Night and other posts

 Night Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry challenge January 23 poem by Dr Koshy AV

It's a "long day's journey into night"

Then a "journey to the end of night"

The sun and moon have a conversation

in the sky

One handing over its torch to the other

early morn

Night has to yield to day

To a sun so bright

The moon still a silver beauty in the blue sky

One day, sexual lust, lateness, and laziness

slowness, lack of focus and concentration

self-destructiveness, and procrastination

delay and all that hinders

will pass away/give way to the light

"There shall be no more night!"

Today's meditation

I may or may not agree with all the things the people here say but like to note how all of them agree on one point which is that Jesus helped them in some way or the other and God, and the Bible, and in some, a few cases, Christians, the church and Christianity.

Mahatma Gandhi on Jesus: “A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”

George Foreman (boxer): “Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that may not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One (Jesus) who inspired them.”

Alice Walker (author of Color Purple): “Somewhere in the Bible it say Jesus hair was like lamb’s wool, I say. Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he’d have to have it conked before anybody paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair kinky.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Author) : “The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.”

Denzel Washington (actor): “Inside every one of us we have something tugging at us, telling us to believe in something…(the Bible) is the answer to that”

Johnny Cash (singer): “When God forgave me, I figured I’d better do it too.”

Pope Francis: “Truth, according to the Christian faith, is God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship”

Theodore Roosevelt (US President) : “(My) great joy and glory that, in occupying an exalted position in the nation, I am enabled, to preach the practical moralities of The Bible to my fellow-countrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (atheist/rationalist/writer) : “Get rid of the miracles and the whole world will fall at the feet of Jesus Christ.”

Mother Teresa : “I believe in person to person. Every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.”

John Lennon (musician): “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

Sylvester Stallone (Rambo/Rocky) : “You need to have the guidance of someone else. You cannot train yourself. I feel the same way about Christianity and what the Church is: The Church is the gym of the soul “

Bono (U2/singer) : “When you align yourself with God’s purpose as described in the Scriptures, something special happens to your life.”

Elvis Presley: “I’m not the King. Jesus Christ is the King. I’m just an entertainer”

Fidel Castro : “To betray the poor is to betray Christ.“

C. S. Lewis “We must show our Christian colors if we are to be true to Jesus Christ.”

Justin Bieber (singer) : “Do you feel you have exhausted all options? Do you feel helpless? Do you feel like you are never good enough? What if I told you that there’s a God that’s willing to meet you WHEREVER you’re at! What if I told you he could take away your pain, shame, guilt, and fears. #JESUS”

Played badminton in the morning with my friend. This reminds me of how Indians call it shuttlecock or shuttle badminton or simply shuttle. Indian English! Rich! Also, how we/they say 'bat-minten' which sounds more fitting, than, say, calling it 'bad-mint-on' lol.

Psalms 30:5: For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Captain Marvel the movie - thoughts on it and on Ozymandias the poem

 Finished watching Captain Marvel. This one was good due to the twist, whereby the villains become the good guys, loved it! And the woman is more powerful and the glorification of the African American woman pilot and the African American Shield agent, both cool. The only jarring note is how when someone falls out of space he or she falls into America, though a shit hole, and has to speak American English.

It was also good to see how Captain Marvel is a hero as she gets up every time she falls and also how the energy core enters her from outside to then make her hundredfold more powerful. Lot of hidden messages there!

Ozymandias, the sonnet, is Shelley laughing at Rameses II, who was defeated by Moses, and also at monarchy in England and all tyrants and tyranny, thus laughing at all right and alt-right and fascist governments, including Hitler's and Modi's. But it is also Shelley laughing at more things, the idea that a ruler is God or like God or that power or violence matters, and at how art tells the truth even when forced to serve the oppressor. I begin to get all its layers only now, at the age of 57. though tracking out its references to the Bible etc. Most of all, it is Shelley laughing about how the ones who cause others to despair and think they are the mightiest end up in the trashcan of history and their nations or kingdoms, patriarchal ones, due to death and time. Shelley, what a great poet!

An old poem written on Jan 14 and a post written today - more on Get Back and Floyd etc.

 If words like

I do not know you

Go away from me

are offset by

words like

I will never leave you

or forsake you

likewise

A man can have only

what is given to him

from heaven

and: even what little you have will

be taken away from you

are sentences offset by

ones like

Ask and it shall

be given to you

Give and it shall be given to you

good measure, pressed down, shaken properly

stirred together

and running over (overflowing).

So be of good cheer.

There will be no place to hold

the blessing

when

it

arrives,

in its

consummation.

The miracle of the Beatles is still on my mind. Ringo is an average drummer who gives off his best. John is a good guitarist and George Harrison is better than him and the best musician of the lot is Paul who is really world-class. But when these four talents, not necessarily a possibility for the best band in the world "come together" in composition something happens which one can only call magic. It is not just about how they were lucky to be in the right time and the right place but about "this thing we do" that is "louder than words", to put it in the words of a song by David/Polly Gilmour on Floyd's last album "Endless River". They constellate something which is not there on their best solo albums after the split, though they played later in bands that were almost as good in collaborations like McCartney/Wonder, McCartney/Jackson, Wings, the Travelling Wilburys, Lennon and Ono, Harrison with others from India, Ringo with his All Starr band - but the same level of miracle or magic is just not there. It is the same with Zeppelin after Bonham's death or Who after Moon. Here, death did not sever them, as the deaths came later, they just ran out of patience to keep working with each other unlike a Floyd or a Stones, at least three of them, or as a Yes or a Genesis or Purple did.

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5qb6UcLTJ0"

Hozier tribute and Today's prompt poem on Desert plus a review of Get Back

 Hosier Take me to Church video tribute. (Why being a closet gay is to do harm to your kind.)

They decide who loves whom. They do not like the fact that I loved you. The kiss, the time at the riverfront, the cigarettes smoked together and the laughter, it all filled them with jealousy. I could do nothing to stop it, they wore masks, went to your house, pushed your poor old dad aside, and dragged you out to tie you to a stake with a metal brick and a chain so you could not escape. I ran to warn you but reached too late. Saw them set you on fire, how can I ever forget that sight.

Take me to church so I can pray for them to burn in hell as they made you burn,

they got under my skin, they got under my craw, but they can never decide who a man should love.

Desert Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم January 22 Poetry challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

This poem defeats fascists

You all call me/us names

to my/our face/s

and you make plans

to destroy me/us

behind my/our back/s

Then when I look through you

Because for me, you no longer exist

You feel it

You get hurt

But you never show it

How does it feel to meet someone

who does not care,

Who is your equal, for once?

That's what it feels like to be in the desert

That's all that remains of the kingdom of Ozymandias.

I finished watching Get Back finally, which is directed by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit fame. It was boring in parts and I was forced to use the skip mode but worth it for the build-up and the insights into their creative process and their disintegration, being four too-highly-talented individuals. It was not a break up in the traditional sense, unlike in the case of Pink Floyd, where bad blood still exists between Gilmour and Waters, but just a natural kind of drifting apart and wanting to do their own thing. The climax of the unannounced show on the rooftop that still draws a huge crowd which is divided in its opinion as to what to think of it shows why the Beatles was one of the greatest bands to come out of Britain and in the world. They produced great rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and rock and the bonus is sometimes their lyrics touch sublime heights. All in all at the end of watching it, due to their lovable next door guys characters and the show and their songwriting process being revealed and their relationships with their women, with a lovely real-life cameo with Heather (Paul's daughter), fans, detractors and others as well as their astonishing range of songs backward into their own repertoire and to that of others with a few attempts at Dylan thrown in and the Rolling Stones a constant presence in their absence with references to Allan Klein and the Stones Circus where Lennon appeared, it becomes a documentary series worth watching. However, if you are not a die-hard Beatles or rock music fan, unlike me just skip to the rooftop show in part 3, held on top of the studio they recorded in on Savile Row in Westminster 1 and you will "get back" to it repeatedly, I assure you.

Glyn Jones (sound engineer), Billy Preston (keyboards), George Martin (the fifth Beatle), Peter Sellers, Alan Parsons, Michael Lindsay Hogg (maker of the film), Yoko Ono, Linda McCartney, Patti Harrison (not yet Clapton), and Maureen Starkey (Ringo's wife) add to the cast of characters that make it famous. The bobbies are lost at what to do and there are a few others who count who I have not named, all in all, a worthwhile cast if ever there was one. Shot over twenty-two days in Twickenham and Savile Row and ending not only in this show but in the classic album Let It Be that contains Let It Be and Long and Winding Road, not to forget Across the Universe. The rooftop concert has them playing Get Back twice, Don't Let Me Down, Dig A Pony, I've Got a Feeling, One after 909, and Two of Us, an absolutely delightful and at times blistering performance.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ysf1u?fbclid=IwAR2iMlsSbpmiV7lNaPNfCDrqVlPBx6ngVua1hWyovauTVBufeh_Vavogm3o

Reflection and Isolated - 2 poems

 Reflection - a roseate sonnet, January 20 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم Poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr. Koshy AV

See the lights reflected in the water

That comes from the lamp-posts on the quay

In the night, shimmering and shining

When they switch them off, they are gone; but not forever

See them dancing in the pale moonlight

Memories of bygone times

Fireflies, will o' the-wisps, the glow-worms of life

'Minna minungukal', signs of strength, right?

If the stars go out, they will come out again

If they come out again, they shall shine on

Rose, I see my reflection in the mirror

Of a night, glimmering wetly as if in water

Sin looks sweet and sometimes, breaking and marring your image, deceives

Even a fallen reflection still infers there's something beyond its eaves

Isolated Prompt Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry challenge January 21 by Dr. Koshy AV

Isolated

Isolated is as isolated thinks

Isolated is as isolated does

Isosceles is isolated's name

Isocrates, his brother, left him maimed

When the ocean creatures

Crawl on land

They feel alone, like on Mars

in a group, on the sand

But if you can see the night sky

On a cloudy 'day'

Isolation is not the key

That's the way

 Catharsis Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم prompt for January 19 poetry challenge, poem written by Dr. Koshy AV

The dark side

needs its outlet

and we can no longer afford it

to find it in yearly rites

like the one in Jallikattu

or in art

as what is catharsis and healthy about it for one

may be an incentive to indulge in the dark side for another

A dartboard is okay

Throw the dart

hit the bull's eye

but maybe we should just call it margin

and not centre

and definitely not 'bull's eye'

Solo games are okay

archery

boxing in the gym

but not violent ones

like bull-fighting

and boxing

Genocides start at home

when the cowardly

tell their children

who to hate and why

who to 'other'

in the name of history

sparing no one

not humans or living beings

or even trees and plants

and these young hotblooded ones

when they get a chance

grow up to become youth

who form groups

to carry out

the unconscious, war-like, plundering, pillaging, looting, rapacious desires

of their parents and the groups they belong to

not knowing they are only indoctrinated

brainwashed

pawns in the hands of evil spirits

and somebody else's game for power and wealth and for their pleasure

Language is full of violence

against women

against castes

against others

not cathartic

unless we learn to wield it

Deny base desires

It's true we all have these tendencies

but what we do with them

how we channel them

into what and out to where

is the difference

Catharsis is separation

Turn away from the monsters

inside

and under the bed

that hid there when you were a child

and are around you in others

lurking, waiting to come out

and turn to purgation

of the wrong kind of fears

anxieties

worries

feelings and emotions

to the right kind

or sort

Bad company corrupts good morals

Learn to watch your thoughts

so you are not your own worst enemy

and separate the wheat there from the chaff

and burn it up with unquenchable fire

Be moderate in all things

Turn away from anything

that is not cathartic or purgatory

that does not help to purify

He who walks with the wise grows wise

In the midst of many genuine counsellors

who really love you and have gone before you

there is safety, as they have your best at heart

and even a fool cannot stray

on God's highway.

Watched Amplified's How Bob Dylan Catapulted Folk Music that covers Bob Dylan's first five albums along with people who knew him or wrote on him giving short interviews or commentary in between. The albums are:

Bob Dylan

Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Times they are a changin'

Another side of Bob Dylan

Bringing it all back home (where he does electric for the first time on one side of the album)

These five albums probably will remain the most enduring part of his legacy. They contain Masters of War, Blowin' in the Wind, Times they are a changin', Tambourine Man, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, With God on our side, A pawn in the game and Subterranean Homesick Blues, as well as I say probably, as Hard Rain, It's Alright Ma and the list goes on and on, too many songs that are now clearly recognized as classics to list in a single sentence. I don't know and no one does as Dylan even recently came up to the eyes of the public with Adele doing a cover of one of his later love songs. And with his songs on Rough and Rowdy Ways, especially the one that starts out being about John F Kennedy. Which is his kind of song about the day he probably thinks not only the music but America with its dream of equality died. The Day of Kennedy's assassination, a kind of new My Back Pages. The Song is named Murder Most Foul, a nod to Shakespeare, and is also a tribute to modern American music from the sixties till, you got it, like me, the nineties and so you won't find MC Hammer and others onwards in it. You find them in his radio broadcasts though.

I was born in the sixties, maybe that is why I am so interested in it. My knowledge does not stretch beyond the nineties actually of the twentieth century. I keep going back to find out things while everyone else seems to be interested only in the present which I find very boring. My interests are also outlandish. People around me don't know as much as I do about the things I do and don't want to know and people over there where I've never been probably know more than I do about the very same things so I act best as a bridge between the ones who know more and the ones who don't know but are interested as in the matter of Dylan.

It's the same with literary criticism in English. I come from the tradition starting from Aristotle, and of Arnold, and Eliot, and then go on up to Eagleton and though I am well versed with the moment of theory and the hour of theory, its spread and its death due to the arrival of post-modernism and today's sprawling landscape of subcultures where everything and nothing matters and everyone and no one matters, which is very postmodern, but even my postmodernism is more of a deconstructive turn than driven by the countering capitalism model, which makes it lose its edge as the edge is in politics and I am more interested in engaging with aesthetics, ontology, epistemology, (hermeneutics), theology and other branches of philosophy, criticism, and theories like formalism, (semantics), structuralism, and post-structuralism, as well as psycho-analytical criticism, so I feel that what I have to say is pretty offbeat and not by any means so-called mainstream-theory/discourse oriented. So back to the bridge-building. The foundation is, of course, literature itself. From there I go on to literary criticism and theory, philosophy and psychology, humanities, the arts, and the social sciences. Science remains largely unexplored.

Carrying about in your body the dying/death of Jesus is very painful for someone like me who spent so many years doing my own will and not God's but it is the only way to the peaceable fruit of righteousness and I press on regardless of the difficulty as this way leads to eternal life and not damnation. This is eternal life, to know God and his Son Jesus in partaking of his sufferings in denying oneself, to do instead the will of God. I will press on for the joy that is set before me, enduring the cross, as Jesus did as he too suffered and learned obedience by the things which he suffered and became perfected and a life-giving spirit to the whole world. There is no better life that anyone can lead than to stop pandering to the self and instead to learn to bless others but it starts in and around the house, as Mother Teresa said and doing small things with great love as unto Jesus expecting and demanding no reward from anyone on earth as then you will fall again. This is the sure footed way of the goats among the rocks of the mountain, so nimble they never take a fall, leading one eventually to a 24/7 happy life.

The Last Call

 Last call January 18 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr. Koshy AV

I did not do that post-doc

I did not complete that French course

I learned nothing in the programming course

I did not learn swimming

or photography or hacking

or AI or Robotics or data science, crunching and analysis

I do not know how to type

I do not know how to ride a motorbike with clutch, gear etc.

I quit halfway through a course and fudged another one

Took six years to do my Ph.D

I did my job badly

I still have not completed that novel

I only write but don't know how to collect what I write and bring them out as a hundred books after editing them

They remain unpublished though some are classics

I did not go West, get the Pulitzer, Booker, or Nobel

Or in India win the Sahitya Akademi or JCB or anything

I did not become Mother Teresa

I didn't save lives like a doctor or build bridges like an engineer

I did not become a millionaire or billionaire or karodpati or a minister or win a paramvir chakra or padma vibhushan or Jnanpith,

all things within my reach but somehow, I did not want it.

Most of the people I helped were only using me

Not that I helped many people

I was bad at interpersonal relationships

I hurt everyone I knew

I am anti-human, a misogynist

and so they never liked me

I failed at love, marriage, sonship, and fatherhood

at being a sibling, a relative, a friend, a human being, or disciple

Not that I deserved better

being only one more sinner

of no consequence or significance to other human beings

The list goes on and on

Of failures

I tried and failed

I failed at pretty much everything

I fared pretty badly in life!

Now I hear the last call

I walk on the road

with my son

The dog barks at him

He turns and looks at me

I rush to him

He puts his hand in my hand

Oh, forgot to tell you he is neuroatypical and non-verbal

I feel something in me, at last

That words cannot express

He trusts me

At le/ast

It is clear

This is my "greatest reward"

I did not miss the bus

I got on at the last stop

I heard the last call

that got me home

This is my best work of art

My greatest reward is Reuel, a person, and those like him and that there are people who still love them and care and look after them and help out, not all the other things I did or did not do or was or was not.

Filled with gratitude, peace, and happiness.

Thank you, God.

(Inspired by Santosh Bakaya, who made me think on/of what my greatest reward is.)

The next three in the series

 Guilt Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge January Sixteenth by Dr. Koshy AV

When the whole world is against you

don't feel any guilt

They are ignorant

The loss is theirs

Pain January 15th Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry challenge prompt by Dr. Koshy AV

We go through various stages of pain

The first cry is of pain at

being ejected from the womb

and being slapped on the buttocks by the doctor

to make one cry if one does not

as that is not good

We do not remember it

mercifully

but we do, unconsciously

Then there is the pain of not any longer

being fed the breast

and of finding your parents are not gods

though perhaps closer than it to than other humans

yet only or most in their treatment of you

Some have no such luck but more pain

There is the pain of being an infant

and a child

then the pain of being young

of being unloved

or unaccepted

of not being able to belong

non-belonging

of insult and injury

wound and wear and tear

of hurt and harm

of suffering

the pain of school

and college

or university

of being always in the minority

refusing to back down or give up

fighting to be equal

and get others to give you the space of equity

the pain of initiation

of growing up

of job and slavery and career

of always having to battle to survive

with each life being a war field - fought solo

of unrequited love

of lost love

of illness and disease

and on the way

the terrible, rending pain of meeting death for the first time

the horrible pain of losing loved ones

the pain of being at the receiving end

of injustice meted out to you

of being taken for a ride

of no one caring, no one bothered

the pain of being always under pressure in the world

to survive and then the pains of mistakes

and wrongs

done

an endless litany of pains

till you finally come one day to stop

counting the pains

as you get they are endless

and concentrate instead on

panacea

how pain makes you stronger

and all have it

and lessening it is the only way forward

facing it

or driving it back

to where it becomes only what it's supposed to

pain that makes you stronger each time

and pain that makes you learn to be better

In the end, your scars proclaim you

lived and thrived and even gave

but do not define you

Pain becomes an anodyne

Free from its pain your new life begins

My skin Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry challenge January 14, 2022, poem by Dr. Koshy AV

My skin

I have worn various skins down the years

Soft as a baby's

Hard as a rhino's

Sunlight as a wrapper

Oil as a healer

Which one should I claim,

remember?

Skin as covering

or skin as dry, and (un-) peeling?

(Skin burning and cracking, crackling in concentration camps,

the skin of history?)

Bare skin or skin as a 'hide'?

The colour of it or its feel or taste

and touch, and its metaphoric, metonymic scales?

4 more poems and a movie review and a meditation

 Today's meditation

John 9

1

As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth.

2

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

3

"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

4

As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.

5

While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Then Jesus healed him.

10“Please, Lord,” Moses replied, “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am slow of speech and tongue.” 11And the LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Or who makes the mute or the deaf, the sighted or the blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12Now go! I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say.”

When your child has autism which is not a disease but a neuroatypical state of being Jesus comes along to comfort you and tell you the truth. He has autism not as a result of his sins or his parents' sins. God made him to display his work through Him. This rolls a big burden of guilt away from the shoulders of the parents. They understand their job is to be the light of his world, and they have been sent to earth for a purpose. When they feel unfit for the job, they can remember Moses. He was sent on or given a mission though he felt unfit.

If God could use Moses so mightily, though he stammered, to be such a mighty leader, without healing him of his stammering, God can use anyone. He can use parents, siblings, caregivers and helpers and caretakers and support staff. He can use science, doctors, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists. He can use medicines and training and techniques. He works in and through them to help those who need it, overtime as it is still day and God works all the time doing only good things, as he showed Jesus so that we too can work, after seeing what he does and learning how to do it from him. When you struggle with thoughts of unworthiness or guilt or shame and are tempted to blame yourself or false beliefs or others for something others see as a curse or cross in your life remember God sees it as opportunity to bless more a person who is already a blessing and a crown where man only tries to find who to blame as the disciples did to Jesus as to who was responsible that the man was born blind from birth. They could neither heal him nor stop from wanting to blame and from Jesus they learned salvation is to stop blaming and start healing.

What God wants is availability, as someone once said, and not ability.

Movie report

I read Heidi long ago. To be honest when I started to watch the film I had no memory of any of it. However, I enjoyed the film. The story goes like this: there is a maker of church organs who makes his finest one for a church in Dorfli but as his daughter who used to sing beautifully falls in love with a man and runs away withdraws in anger and bitterness from playing anymore to his home in the mountain in the Swiss Alps and has no communication with anyone anymore, not even the priest. His daughter has a daughter she names Heidi whom she also teaches the songs she used to sing or Heidi picks them up by herself by listening but Heidi's mother and father pass away leaving her with her mother's sister. She tries to pass her on to Heidi's father's brother whose wife has died and lives with a governess and his daughter Clara who cannot walk.

When that fails she asks the priest to take Heidi to her grandfather. Her grandfather does not want her at first but Heidi makes friends with Peter, a goatherd who gives her a goat, and his blind mother who tells her her own mother was beautiful, kind and good. The grandfather softens to Heidi after hearing her sing. Heidi's father's brother comes to know of her and wants to take her to stay with him to help Clara have some company. He gets the grandfather to agree saying it will also get Heidi an education. The governess is in love with Heidi's father's brother. Heidi goes there and becomes friends with Clara after an initial fight, and the butler, the governess and her Dad's brother are all kind to her but she pines for her grandfather and Peter and his mother and the Alps. She asks to go back for two weeks and is taken there by the governess. The grandfather who is happy at first becomes unhappy on hearing she has returned only for two weeks. Peter is happy to see her again. On hearing why she wants to go back is to help Clara, the grandfather offers that Clara can come and stay with them. Clara is delighted. On coming to the grandfather's house Clara is one day left alone and starts to walk to get to her father who is coming to see her, bearing the pain. The grandfather gives her a huge stick to help her walk. The governess who was planning to go off as her boss didn't want to marry her as she is only a governess decides to stay and he changes his mind. The grandfather starts playing the organ in the church again. Heidi has miraculously healed his hurt, Clara, and also brought her father's brother and the governess whom she loves like a mother together, setting right all the things that had gone wrong in the past starting with her mother running off and her father's brother's wife's death by drowning, in which accident only Clara was saved. The movie also has a good character in the priest who refuses to give up on the organ maker and player who is the grandfather and main character in the story as in Jesus' parable of the lost lamb but finds him and brings him back.

The movie really took me back to a time when life was much simpler and people not so evil, when it was still possible to imagine and believe not only in a happy ending for one person but for all.

Switzerland, the Alps and the village is to die for, as natural scenery.

Promises Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم prompt January 12 poetry challenge.

Promises

lips

and temptation

and the promise not to yield

broken

bright eyes

and the promise

not to make them tearful

broken

try not to

make them

if every passing

whim

and fancy

takes you

like a storm

to not keep them

Lies January 11th 2022, Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr. Koshy AV

White sugar

coated

poison

Capsules of

death

Small sachets

of cocaine

Slope to a chasm

Weir for fishes

The mouth that smiles

after

when no one is looking,

born in the sewers

of the darkest labyrinths;

flowers of blackness that coil around once clean feet

pulling them down into swamps of defeat

from which none come out

strangled by conceit, and deceit,

their demise.

Un-riddle

Am I this?

Yes

Am I that?

Yes

Am I this and that?

Yes

Am I not-this?

Yes

Am I not-that?

Yes

Am I not-this-or-that?

Yes

Am I for this?

Yes

Am I not for this?

Yes

Am I not for that?

Yes

Am I for that?

Yes

Am I against that?

Yes

Am I not-against that?

Yes

Am I against this?

Yes

Am I not-against this?

Yes

Either- or

Neither-nor

Both-and

Am, Be

For/against

Not for/not against

Depends on who I/i am/is and is/am not

when it is taking place

who I am with

where I am then

why I am there

what for

how it is unfolding or emerging

whom all I am with

which, the outcome or goal?

relative- subjective

objective-absolute

non-belonging

non-being

When I wonder

why

I write

1000s

of poems,

God asks me

why

I think

he makes countless butterflies

Surprise January 10 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم Poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr Koshy AV

Surprise in her eyes

when I kissed my baby tight.

Surprise, surprise

to exchange might for love.

Did we not plight our troth

many years back?

Why then this surprise?

Love is costlier than gold

Love simmers in dying embers

that look like just coals

and sometimes fans up in a blaze

And the flames, fired up,

on a sudden surmise

surprise, surprise.

After all these years

one day, love shakes off

cobwebs and enters

love's reprise.