April 18th TSL's NAPOWRIMO Prompt by Lily Swarn Your favourite chair and why you like it

 TSL's NAPOWRIMO Prompt April 18th Prompt given by Lily Swarn

My Favourite Chair and Why I Like It.

My favourite chair was a red bean bag

They said it was from Italy

We bought it from Ikea

But the Ikea was in Jeddah

We were happy to buy it

My wife was with me and my children

We sent it back by air cargo

It sat in the front room of our rented house

In Bangalore

After a while, it developed a rent

The stuffing came out, small balls of white styrofoam pellets

We got it filled and the rents stitched

again and again

twice or thrice

It was everyone's favourite seat

You could call it a hit of a seat, not a hotseat

Mine, my wife's

My son's

My daughters'

My nephews' and nieces'

Their uncles and aunt's

And others on my wife's side of the family

And friends

Finally

Like all good things must

The rents and tears multiplied disastrously

Gaping mouths one too many

Too worn and torn to be repaired

We put it out of its misery

It came to (an/its/the) end

But remains green in my mind

(Though red)

And memory

Who said things die?

If I ever get the chance

I will recreate it

A huge red bean bag with styrofoam pellets in it to make it soft

Hugging you

Lovingly, like the ones who love you

One that accommodates to the shape

Of the person sitting on it

And leaves an impression on your seat

Favourite Chair Take 2 Porn Poem

I want my lap to be your favourite seat

Both of us wearing only skin.

I can feel your curves and you, my musculature

and together it seems we are catching fire and on heat

Something is stirring somewhere

And a blush steals across your cheek. I go bust

Get up and close the door

Driving the bolt in through the brass tack, and get back.

Favourite chair Take 3

That day when he went out he did not know

- let us not give him a name,

he is a child from any place violence torn -

another had too with a bomb in his hand,

another with his mother.

They all look the same, said those Others

When the soldiers aimed their guns

they mistook one for another

and he it was he who died;

not the bomb thrower

When his mother came on the scene

weeping fit to wake the dead

she took him in her lap

a 21st century living Pieta

and he held her and before he breathed his last

he said, "mother, your lap

was always my favorite chair"

But her tears did not wake him from the dead

any more than his words could

What was done remained done

And what was said made no difference

to anything or to anyone.

Oh, Candida

Satin smooth

And ivory

It decorated the floor

On four legs

On damask

A living, moving throne

Only one could it ascend

And upon it, regal

Be seated

Be allowed to pat, caress

That royal steed

One alone climb astride

To rock or ride that horse

Gleaming ivory its haunch

Only one could straddle

Only one could stoop to conquer

Tame or break it

Take it to war

Earn its love and saddle, buckle it

In the land of love and lust

One get it to trust

Version 2

Oh, Candida

Satin smooth

And ivory

It decorated the floor

On four legs

On damask

A throne

Only one could ascend

And upon it, regal

Be seated

Be allowed to pat, and caress

That steed

One alone climb astride

To rock or ride

Gleaming ivory haunch(es)

Only one straddle

Stoop to conquer

Tame or break it

Take to war

Earn it; saddle, buckle it

In the land of love and lust

One, get it to trust

Abecedarian poem TSL Napowrimo prompt by Kashiana Singh April 17th and an old ekphrastic poem plus another small new poem

 Abecedarian poem TSL's Napowrimo Prompt by

Kashiana Singh

April 17

After bathing comes daydreaming

Ever fascinating:

"Green hexagons in Jeremiads.

Krypton lost.

Meursault necks.

On. Pluto

Quails. Racccoons?!"

Stop. Time unspools.

Verity/verily wan, xenic.

You, zen.

Fauna hid in the tall green grasses

April 17 2013

with fauns

and yellow- leaved satyrs

but one day she met her nemesis

in a dark man who fair women in a pool

desired

and fauna fell in love

fell ill

one day fauna died

fauna is dead, like god, they said

and pan, the great goat, with his flute is too

only the dark man and his maids in the pool

survived to tell the truth you view - (you view was originally to the blue)

Version 2

Fauna hid in the tall green grasses

with fauns

and yellow-leaved satyrs.

But one day she met her nemesis

in a dark man whom fair women in a pool

desired

and Fauna fell in love,

fell ill.

Fauna died.

Fauna is dead, like God, they said

and Pan, the great goat, with his flute is too.

Only the dark man and his maids in the pool

survive to tell the truth you view -

Painting by James Price Waterhouse (I think)

Close your book

April 17 2017

Close your book

Focus on life

Not on the ones who did/do not care

On the failures

Or the strife

But on the ones who did

The victories

And the

"Abundant Life".

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.