.

Pandorathon May 5 TSL and my attempt

 TSL Pandorathon's prompt May 5th given by

Santosh Bakaya

, imagine a conv between Wilde and Shaw while watching a circus using their quotes.

Night at the Circus (Irish slapstick)

Wilde: You seem inebriated, by George!

GBS: Alcohol is the aneasthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Wilde: I have the simplest tastes, I am always satisfied with the best.

GBS: That's Wilde!

Wilde: See the pard lady. She reminds me that it is better to be beautiful than good.

GBS: (Keeps silent)

Wilde: Why are you silent? Have you no opinions of your own on the fair damsel walking a leopard down there?

GBS: Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Wilde: Her face is her work of fiction?

GBS: I was just thinking, that she may be attractive but she is not clever, or she would be governing the circus owner and not a leopard down there.

Wilde: Dashed astute. But for me it is all about overcoming temptation by yielding to it, the only way to overcome it, I think, which in this case is to yield to the temptation to feast my eyes on her face that is a fiction.

GBS: Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.

Wilde: By George, Shaw, that is Wild!

GBS: Pshaw, Oscar, it is nothing compared to my best ones.

Wilde: Clearly you believe that modesty is not the best policy.

GBS: Ssh, the elephants, let us now stop conversing and watch the circus.

Wilde: Very well then, you watch the elephants and let me dwell on my leopard lady's face which is a...

GBS: (slightly exasperated)...work of fiction, I know!

Pandorathon 4 TSL's Napowrimo and My take on it

 TSL's Pandorathon Prompt When War and Peace engages in fisticuffs with Gone with the Wind given by

Santosh Bakaya

There was already fisticuffs

Between War and Peace

Napolean brought war

To Russia's peace

The winter made it all

Gone with the Wind

Some American woman

Kissed an American guy

Talking of which

It was not an African American

You can bet

But kisses always look

Hot on the silver screen

(No idea why, though,

either why it is called silver or why it looks hot and not cold)

And the movie was big

It made the second-rate book a success

Second-rate compared to War and Peace

While War and Peace languished on the shelf

Too big to be read and no David Lean to make it fat

Explode on the silver screen

That is how it goes

In this bitch of a world

Said Vladimir or Estragon, out of place

or context. What wits!

The racist movie wins

With its background of genteel slavery

Made from a mediocre book

And the good book loses.

What the masses who are asses want

Is something they can see sealed with a kiss

With some vague nostalgia for some vague land!

To learning about Russia in the time of War and Peace

Theatres and distribution of reels

Are akin to not being against the ropes

In the boxing ring

Who goes into a bookshop anyway

To buy War and Peace?

Everything follows entropy

The fisticuffs are played out in terms of greenbacks

Not in the ring where Tolstoy would be a heavyweight

And Margaret Mitchell only bantam

Who on earth asks you to write on such weird things?

I might as well go and kill 'em

Make war, not peace

And engage in fisticuffs

Till such prompts are gone with the wind!

Just found I got published by Samyukta in 2018 (fourth time)

 https://samyuktajournal.in/poems-a-selection-6/?fbclid=IwAR0sDXF2bJCWhT7voNgzFvQ_2bIs2teDvER-MxDqyT4Imts-gYufBZXIPpg

I wrote a series of poems on Revolution

They got lost on FB

But these few got published in 2018 due to Bini Sajil. I found them only now or rather Reena found them for me. Thanks to her.

The first poem has some missing lines on Vincent Van Gogh

So I rewrote it.

The rest is okay.

STATUES AND PLACES OF WORSHIP

I have lived to see the Bamiyan Buddha blown apart

An Ambedkar wearing a garland of chappals

A Gandhi defaced

An Indira Gandhi’s bust attacked

A Lenin fall

I lived to see the mosque in Ayodhya, the Babri Masjid, get destroyed

Confederate statues get torn down in the US of A

Saw the twin towers there fall down

All this happened during my lifetime

I am not a Buddhist
Or an Ambedkarite, though I am pro Dalit and against jathi and varna discrimination
Or a Gandhian
Am anti-Indira Gandhi
Anti-Lenin
I am not a Muslim
Am anti-slavery, anti-racial discrimination and the Confederates

Anti- American imperialism, expansionism and interventionism
Anti-the political Right movements across the world
& I am no Hindu

I follow the ones free of all icons and idols
Jesus, Buddha, Kabir, Rumi, and all
I follow those in whom God or ideals live(d) in their hearts
I am freed by them of all icons and idols
My body is my only, though not holy, temple
Which statue will you tear down
Or place of worship destroy

To offend me, or of such a one?

I believe in the gospel of Vincent van Gogh

who became a minister and served the poor

and was turned away by his congregation
for being the second coming of Christ, so half-admiringly and half-mockingly named by Zola by hearsay from the miners of Brabante before he turned a painter?
Have you been Adidas and laughed at by the Tam Brahm writer
who could not take your mocking his clan
though he said he was an atheist
but made his son wear the twice-born symbol of the holy thread
even while considering your story sacrilege and crap?

Revolution, you are still in Kerala.
I left you behind, even Adidas
As I have something else to do.
Fate parted us but the fire still burns
In the hearth
Sets ablaze
At unexpected times
Even as the same fascist dogs bark together
All over the world
The same pack of hungry wolves run together
And I, lone wolf, alpha male, await the full moon
To howl and bay at it yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes

My teeth chattering again, this time in the loneliness of heat and cold
And hope it will melt the polar ice-caps.

Pandorathon 1,2,3 TSL Prompts given by Santosh Bakaya and a brief history of TSL and one more poem

 Pandorathon 3 Prompt 3 given by

Santosh Bakaya

on the TSL set of new prompts for this month and this one is for May 3

"I want to have vodka by the Volga

Ah, for this intoxicated fiesta"

Don't forget the gin, Ginny

And the martini

Let us top it off with tequila

The shot glass limed with salt, not honey

Bring rum and coke, if you want to

Your poison is your choice but toast you have to

Now let's jump in the Volga

Or would you prefer a boat, and to salsa?

Row your boat carefully

Oh, the moon is drunk on/with the water!

Sway your hips, don't fall over

End by trailing your fingers or lips in/on the river!

TSL's Pandorathon Prompt 2 May 2 given by

Santosh Bakaya

. Write twelve more lines to these two lines given. Poetry.

"Out of her wits she was shocked

When by all and sundry mocked"

When they should have stood by her side

And seen her as someone not to deride

He said he was in love

She thought he was quite the guv

One day he gave her a rose

Then clicked her as she struck a pose

Next day her pics were on insta

Photoshopped, showing her umm.. ah!

With a caption, uh, these days, these girls, hmmph!

Fucker, she had no idea, was such a chimp!

Though all pretended to believe her story

They, as usual, let him get away 'cleanly'.

TSL's Pandorathon 1 May 1

with

Santosh Bakaya

An obese mongoose called Rikki Tikki Tavi*

Who was not that famed one of old

Let a sleek svelte slimy slim slippery snake escape

And starved to death, I am told!

Now if only obsese (not Obi-wan Kenobe) Rikki Tikki Tavi

Had not opened her presumptuous mouth to yawn

Nag* would not have slipped out

From it, that voluminous, cavernous cavern

Leading to her starvation, and death!

What a repast was thus left behind

Of a slim sleek svelte slimy slippery snake!

Here my 'sad' snake story ends!

*Nag means snake.

*Rikki Tikki Tavi, the name, is taken from a Rudyard Kipling story.

Dear friends,

A little bit of history is in order. We started The Significant League (then Rejected Stuff) in 2013, I think. I was there and then Reena Prasad came along. We gave our first Reuel International Prize for excellence in literature and writing for the long poem Oh Hark! in the next year (2014) to Santosh Bakaya and then she joined us and became our main pillar. Anu/Anna Gabriel and my daughters gave silent support. Then we found wonderful supporters like Satbir Chadha, Sudarshan KCherry who is omnipresent, Lopa Banerjee, Gauri Dixit, Sunita Singh, Donnis Mathai, Vinitha Nair, Vijay Nair, Antara Nanda Mondal, George Korah, and all our members and readers. We brought out many anthologies like The Significant Anthology, The Significant League's Roseate Sonnets Anthology, Silhouette I & II And Other Short Stories featuring Eternal Links, a Hallowe'en Anthology, Igniting Key, Umbilical Chords, Muffled Moans, Darkness there but something more, - with the help of a 'thousand' other writers and many editors - these deserve a special separate thank you note as they include Michele Baron, Anna Gabriel, Firdaus Parvez, Reena Prasad, myself, Santosh Bakaya, Gauri Dixit, Sunita Singh, Vineetha Mekkoth, Himali Narang, Madan Gandhiji, Bhuvaneshwari Shivkumar - and also single collections and duets, and online anthologies, and we gave out Reuel International Prizes and Nissim International Prizes till last year for seven solid years now. We did NAPOWRIMO now for the sixth year from 2016, 17, 18, 19, 20, and now 2021. We have also done Nanowrimo thrice.

It was all because of you all - we thank again especially all the prompt givers this time and every time and participants.

And Congrats to all who completed and are completing! More fun is on the way. Stay tuned. All this was done with just a few people at the core who are mad about poetry, and love literature and writing passionately just for its own sake and for fun! I don't know about what others think but we think we have done a good job Many have wanted to see us go down or fold up but we go on

We have held book launches, award ceremonies with Authorpress's help, and Rubric's and in Atta Galatta and Urban Solace and literary meets online and offline and are always busy bees and so keep ourselves happy and engaged always collecting the pollen and honey of literature and we don't flash it but we did excellent work. We have given out hundreds of certificates and books as prizes as well as cash awards for poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction, and literary criticism, all done away from the glare of useless media publicity. Basically, we tried to help new writers, improve mature ones in writing, make people take off (as from this place as a springboard) and achieve more and not get worked up about how others receive their works but work at being totally great in their writing to make their writing journey a smooth ride.

We also ran Pandorathon twice and started the third one today headed by Santosh who has also instituted a humour prize in her father's name.

Our groups now have 25000 to 30000 people in them. TSL admins and jury are all artists, writers, and award winners of renown nationally, and internationally, mostly.

From someone who was there throughout so far thanking everyone once again, namely me, Koshy AV

TSL is supported by Nissim Co. and Autism for Help Village Project Trust and Fasihi Magazine International and Coffee Table Romanticisms and vice versa and one of the causes we support is autism.

Religions bind (people together)

more than

the notion of nation or the humanizing of humanity

Religions also thus divide

(as humans want to belong and be irrational

and feel superior)

between their adherents and others of different faith

Demons are the ones that bind

Religions are demonic

Unbind people from these demons

of religion.

nation and humanity

caste race class gender and other kinds of idiocy

dangerous hateful tomfoolery

cast these demons out, and exorcise them

send them back to hell where they belong

and set the people free

to love everyone

who daily crosses their path

and every plant tree animal bird insect living being

as well as nature, the earth, and the universe

free to say no to these demons

10Amita Paul, Anna Maria Tvpm and 8 others

1 comment

Like

Comment

Share

Ampat Koshy

Religions bind (people together)

more than

the notion of nation or the humanizing of humanity

Religions also thus divide

(as humans want to belong and be irrational

and feel superior)

between their adherents and others of different faith

Demons are the ones that bind

Religions are demonic

Unbind people from these demons

of religion.

nation and humanity

caste race class gender and other kinds of idiocy

dangerous hateful tomfoolery

cast these demons out, and exorcise them

send them back to hell where they belong

and set the people free

to love everyone

who daily crosses their path

and every plant tree animal bird insect living being

as well as nature, the earth, and the universe

free to say no to these demons