Stitch ("Kinsman Redeemer")

 Stitch

Koshur Qalam challenge prompt 4 poem by Dr. Koshy AV

When there was no stitch

left to cover my victimhood

between those who had pawned me

and those who thought me the spoils of their gambling

you stood as a blue cloud

surrounding me

saving me

"Extend the border of your mantle

over me"

be I Draupadi or Ruth amidst the alien corn

listening to the nightingale

be you Krishna or Boaz

in the ancestry of the line of the chosen one

Jesus

"Cover me"

Pebbles

Pebbles Jan 3 Koshur Qalam Challenge Prompt by Dr Koshy AV

My life is a

Handful

Of

Pebbles

That lead me

To their source

My home

The rock

From which they were hewn

The water in which

They were smoothened

Fashioned

Cool to the touch

Fair to the eyes

An imaginary sweet

In the mouth

Memories

Pebbles

Light of God

Refracted bands

My many

Pebbles

The Sonnet for Beginners: The Last Chapter.

 I would like to end by saying that many sonnet forms are probably out there in the ether now that I do not know of or am not interested in covering, as I have covered the main ones. However, I want to end with the last two that to me seem worth looking at briefly, to wind up this little canter or going over the ground of the world of sonnets, or little songs as the root word meant which is from Italian as I have probably stated earlier, somewhere, already; the word 'Sonneto.'

First, I would like to talk of the anti-sonnet which is not a new form. Shakespeare wrote a really interesting one. It basically meant to rebel against the Petrarchan one which was limited in its meter and rhyme scheme and theme.  By moving on to his own meter and rhyme scheme and changing its form and widening the themes of the sonnet form Shakespeare basically became the first of the anti sonneteers and all who have come later who matter are also not only sonneteers but also anti sonneteers in a sense. But let me quote his best anti-sonnet, according to me and many others.

"

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)

William Shakespeare - 1564-1616

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare. "

It's all there, the iambic pentameter, the closing or clinching couplet, the abab rhyme scheme for the first three quatrains and the cc for the last two lines, and best of all the complete break with the tradition of the Laura poems of Petrarch where the mistress is romanticized to an unearthly level, which irritated Shakespeare enough to make her earthy but no less lovable. Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Sonnet Mondal, I - all ring in their changes to the Petrarchan ideal and thus belong not only to the tradition of sonnets but also to the tradition of anti-sonnets.

I also want to talk of the minison. Introduced to me by my poetry partner in crime it consists simply of, in its purest form, fourteen letters of the alphabet but can be made impure by making it fourteen words or fourteen syllables. A form ideal for twitterature, but it also packs a punch. An example is "tell you a secret." More about it and examples can be read on this site: https://neutralspaces.co/minison/ .

We did a minison in The Significant League's 2021 NAPOWRIMO, as a prompt by Reena Prasad, that brought some 75 of us to write many wonderful minisons.

So let me write one to sign off: "sonnets do dance". 

The END.

2 Prompt Poems

 Disclaimer: (Prompt from Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم January 2, 2022) by Dr. Koshy AV

I do not love your forehead

I do not love your eyes

I do not love your cheek or chin

I do not love your hair and that stray lock that escapes from it often

I do not love your nose

I do not love the colour of your skin

I do not love the shape of your face

I do not love any part of you

I love you whole, or not at all,

right through thick and/or thin.

2. Based on a picture prompt by Gauri Dixit (picture given below)

The cup that cheers

The cup that inebriates

The cup that intoxicates

The cup that invigorates

The half empty cup

The half full cup

The overflowing cup

The cup of the bra

The cup that merry makes

The rum and coke and ice cubes filled cup

The dark as wine cup

The cup of blood

Denoting sacrifice

The cup in the hand

worth two in the bush

The cup in the pic

The cups in this poem

The many a slip

between the lip and the cup

The cup that matters

Or does not

See-saw (Koshur Qalam challenge Jan 1, 2022.) by Koshy AV

 See-saw Koshur Kalam challenge Jan 1, 2022. by Koshy AV

The playground in the Museum

in Thiruvanathapuram

was my first see-I saw

Then a rocking horse in Bal Bhavan

saw me see-saw

I loved sitting on one end

of the big one

watching the other go up

and then running there quickly

getting on somehow

and watching the other side go up

Up and down, down and up

I did not know, playing alone

it was preparing me for life's vagaries

When it was a girl at the other end

I felt happy

We learn in miniscule

for greater tasks

in childhood

and yaw like a ship on the sea

drunken in the winds of time

and change

stagger to the tune of

what goes up must come down

and are comforted by the fact

that what comes down must also go up

like any see-saw that works

in any children's playground.

See-saw (Koshur Qalam challenge Jan 1, 2022.) by Koshy AV

(edited version)

In the playground in the Museum

in Thiruvananthapuram

was my first see-saw

Then a rocking horse in Bal Bhavan

saw me see-saw

I loved sitting at one end

of the big one

watching the other go up

then running there quickly

getting on somehow

and watching the other - the previous, the first side, go up

Up and down, down and up

I did not know, playing alone

it was preparing me for life's vagaries

When it was a girl at the other end

I felt happy

We learn in minuscule

in childhood

for greater tasks

yaw like a ship on the sea

drunken, in the winds of time

and change

stagger to the tune of

what goes up must come down

comforted by the fact

that what comes down must also go up

like any good old see-saw that works

in any old or new children's playground.

Photophrastic - nimisha kavitha based on a click by Gauri Dixit

Lovers sat on those benches/ and husbands and wives who quarreled/ on separate ones/ some practiced social distancing/ by leaving the one in between empty/ tired people embraced them/and ones taking a break/then there were those who just wanted/to while away the time/ watching the petals falling/in warm weather or cold times/how many stories they could tell/perhaps this shows lockdown/benches, man-made, oft unused, petals and leaves, natural too, fallen/all subject to the chipping or yellowing wheel of time/ here caught in a moment of abeyance

My second collection of poetry or third one gets reviewed in Indian Literature

 

Repost: Parul Khakar's Shav Vahini Ganga translated by Dr Koshy AV (with a few changes)

Parul Khakkar's Shav Vahini Ganga (Corpse bearing/vehicle Ganga.)

Translated by Dr Koshy AV

Don't be sad but 'rejoice', say the corpses in one voice

O King, in your Ram Rajya!

We see the corpses floating in Ganga

Lord, the trees have all become ash

There is not even a speck of a place in the crematorium

There is no undertaker there or people to carry the corpses to the pyre

No one to sit near and cry

To those of us who lost everything, only the dance of death continues around us, O King

In your Ram Rajya, our corpses float around in the Ganga

Spitting smoke and spitting smoke, even the chimney is panting

The virus has caught us and is shaking us

Our bangles are breaking, and our insides are hurting, burning like fire

While the city is burning, the pandit is playing the veena

O King, in your Ram Rajya corpses floating through Ganga too I see

What pomp and power there was in your get up and style earlier

Now the city sees your real face

Say no excuse now but come out in the open and say loudly, loudly

That you are wearing nothing and have no ability and are lazy

And will not rest now at least but act, show us that!

Smoke rings rise and rise to touch the sky, the city is angry and seething

Don't you know that in your kingdom through Ganga the corpses are floating, at all?

Gala

 (Charles Hewitt, Gala Dali, 1955, source: Getty Images)

It is a dry time

The muses have taken a hiatus

The wasp in my room buzzes: All irritation

The child mourns

The slate grey sea does not stir in the absence of breeze

Then a bard sings outside

A single sweet note followed by a single sweet

Note

Somewhere other birds take it up again

It is Gala time

The dry bones/stones have allure on either sides of her back

Her gaze into the far distance seeks

I am out of sight, on the other side

The bird cries a single note

Another bird/bard flying on makes its own songs

I will go down and find company and solace with my child

Down the stairs in a surreal, dim-lit evening

Escape from the gathering gloom in my darkening room

Having now seen God and poetry in a woman's photographed & unvarnished hair, buttocks, and back.

2 Poems

 Slow, the vultures circle in the sky

Slowly the hyaenas walk on earth, and make an outcry

The snakes with small, squat, poisonous heads raise them

To strike, but are "mocked by a tissue that will not serve"

They shall all die and their bodies shrivel up

in forest and desert and city, village, town;

"hang in a pitiful crescent". In hell, fry.

2.

Flights of black birds in formation

overhead, going home

or to sleep

turn the evening into winged dreams

There are bruises on the sky

cuts and wounds -

part of the fact that birds can fly -

in the clouds

Red gashes

blue or black

turning the evening into

purple twilight and night

The birds continue their flight

looking effortless

Do they wish to be wingless

and grounded

with or like us here, down below

the way humans wish they could float, unwounded

in the air of the heavens; 'weightless', cutting a path

through, free, in endless flight?

The two quotes are from two poems by Samuel Beckett called the Vulture and Yoke of Liberty respectively

Interview

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0jyiPVDEXM

Reader Island

 There will always be an island

the island of readers

unbiased

who come to my writing as nymphs and dryads

to the cool of a forest

and the shade of a waterfall

to enjoy the words'

sound

cascading like water

picking and eating them

like berries

that stain their lips red

with their juice

and because of these and the naiads

who quench their thirst at my poems' fountains

because of their refreshment

I breathe

I live

7Nidhi Popli, Lakshmi Venkatachalam and 5 others

Something dark

 I know you read me

and then wish you hadn't

because there is something in there

you just can't place your finger on

something that is nothing like and belied by my appearance

shaggy like a bear and silver-backed like a gorilla

something dark that swallows light

and make you want to be wild, get wet or get angry

Proud to be an anti-national poem

 Looking at the young, feminine faces of 'the enemies of the State'

Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Parul Khakar and Disha Ravi

Their names like a poem

(All Good Hindu Names, or are they not, my friends?)

I feel 'their' State is the devil's flaming brew/tea

and they the flies to wanton boys

who think they are Gods

who 'strip' off their wings

and leave them all in it to float, sink or drown.

Paranoid and bitter? Poem

A Tribute to Nightbirde*

I remember back then

how you used to come

hang on to my every word and every poem

You and you and you

and you and you and you

I was the stars to your moon

My poems the sun to your sunflowers

I was the one you could practice heliotropism on

Then when you thought that you had arrived

Your visits became few and finally none

You said you are not a poet, or your silence did, to me

I am bigger than you now, it said, I know it all

I watched you try to remove the ground beneath my feet

Unable to feel hurt, or anything

The Krishna whom you felt that you could give a bhashan to

The Drona whose thumb and forefinger you wanted to remove

The one who was just an inn on your way to your destiny

Or cut down to size, to step into my shoes

I was busy watching the ants in the anthills

The anthills in the savannahs and not the cities

You did not know of people like Nightbirde

In comparison with whom you would never become anything

As you did not have the same amount of humility

People whom I watched, the tears streaming down my face

The real thing, whether successful or not

Fighting insuperable odds and able to go on

To sing, to dance, to write poems to fight, to live

To hope, to have faith, to love, with the courage to go on alone

I did not know them and they did not know me

But we were kin and wing to wing flew in the unknown, lost

"It's ok, it's ok, it's ok," was our song

"To be among the lost," and soar, vast, "sometimes".

To burn a hundred poems and still be strong

To never look back, and have nothing to look forward to

to break the yellow lights and know it is only you you lied to

"It's ok, it's ok, it's ok", you see

"To be among the lost", and not even soar**, "sometimes."

*Everything in this poem may be wrong. (ref. to Richard Bach's Illusions)

** have a golden buzzer moment

https://www.facebook.com/simoncowell/videos/542849500456737

Prompt poem

 

given by Amita Paul

10stSponsoSrencdh  · 

This is photograph of Karwar Railway Station which Karnataka Tourism claims is the greenest in India.
It looks breathtakingly beautiful in this photo.

I wonder how many poets in TSL would feel inspired to write a poem or two on it?

that green that mist those tracks that train those platforms and the smell of rain is that not where i kissed you once that rain that green those mountains that mist that smell that pain