Three small but lovely poems, the second one published in Glomag recently.

 The mother is brown

The seed is blown

The tree is born

Earth, wind, fire

The water, drawn

The husbandry, fed

The grass, by feet worn

Earth, fire, wind

The ether sings

Of gales, rings & ripples

Of radio waves

Fire, wind, earth

Five elements

En-circle my life

Will en-fold my death

Wind, earth, fire

Glory Sasikala

GloMag

S7Sposcdnsorehd

There's no place for hope on this Earth? Sad...

Ampat Koshy

 January 2021

HOPE

Hope is the white dove

that no longer exists

with the green olive leaves in its beak

that has to be dreamed into being from above

into a new country

that too must be dreamed into being

where she can find a resting place for her feet

and her mate can join.

Adapting

What is life

without love

sex

romance

and praising God for making a tree

as only He can

or without standing and staring

when feminine beauty passes by

and not writing poetry?

Published in Stefan Bohdan's international anthology Paradise on Earth

 Thanks

Stefan Bohdan

for including me in the International Anthology Paradise on Earth. The first poem was written for a TSL prompt last year. These have just been published in Paradise on Earth: An International Anthology. There is a story behind it, I had published the first one on my blog and then sent these three of which the other two were written later to an Indian erotic anthology which had rejected it as I don't fit Indian ideas of what good poetry writing should be like due to Indian editors' ingrained and often even unknown to themselves biases but the same day I saw Stefan's call and did not know him at all but thought I would send and in an hour it was made known to me by him that he had accepted it. When man closes one door God opens another. Grateful to Stefan always and to be in such a fine anthology, one of the best I have seen in a long, long time after Brian Wrixon's , Daniela Voicu's, Ra Sh's, and one or two others in which Santosh Bakaya appeared and Scott Thomas Outlar and Aparna Lanjewar Bose and our own (TSL's )

The Significant Anthology

and Umbilical Chords and Muffled Moans and Roseate Sonnet anthologies.

I will buy and share the links when he releases them. Meanwhile, enjoy my poems that I promise are worth reading! to all

https://www.facebook.com/ampat.koshy/posts/10165019167280006 please read the poems here.

I might change one line the penultimate line, in the Sakhi poem now to 'nothing and no one does'.

My poem for today's TSL Prompt by Pratyush Mishra which was a brilliant one.

 16 April TSL Napowrimo...Prompt:- the three exercises poem.

It's more of an exercise in three steps to unblock and flow on paper.

Step 1:-

Jot down one line on paper as clearly as you can about the current state of your mind.

Jot down three appropriate emotions that you are feeling with respect to your state of mind.

Jot down the first three things you see around yourself in your immediate surrounding.

Step 2:-

Imagine that the three objects around you are personifications/manifestations of those three emotions that you have jotted down.

Step 3:

Using material /lines /concepts generated in the first two steps write a poem not exceeding 20-25 lines.

-given by

Pratyush Mishra

The current state of my mind is lethargic

Three emotions: ennui, lassitude, apathy

Three objects: Nutella glass got free by buying it as the nutella came in it, Casio alarm clock, mobile phone Samsung A 30

The Glass is empty

It's too much effort

to get up and clean it

heat water in my kettle

pour it in

put in the three-in-one coffee powder

the cover of which I have to slit with a scissor

and then to drink it

watching it go again

from full to empty.

The Alarm Clock has green

phosphorescent hands

imitating the slush

and sluggishness in my mind

while the black borders of the numbers and the silver second needle

only accentuate

my endless procrastination

against a background of white and a back of black and silver

The Mobile Phone has a black face

like tar and black coffee

I remember Gray and Keats

wrapped in melancholy

and wonder if my fate

will be the same -

words writ on sand

washed away by the water

and an elegy in a graveyard

while the birds in sympathy twitter

then fall silent

while somewhere a Glass lies unused

and an Alarm Clock

no longer rings,

like a Mobile Phone's blackened, blacked-out face

merely confused.

April 15th TSL's NAPOWRIMO My poem on Arvind Passey's Prompt "Turning inwards is not more or new"

 15th April TSL Napowrimo's prompt

"Turning inwards is not more or new."

-

Arvind Passey

Yes, turning inwards is not more or new

It is absolutely needful

Take the knife and open a window

On your chest and look in at/to your heart

If you have courage, be bold, clear-eyed

When you turn in you see the truth

That you are nobody and nothing

It is a black hole inside

It is emptiness made more void, waste, chaos, and darkness

Viciousest vices, sins, perversion/s, worstnesses, what not!

Pitch and tar, and hellfires burning

The need to seek honour, get credit, be praised

The need to be loved, to belong, and be accepted

The idolatries of the superficial, shallow, selfish spirit and soul

The need to receive flattery true or false that stinks to high heaven

There is nothing good in there

Nothing you can use to help anyone

Least of all yourself

All inside good for only one thing

To be condemned to death entirely

Turn in, tune out, drop by, do

And then in your utter helplessness and hopelessness

Having found nothing new with which to build something about which to rejoice

Having no provender or material to be a builder

And having done nothing more than what you should have done or finally did

Surrender and find yourself filled with strength

Not your own

Some call it grace

It will carry you through

A Tribute for/to Dr. Ambedkar on his birthday

 I remember watching

your life's story

with my mother

on our small portable black and white Keltron TV

She made me watch

She said, you will learn something, son

Watch carefully

She was learning too, with me

I loved watching things together

with her

on that small TV that was probably all my Dad could afford back then

in that small house

in that small room

So Ambedkar sat

in the back of the classroom

and the displeased teacher

threw his cane at him

as to beat him directly with it

would mean

when he went home in the evening

he would have to take a bath

before entering his house

as touching Ambedkar

a small boy (who had dared to come to school to learn

instead of wanting to remain what his religion had said he should be

wanting to get out of the trap others had laid for him)

would make the big teacher unclean

And the small boy?

He grew up to be Dr. Ambedkar

whose birthday it is today

left Hinduism

which made perfect sense to me

refused to cut off his thumb and give it to that teacher

unlike Ekalavya

and so took the next step

A small step for him

A giant one for mankind

As significant as

Armstrong's on to the moon

against caste

against religious or any other kind of discrimination

against superiority complexes

Jai Ambedkar!

April 14th TSL NAPOWRIMO Prompt by Preeti S Manaktala The Day I met my Soul (first Draft of a poem by me)

 April 14th TSL NAPOWRIMO Prompt by

Preeti S Manaktala

The Day I met my Soul (first Draft)

Today I met my soul

It was Beckett's birthday

He unstapled it

But Dali unhinged it

Women had eyes for nipples

Which might sound quite cliché and lame

But some had butterflies between their legs

Which was simply insane

The day I met my soul

My first love had just ended

I took a calmative

Textes pour rien mended

The day I met my soul

I was not waiting for Godot

but for Hardy who was tardy

As to why the Mayor* was tragic

The day I met my soul

I found endless women

Nefertiti, Cleopatra

Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor

All in the neck of the woods

Watching the wings sprout on my back

The bloodstains looking to each like countries

Columbia and Spain, Yemen and Yucatan

It made them fall in love with me

And act like floozies, crazy!

The day I met my soul

My poetry started screaming

As if in ecstasy

People said he is dreaming

But songs through my head were streaming

Of the river of destiny

A million frogs were crossing

The scorpions on their backs were stinging

I felt it was the apocalypse

Fate and a flower's calyx

The day I met my soul

A clarinet was playing

I was kissing a lady's clavicle

She let me, it was maddening

To watch dew-drops on her upper lip

Taking the shape of a mustache

Patterns were forming in the chintz curtains

Of the house in which we were coupling

The windows were making music and playing

After I did it I started snoring

But she was adamantly braying

Of some place where it was raining

I never loved anyone

I told her while I was sleeping

But I slept with many

It made her so angry she brained me

I told her my soul is waiting

To take me to the periphery

Of all knowledge and knitting

Come trip with me, pretty sweeting

But she was feeling woozy

I wanted to tell her something

But my soul was stimming

It did not want company

Ill seen ill said, it muttered

Wortsward ho, it whispered

Beckett through me was speaking

The day I met my soul

*The novel by Thomas Hardy, not the character

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Poems by me for TSL NAPOWRIMO Prompts 12 and 13 given by Shalini Samuel and Meenakshi Mohan

 April 11th Prompt by

Shalini Samuel

for TSL's Napowrimo on Lovingly, I hate you

A girl I knew

She stole my poem

And posted it

As if hers to 'shew'

Lovingly, I hate you.

I thought

for thinking my poem good enow

to be 'stole'

but you are just a thief, asshat

and a bad one, at that!

When asked by someone

did you steal

she said no, never

They all believed her

or pretended to

as that is how it goes

out here.

They will, hatingly, not haltingly, love such fakes

as it was not their poem that got 'stole', the apes

But hearing this

and the acclaim she got

despite or for

her thieving ways

I changed my mind

Now hatingly, I hate her

and all such haters, and the hateful

No love need be lost on such people.

Napowrimo April 13 Prompt Rainbow given by Meenakshi Mohan

North is Violet, a flower

North West indigo, from which came ink

East of North Green, the parade of envy

East is Blue, and porn is too

South of East is Yellow, and fallow

South is Orange, fruit and colour

Sou'wester is a toofan of red

Black and White must be the pris(on)m of the West

A Rainbow of land and air

Undercover, without doubt, hangs fire.

April 11 TSL's Napowrimo Prompt Roseate Sonnet by Rohini John on Lives Lost during Lockdown

 April 11th NAPOWRIO TSL Prompt by Rohini John Lives Lost in Lockdown (A Roseate Sonnet)

That day he came up, my friend, up the stairs

I went out of my room to meet him at once

She is gone, he said. We hugged

We wept. His mother, afar. Exile burns.

Nuzha too died here of Covid. Just a few days before

She was a colleague

Then she was no more

Another one gone to lockdown days and death's league

Two days back my friend messaged me

John Evans was gone. Only fifty-seven. Three

Roses who passed away in this strange hiatus

One, the last, an old classmate, whom I last in his house met

Some years back, when his mother was alive yet

Eaves of life and death. These day's vagitus.

April 10 Napowrimo TSL Prompt by Feby Joseph ekphrastic poem on Seurat's Bathers

 April tenth The Bathers at Asnières by Georges Seurat TSL's Napowrimo Ekphrastic prompt given by

Feby Joseph

.

A Roseate Sonnet as a tribute to Georges Seurat, Impressionist painter who was accepted only after his death as a great painter and founder of the pointillist school of painting which has no followers after him as only he knew its intricacies properly.

In the distance the factory chimney belches smoke

But it has not yet encroached on this sylvan scene

Sufficiently to give us alarm and no hope

Nature is still ruling and serene.

He draws no faces but they say these are workers

What he gives us is painting where the shadows and light are luminous

A masterpiece of pointillism and balaye brushstrokes

A world full of colour and the concretization of silence and still(-life)ness

What did it cost you, Georges Seurat? How many versions

Did you have to paint before hitting on this final masterpiece that was rejected?

Reasons. Was it one of them, for your early death at 31,

Or must great art be always misunderstood before it is accepted and rewarded?

'Sunday at La Grand Jatte' and 'Bathers at Asnières' have I gazed and gazed on

Eye-drunk, at the Beauty of Art-Life, by you; perfect composition composed.

April 9th 4 Poems Prompt TSL's Napowrimo Ripped Jeans given by Radhakrishnan sir

 Take 4 with Radhakrishnan Krishnan

Ripped Jeans
We bonded over ripping up jeans
She ripped mine up
And I, hers.
It was ripping.

Ripped Jeans Take 3 with

Radhakrishnan Krishnan

I want my daughters to be free to wear what they like

Ripped jeans or mini skirts or bikinis or swimsuits

Or hotpants or shorts or showing cleavage or whatever

I really don't care if they only wear body paint and tattoos or nothing

But as a father I know out there are sharks

And sharks are violent and only know to be predators

What are the ways to deal with the sharks

Cut/Rip off any part of their bodies to control them

That they try to use to hurt women

This may seem violent but is a good deterrent

May even be a good detergent

Art, porn, or video games as outlets cannot lead to salvation in some types of criminals as the effect can swing both ways

In some to pretending in society they are not bad and in some to actions that were inspired by all the darkness in those three

Only law and the iron hand helps

As a father when my daughters hit the streets alone

In ripped jeans and high style

I want to build a wall

Divide the world into safe zone and danger zone

Keep the sharks out

And let only the seals and porpoises in

who believe in love, romance, mutual consent, fidelity, loyalty, love for children and other things

I even suggest sex profiling, surveillance, trackers implanted and electric shocks

For the criminally minded as is done to paedophiles

In movies when they go out on bail in the US

They don't belong on land

In heaven only houris should be allowed to dance

gambol and play

protected by their guardians who are fatherly or eunuchs.

April 9th TSL NAPOWRIMO prompt Ripped Jeans given by

Radhakrishnan Krishnan

and my poem on it Take 2

When I was a child

My dad and mom told me

Monae, Jesus says

Never look at a woman

With lust in your eyes

Because it is better to

Go to heaven

With two eyes

Than with none

As if you do feel tempted to look with lust

You had better pluck them out

So you won't commit that sin again

I took them seriously

So even if you put a naked woman

As beautiful as Rambha, Urvashi, Thilottama or Menaka

In front of me

I know the problem is inside me

And keep my eyes pure

And look away

To obey Jesus and my parents

I pray not to be led into temptation

And to overcome sin inside

This has saved me many times

I'm not the only one

Gandhi was saved from his own incontinence and lack of self control and lust and lack of sexual discipline by saying Ram's name

When he went to meet a sex worker

Once

And I have a friend here

Whose mother taught him

Never to act dishonourably to a woman

We don't fall or yield so easily

And there were many men in the older generation who did not, either; who loved only one woman, their wives, all their long lives.

And I know a mother

with two sons

who taught them

never to do anything bad to women

It's not the ripped jeans

that is the cause of lust or rape

but sexual desire

inside you,

you human beings

that if you let grow into a beast

can lead you to harm

and to hurt others

not knowing

for everything

there is a right time and a right place

and right person

Don't make ripped jeans your cover!

The cover for your lust

your sin

and your sexual misbehaviour

molestation, harassment, excess and sexual misdemeanor

and your saying men will be men

and boys will be boys

all lies

to make women

your slaves to use as you please

when they are not!

Instead learn from Jesus and Ram

and Buddha and Sufi saints

or keep on blaming women

asking them to dress modestly

when it is you who are evil, sinful, lustful and immodest in your thoughts!

Ripped Jeans April 9 Prompt TSL's Napowrimo

In others' homes it's different

In mine it is different

My daughters wear ripped jeans

When I open my mouth itself

As a conscientious father

Before I can say a word

My wife takes their side

She sings from Mary Poppins

"Cast off the shackles of yesterday

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!"

And from My Fair Lady

"They can still rule the land without you.

Windsor Castle will stand without you.

And without much ado

We can all muddle through without you."

My daughters join in raucously

What a cacophony!

I cover my ears

I flee

"Temporarily lost at sea"

At all my Madonnas who want to be free

Beating a hasty retreat

For now

O, Phew!