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.

Dark Room

 Dark Room January 9th Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr Koshy AV

In the dark room of the

mind - the throne of thoughts

or heart -the seat of feelings and emotions

dwell dark, unspeakable things

In the dark room of the soul

or spirit

these dark ideas and moving images

or words, thoughts and emotions

of evil lusts, desires and their roots

lurk

tempting by taking on fair disguises

to make you fall into

the abyss

that has no floor

Only innocent doves

shrewd snakes

can bypass these doors of temptation

that when you cross them

contain bystanders

who call out to you their wares

and even try to guess your inner name

to make out they have supernatural powers

These are the dark-room dwellers, outside

When you are in the dark-room

or meet the ones who try to lure you in

you come to the awareness

that some have emerged

into the light

from Plato's cave

Either they never acquiesced

to the dark room's enticements

from when they were children

like Samuel or Mary

or when grown-up

realized

the dark-room has/is a trapdoor that opens under your feet suddenly

to the abyss

and it lost its fascination for them

who were till then playing with it

as if it is a toy

when it is a suicidal, slow slope

and so they left

taking along with them

any ready to come

to swell the ranks of the ones

who no longer want to be deluded and plagued

by the dark room's meaningless allurements

and charm.

 on the other side of...

January 8 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

on the other side of midnight...

there is the first streak of the light of a new dawn

and on the other side of doubt

there is rest from feeling torn

broken and always forlorn

on the other side of the grave

is a world without hurt or harm

Fall January seventh Koshur Qalam poetry challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

I fall to pieces

I fall into your arms

In the fall

I rise to fall

I fall to rise

Part of my never-ending novel

Come with me, said Jesus, and I will show you...

I met Jesus at the crossroads.

Jesus, I said, I want to follow you. I want to be like you.

He laughed. He had a full laugh. The man of sorrows had a laugh that was different from that title that someone had given him. One more hat to wear and throw away, no one could box anyone in into being only this, that or the other.

Come, sit down here with me, he said.

Then he did a surprising thing.

He took a small needle from the pocket of his robe, the smallest I had seen, and a thread and told me: thread this needle and you can follow me.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle sometimes than a thread. I tried and tried but could not get it to go through the needle's eye. The thread seemed to grow thicker and thicker and the slit in the needle smaller and smaller.

Then he took the needle from me and put his eye to its eye and

laughed. His eye could be seen through it.

Then he threaded it.

Then he stepped through it and vanished.

After a couple of seconds he came back out of the needle.

Do you really want to follow me, he asked.

Yes, I said.

Even after this?

Yes, I said. I want to be like you at all costs.

It's not easy but it is simple, he said. It is a matter of practice.

Learn to do these three things. And you will automatically become like me. Thread the needle. Look through its eye and see what I see. Then go through it and come back.

I shall try, I said.

After trying a lot more times, I managed to thread the needle finally.

From easy to difficult first, he said.

He was smiling.

What did you learn?

To not give up, to never give in, to keep trying, to not get upset or angry at not getting it right the first time, or many, many times, and patience, I said.

Yes, he said and persistence, endurance, long-suffering, and perseverance and... He laughed.

And what?

I don't know, I said.

Humility, he said. You can't even thread a needle, then how do you expect to become like me?

Then I laughed too.

Aye, aye, sir, I said.

Now to the next two things.

Yes, he said. Before you go through a door you need to see what lies behind it. On the other side. Beyond.

I looked through the eye of the needle. The slit was so small but the world beyond was so huge it seemed to stretch away to infinity.

Wow, I said.

He smiled.

If you look, you will see. Alter your perception. And you will get clearer vision. You will see the unseen that others don't see.

I began to understand.

And the last thing?

That will take you some time. But come with me and see. First. Then you will pick it up. God is the God of the impossible.

How long did it take you?

Many years, he replied.

We both smiled at each other and set off. I left everything behind in a flash. No regrets. This was what I had been looking for.

(To be continued)

Today's meditation: It says "Jesus was faithful as a Son over his household" in the book of Hebrews.

Today morning Reuel came and knocked on the door. He cannot have his tea made for him or make tea for himself. I rubbed the sleep kinks out of my eyes and went down and said "ok Reuel make your chai." He was so happy being impatient as it being a Saturday we were all tardy to get up. He has no such tardiness being young and full of joie de vivre and not knowing what day it is probably. So we made chai together with the usual ups and downs. Then he made his egg by himself. I went upstairs and when I came down he was making his next dish the way he likes it and has been taught to. However it got a bit burnt and to my surprise he threw it all out as he did not find it to his satisfaction. Then I made him the same kind of thing. While I was watching him the verse about Jesus came to my mind. Reuel does what he has learned from Anu, Danie and Jo and Abi, and others, quite well even if by himself when no one is watching and is true to the spirit of what he was taught. He does not forget and does not regress and tries to be perfect at it, does the best he can, though he does not always succeed. He does this when supervised but even otherwise.

Jesus was faithful to God in the same way as Reuel is to his mentors, in God's presence he was faithful in heaven before he came down and in God's seeming absence on earth as an invisible being, and it is this hidden life of his, in his thoughts and unrecorded actions and deeds and works and reactions that pleased God to make him who had been made a little lower than angels for a time on earth the only human being to have the power to resurrect himself from the dead even after three nights and crowned with glory. Hindu yogis know a dead person can be resurrected after a few hours, if only a few have gone by as Jesus did, but none know anywhere in the world how to bring themselves back to life, especially after such a long period and proving it by doing it. Jesus is the only one who did it. We know that that was God's reward to him for his faithfulness to make it clear to all men that he was His Son who had been faithful over all his household in heaven, over God's celestial beings we call angels and over all who came into touch with him on earth, and even when he went into paradise after his death and Sheol or hell to preach the gospel to those there who had not heard it in Noah's time and to get the key to hell and to eat of the fruit of the tree of Paradise, mystical truths only those who understand things of the Spirit will understand even as I say them. A whole lifetime of being faithful to God in the hidden life gave him all authority and power from God over all in heaven and on earth. Down the ages, he has shared this glory with a few in each time and place and country and from each creed and language and ideology or philosophy or worldview who like him are faithful even to the death in obeying God accepting their sonship or daughterhood as of the family of God. To want to be in that number is not pride but good sense. The difference between him and others is that he wanted to be like "God who is light in whom there is not darkness at all" whom he knew as His Father but not through any shortcut or robbery as others want but by making himself of no reputation, when found in fashion or appearance as a human being, and humbling himself even to the point of death, death on a cross as someone cursed by mankind and as a common criminal of his time. Thus, it became a symbol of salvation, of the crossing out of the ego, not before man but God, a total refusal to do one's own will and only God's will instead, and bear God's yoga which makes one meek and lowly and learn of God bringing rest. This rest will also lead to resurrection not just spiritual in that your name will live on forever (even though you did not want it) but physical, not after three days but in the first or second resurrection and it was this hope that made St. Paul, for example, strive on relentlessly to see if he too could somehow lay hold of it, a kind of insanity to all, but not to ones who understand the inner life it calls one to as it leads to blessings for millions of others on earth as they suffer by lessening the suffering of others.

I have come a far distance from where I started which is about Reuel but to sum up my desire is very simple, to learn from Jesus and Reuel to be good in my inner life, thought life, and hidden life when no one is looking and not even or only when others are and one is forced to conform to society and so is not a bad person. Reuel does it naturally but I need to learn it. To not seek the honour of men but the honour that comes from God only.

Poem: I never want to die.

 I never want to die (January sixth, Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV)

"I never want to die"

is the last tempter

but after one crosses

him/it too

the fourth one

portrayed by Eliot well

and overcomes him

Satan or Mara

or the one Nanak wrestled with

portals open

Rose petals strewn on the path

raining down from heaven

the sole of the foot in touch

with mother earth

mindful in the here and now

where you are with the wild animals

and angels come and minister to you,

playing the music of celestial, cosmic tunefulness

Thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh for the influence.

Twigs and Do not be ashamed of your ugliness. (2 poems)

 A companion poem to "Do not be ashamed of your beauty."

Do not be ashamed of your ugliness*.

It is the only thing of yours

people won't fight you for

to take away from you.

It is not like the ugliness of youth

that passes away like spring

when acne and freckles no longer sting.

"Age cannot wither nor beauty stale"

your ugliness.

Guard it as what it is:

treasure

from the dragon's hoard

that is the most precious piece

for behind it may be hid

as in the case of Pope

a startling poem like 'The Rape of the Lock'

or as in the case of the Hunchback

of Nortre Dame

the only heart made of pure gold.

* Thanks to RAVINDRA ARORA for the inspiration.

Twigs January 5 Koshur Qalam challenge Prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

She gathered the twigs

for firewood

She wended her way

to her hut

In the big-afar-city

in air-conditioned rooms

they decided,

they fenced her out

She no longer could

collect twigs for her hearth

For them, she didn't exist

For her, she did.

Ditty and Two Other Poems

 Do not be ashamed of your beauty.

It won't last long.

It is the beauty of youth that fades away

like a song,

that withers when left

love-lorn,

that like a flower is born

only from the stem

to be torn.

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 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

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.