A Halloween Poem

A Halloween Poem
On my way up on a staircase which I believed led me to heaven
I met a woman, descending as it were from a Dantesque hell.
"Does this way not lead to heaven", I asked.
"And what made you think it does not lead to Heaven?" she asked.
I looked at her twice over to make sure that Hell had not turned her into an insane wreck that saw Hell as Heaven and perhaps Heaven as Hell.
She too gave me a keen look and said,
"It was verily a Heaven, but a Heaven made by men. A woman is allowed only if she pulls on a veil. Then they attribute all devious charms and snares to her and make her play out a role
enacting a charmer and a witch, an angel and a bitch,
a mother and a whore, everything all at once. A slave to their passion, but scourged to damnation if I dared to utter the name of my Sacred Love."
She paused for a moment and asked, “And pray, what makes you seek the way to Heaven?"
"I am seeking my Love I lost on Earth; and I am sure of finding Him there. I am sure of finding Him there in Heaven," said I.
She laughed the weirdest laugh.
"If He loved you true, and you loved Him back,
go to Hell; you will surely find Him there.
Hell is the place for lovers to live in eternal damnation
to completely drink their cup to the dregs".

Woman

Woman
Woman, once a pyramid of rising rapture,
when exactly in your history did they block
your flame and turn it into dying embers
emitting pillars of smoke?
When did they clip your wings and blast your fragrance to turn on the fumes of poison?
Woman, who came to earth in triple light
of wisdom, well-being and carnal desire
when did they succeed in suppressing your potency ,
 bottle it with a cork and screw, and whenever you tried to break the cover, who taught them to hack you to death and call out," Look, this is how we deal with hysteria?"
Throughout ages they built myths, both hideous and deceptively beautiful.
The Angel of forms and the secret of hidden ethers,
you are still what you are, in spite of the destroyers and deniers,
your voice resonated:
"I am awake, not dead."

Let the waters hold

Let The waters hold

Dusk in silently;
As yet the waters are still
and the sky holds light enough
just to cradle your image
before the shadows of the swamp sweep in.

Sushama Karnik

Kim E originally shared the image

The Muse

The Muse

Stifling the cool morning with the breath of summer
she appears in the sky,
A desire frozen into a bright icicle,
not having found a place on earth,
she rested in the shifting shapes of the clouds,
hiding between her veiled thighs
the lamp of fire that burns without a smoke :
the muse ascended to unseen heights!
Did I fall in love with a dream?

In the morning...

In the  morning...as a farm-hand leaves for the town

In the morning a goods train rushes past the farms and the meadows, the light scarcely dragging into view their placid green.

The borders of the rail-track are strewn with lamentable cartons and warped plastic bottles. The rumble of the wheels and the rumble in the sky are hardly alike

But the ear and the eye are starving for a sound.

A mysterious guard has hurled in passing, his jaded cargo of unwanted metal trunks on both sides of the track in a careless frenzy of freedom as if he was getting rid of a life-long burden of sorrows.

Close behind the hills the sky is still grey, but warming up to memory, before the brother dropped a hurriedly scribbled note on a sepia page of a dormant note-pad.

A window opens and the wind cracks like an unsuspected presence of a glass-bottle falling on the ground with an encounter in the dark.

There is no legacy left for the farm-hand except for the note of departure of a brother who left before the day-break to avoid the turbulent good-bye.

The farms and the crops await with a heavy breath the long-delayed arrival of rains.

The brother has vanished far into the distance without a trail

Faces lost and hungry, will huddle into a knot and make a path for a rough ride into the future, awaiting a light and hoping for the strength that tomorrow the sun may bring and the dark may merge in the clouds of rain.  

SERENITY

SERENITY

Serenity, do not come on a night like this
when the shadows are not shadows but a purple tide of darkness falling like a frost-bite all around. Serenity, do not come like this with a cold fist hidden in a glove. 

Your icy embrace makes me freeze. Serenity, do not come like this with a moon staring down  like a strange visitor to a silent town.

The shaft of your light falls far across the weird sea, bringing to light a world hitherto sleeping and now awakening to an ascent of the spirit.

Serenity, your shaft of light pierces the heart of the night and your incision is exact and deep.
I can neither wail nor bleed; I weep silently.

The Whirling Dervish

The Whirling Dervish

When the whirling dervish whirls
Let him whirl and sing.
Yield, do not resist.
Close your eyes, let him sing.

Your waking eye blurs
and you hold fast but cannot cling.
That's the moment to let go; do not persist.
There is neither a wing, nor yet a swing.
And yet you are thrown into a wind -twirling flow.
A musk -toned darkness streaked by a light
with only a voice that silks over the night
whistles through the weeds bent low.
The dervish whirls; let him whirl.
His circles spiral and grow.
His dance is wild, his music slow
until it leaves no sign to follow.
It's a silent storm now.
Churned out of the vortex,
the drowned images float:
silhouettes of spires and domes.

The memories do not stay. They are never meant to stay;
they are meant to lead you on
on the wave of the dervish's song.
Let the dervish lead you on.

The dervish has dropped his wing.
The dervish will no longer sing.
He opened the landscape
for a moment that lasted long enough to cast
a spell that moved eternity,
a wave upon wave that rose and fell,
until the dervish left and you never knew when.

The Melody and Form

Melody and Form

"Sad it is, O Artist
That the world does not understand
how each haunting melody hides in its austerity of form'
the pain that originated
once in some heart.
It comes to all now
in a transmuted form,
the agony transformed in art
is now ecstasy.

A Crawling Story

A Crawling Story

“You are trapped between the two age-long stereotypes

The angel and the witch.

I am fed up.”

“But stereotypes are essential to all stories. The kaleidoscope is the definition of all the possible motifs.”

“But your story does not move. I thought it crawled, but it just stagnates.”

“Hmm…Stagnation is better than suffocation”

“Is it? Do stagnant ponds breathe?”

“Well, they might, if they try”.

“And who stops them from trying?”

“Their own essence, the truth about themselves!”

“What truth?”

“Just this; that they are stagnant; and they are stagnant because they are ponds”

“And now I see how your mind works—“

“Ha! You might as well have said how it crawls!

And pray, tell me how do you see my mind ‘work, or move or crawl’?”

“I don’t see anything in it except a blurred reflection that flickers but does not move.”

“A reflection of an angel or a witch?”

“Well, a witch is closer to womankind than an angel! “

“We are stuck again”

“That’s better than crawling. It is freedom; freedom from the necessity to move.”

“For once I agree. Getting stuck is a moment of self-definition”

“With the limited stereotypes between which you are forced to move, is there really space for self-definition? I thought your story crawled because you cannot go beyond this need for self-definition and categories”

“I think, there is one thing a stagnant pond can do really well. It blurs the boundaries and mixes
categories.”

“Yes, I can see it doing everything except breathe! And do you know why the pond cannot breathe?

It does not know that there is a difference between suffocation and breathlessness.”

“I am tired. And when I am tired I cannot see differences. I see only repetitions.”

“There is one way out that I can suggest. Stop deflecting. Be the wind. Force the categories to the extreme. Break out of definitions. Run, flow, rush, till you are breathless; hit a wall. I don’t want to see the end. Do you know why a writer should be in love with abyss? The abyss is endless fall, an endless movement. Break out and embrace the abyss”

“ Hold my hand. I want to fall with you in the abyss.”