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Week #40 Prompt 'Your favourite word is the title of your poem'

There really was no favorite word I could think of really. This was written in the last moment, just so I didn't lose a week.

Blessing

Have an extraordinary life
days of sun, clean air, 
breezy nights journeying into misty
mornings,
a love of long walks, the one beside,
but never on a run from – situations, yourself.
meaningful talks,
lots to share,
always helping or a way to discovering what’s divine,
work that takes you deep into the night
and through the breadth of the day,
leanings on and dealings with
answerable people with the right answers
the ones that keep their homes clean,
lots of art to fill vacant spaces,
above all music, sometimes slow and melodic
and of course, poetry.


Prompt #41 'Emptiness Sounds Like'
(received a special shout-out for this one, along with a few other poets)

1.
Emptiness sounds like 
words spoken with negligent
concern, saying the change in sight 
is part of normal ageing.
It was laughable, really
when my stray grey hair 
swished ahead in confirmation.
Because I was happy.
It seemed a pilgrim’s journey 
on its half way mark, a few 
milestones and with some luck
more landmarks to view.
2.
Emptiness also sounds like
the quiet beginning of new places
waiting to be filled in.
The land being dug, the brick being 
laid and the uncertainty whether the 
wall would wear that painting. 
The echoes in a hollow basement
the sounds that jump back at you
your past that taunts your dreams
and the shiver you feel
in your blanket of fear.
3.
I have watched winters come 
early and felt the emptiness. 
The ceaseless dripping tap,
the neglected lunches, the repetitive dinners
the lady of the house was sick and no one
cared to read the signs.
My old man reduced from vanity into
acceptance and fear, not
understanding either,
the order of time collapsing.
These have happened before
and I have held the emptiness. 
Emptiness sounds like hungry 
crackling flames.
And I don’t like that sound.

Prompt #42 - 'We Rise Because'

We rise because……

Imagine nothing changes
we walk the same road
we live in the same city
we eat our meals with the 
same people and the
language calls them family.
We rise, move things along
disturb patterns and arrangements
we move for sanity and happiness
both, we believe live on the other side
of some perennial movement.

On the other, imagine everything changes
Friends change. Desires emerge, from depths
we didn’t know shook their nights;
more is lost in life, than in the cascades 
of closures liberated of life; 
brothers turn strangers, a past falls into an abyss
people move, get lives you didn’t;
chasing priorities, you weren’t;
everyone chooses the more exciting, 
you never counted;
suddenness peeped behind doors 
ever watchful, ready to pounce, 
deliver its parcel of shock. 

Again we Rise. Rebuild, realize, 
fragility and endings, struggle with
the precise moment when our
scorn turned to a bleeding yearn.
And a few more years adds wisdom,
arouses an ancient sentiment
the ones that were always coded
between the lines of your palm
cradling your palm, 
you alone are yours alone
come alone to go alone.

Prompt #43 - 'Side A/Side B' (This poem got a #3 ranking :)) 

Shuffling, shuffling through a mad desk
the serene silence of a house
pens that cling, have run out of ink
pencils beckon the beloved touch.
Floors swell with images unseen
hands drop, the feet stamps on orders
the uplifted chair falls-a-thud
rationality has won this round. 
It’s the needed conundrum
to seek exact measure in words
tweak the left, pinch the right forever
let out streams from a heart patched up
and fountains from a mind fragmented
please the senses and say nothing
delight the mind and say nothing
or say something, anything at all
everything at once.

Prompt#44 - 'Hope is Wearing new Shoes Today'

Hope is wearing new shoes today

Sleep, my dainty 
eyelids, negate the world.
The hour is here of its nightly visit
it doesn’t know tiptoe
jumping over so many rabbit holes
riding with dash, 
stopping for a few moments 
then flying outside back into the darkness
a frightened bird on a sill
taking a noisy flight, to the sound of a sneeze.
That’s all that lasted 
of its arrival.
A funeral home on my heavy eyes
That have now seen too many nights
pass away, too many fattening and thinning 
of the moon. 
So how do I trap my runaway rest
when fidgety hands play 
with building blocks inside my head
breaking and making, an unclear design
How do I stop them, from telling me 
There may be no end.
Until, when in the morning, a shooting ray 
blinks wayward upon sleepy shoes, a small lit up corner
a wonder unto itself
though unlikely to speak
whisper in words I had last heard in stories
in the shelter of a forgotten hearth
reminders to wake
I smile, get out with my shoes
my steady steps and a forever friend.


Prompt #45 - 'Poem titled "Epilogue" in 50 words or less.' 

I actually wrote 3 poems in response to this prompt. The first one was a mistake because I had somehow missed the instruction of 50 words. 

1st Poem-

Eventually as everything erupts
except queries on all the harbored myths;

Passions breakdown, conquests end and perhaps 
the thrill for the search of the pearl is lost;

In plain sight in our plain lives
unraveled in no explicable pattern;

Longings disappear, intrigues fulfill,
some abandon, some flourish against hope
(as for me, my fiction resolved);

Of all the calculations and figuring on life
the jokes on fruitlessness and the whys in 
the silence of the receding laughter, we live to exalt; 

Gathered in those hurried bouquets of memories 
in our travelled hands, the remains of our richest discovery;

Underpinnings of the love that we were so capable 
of every time that we were called out to love; 

Even as this dreamscape slowly cracks
we smile at that one thought and remain proud

2nd Poem-

My socks with holes
Needed to be thrown.
Were advised such “Inko Pheko.”
Instead, instinctively 
I went for the needle and a pink thread
For new-born colours
After, God knows how many years
To repair. And just did that. Repaired.
Didn’t think about the silliness. 
Those socks had kept me warm. 
They again do.

3rd Poem-

This is the fork, through my brightly lit
roundabout path, where we 
part our ways. 
I have put you down but carry you inside
and so long as your medicine lasts,
blood flows,
this strength I’d mustered will keep me standing
after which I will have to sit.
Write me an epilogue too.

It was such a beautiful surprise when APM, included this 3rd poem in one long poem consisting of a string of poems from various poets to create the Poem of the Week for the last week of poetry for the year 2018. I will definitely spend time missing this year of poetry. Thanks to APM and the beautiful people behind it. The following was the poem.... Enjoy!

Epilogue (A Poem In 9 Parts)

i.
shortsighted as we are,
we search for conclusion in the middle of the story

placing stockings haphazardly as though
closure might appear if you check again later,

our wishes aren't simpler now,
they're just more abstract,
and this is the end of nothing

just a new number to remember

ii.

The herd has left.
It's now in this void that
my poverties exist.
There are innocuous admissions,
jocular recitatives,
an abandoned cup of tea.

Million is a number,
this letter will never reach you.

The most shameless poems have already been written.

iii.

Now I can let go of the crayon, chalk, felt-tipped
ends of myself. The clay, the sand, the lego bricks,
dust I passed off as proof of magic. No longer
am I making, no longer are my hands heard. I’m here
only to unwrap this last testimony of lived words.

iv.

Dirt on my palm – the earth!
Water, mud, clay, sand, gravel, dust – all matter
a testament of life embroiled in changing.

The epilogue, a continuous dialogue among the living!

v.

I don’t believe the thread ever

breaks. Light continues to
stream in through the oculus. Parrots
copulate and squawk. A pockmarked
moon still rises behind tall towers.
Nights oscillate between howling and healing.
Don’t climb mountains waiting to be
transfigured into something holier.
All deaths are a small fib. Relax.

vi.

This is the fork, through my brightly lit
roundabout path, where we
part our ways.
I have put you down but carry you inside
and so long as your medicine lasts,
blood flows,
this strength I’d mustered will keep me standing
after which I will have to sit.
Write me an epilogue too.

vii.

Towards the end
my sister told me that she was so tired of being a person.
Turn me into a painting or a poem, she said, her last words to me.
I'm no artist,
but sister, each word of this poem
smells like the sound of your name.
There are no goodbyes for us
my dear Nova.
Wherever you are, we will always be
KoraandNova
NovaandKora.

viii.

Till death does me it's part,
I shall collect skeletons and corpses
of ants.
Some shall receive burials,
And some shall get cremated.

So when I die,
There shall be another ant collector
Who would offer my corpse
A burial,
And would scribble over my tombstone
‘Gone like a celestial nothing’.

ix.

Seas
Become mountains,
Rivers run dry,
Sweeping sand across history
Oaths are breathed in the light of long dead stars
To
Be forgotten.
Our worlds are
Built of morning mist.
We love, and lose and ache and will love again.