Among the prolific pages of this maple tree

are some leaves that forgot to ripen with age.

There were spaces, blank and white

where language failed.

In retrospect, miserable failures when the heart screamed.

Those were spaces meant for love.

And arguments upheld by ego and pride

were ushered in. They careened in and spread over;

and sadly a misplaced bookmark was inserted to keep them live.

The damage that such bookmarks do to the life of a book!

In some unfrequented coffee shop,

not in the presence of the sublime sea,

but in some lonesomely crowded coffee shop,

is the space to find the blank space

mistakenly overlooked by the tirades of words.

The miserable maladies of language when language

was oblivious of its origin in the heart

and forced to walk in the labyrinths of the brain.

These days the gorge of the sea scares me with its an insaneness

The sea is not for the writing of words.

It's for reading the forgotten spaces for silence,

spaces usurped by the chaos of words.

Sushama Karnik (c)

28 Dec. 2019.

The image courtesy @fawzi hejazi

fawzi hejaziTimeline

a month ago

Among the prolific pages of this maple tree
are some leaves that forgot to ripen with age.
There were spaces, blank and white
where language failed.
In retrospect, miserable failures when the heart screamed.

Those were spaces meant for love.
And arguments upheld by ego and pride
were ushered in. They careened in and spread over;
and sadly a misplaced bookmark was inserted to keep them live.
The damage that such bookmarks do to the life of a book!

In some unfrequented coffee shop,
not in the presence of the sublime sea,
but in some lonesomely crowded coffee shop,
is the space to find the blank space
mistakenly overlooked by the tirades of words.

The miserable maladies of language when language
was oblivious of its origin in the heart
and forced to walk in the labyrinths of the brain.
These days the gorge of the sea scares me with its an insaneness
The sea is not for the writing of words.
It's for reading the forgotten spaces for silence,
spaces usurped by the chaos of words.

Sushama Karnik (c)
28 Dec. 2019. 

Jun 6, 2016

In a morning mist the shadows

sway, softly stir,

and the wind, hesitant,

barely touches the trees;

Dull, the memories, sharp the pangs

of having to return

to the somnambulant day.

The path in the dew

disappears in the moist expanse of the meadow.

I love what the light will reveal

once the sun is out of the mist.

I shall pray, let the morning stay

even after the mist is gone;

I will accept the light that will come

as the will of God.

Sushama Karnik

12 days ago

 Photo album: Арт

Artist, Karen Hollingsworth

The Mountain, The Grass And Me

The Mountain, The Grass And Me

With a basket laden with the harvest of summer,
 fruits and flowers
and season's delights,
riding through the forest that kissed
the mountain's feet
I stopped on the way
and slumped on the grass.

The Mountain was a hillside,
 familiar with its scents and the breeze.
But lying in the grass I saw it rise
to an eternity in a moment's flight.
I lay on the ground,
close, intimate in the lap of the earth,
measuring the immensity hanging over the earth and me!

Image credit: Tanya Dimitrova

A Cloud Dreams...

The night opens
 a portal in the sky
 and the cloud dreams,
and the stars and the moon
 float
in the cloud's dream.
Galaxies come and go;
the milk of paradise flows.
The cloud imagines an eternity,
and herself, a vision of the star and the moon.

The Jaded Walls

Jaded walls,
the faded paint of the window-frames.
The neat squares of the frame of my mind
respond ...
to the deepening sky.
Close to the window, on the ground below
nestle the house-tops,
intimate, near to my heart.
Lives unfold, shelter the hearths,
the harsh winter is kept at bay.
Many an evening has turned purple
as many a person watched
leaning against the wooden sill
drawing in the infinity ranging beyond.
The darkness came and swallowed everyday
that which was infinite a moment back,
the cryptic purple turned into black.
Standing by this window I learnt to respond,
receive and forgive life's harms;
injuries were never allowed to sink
beneath the first layer of the skin.
At every eventide
a new mood flows out of me
and pervades the purple sky.
When the sky reddens in the first blush
it begins to speak
and reveals the link -
the bonding between me,infinity and humanity

Running Btween Two Drops Of Rain

May 5, 2016

Running Between Two Drops Of Rain

When you came  drenched, dripping wet,
and as you hung your raincoat on the peg, you said,
that you were tired from running between two rain drops,
I wondered how far away were the rain drops spread,
and I threw the window open
to watch the miracle of this rain.
There on the lattice of the window
was a newly sprung wicker of leaves,
thirstily absorbing rain,
and each leaf stood trembling in the rain,
just a rain-drop away in the glistening lace
one from the other, dripping wet.
I suddenly realized how tiresome it would be for a man
to be running between two drops of rain
if raindrops were so scarce and far away,
and if it suddenly started raining floods.

On One of The Nights

Jun 3, 2016

On one of the nights
the wind will barge in your dream.
The curtains fly and elephants will walk
gently upon the roofs.
Angels will guard your sleep
and lift you high, and higher still
till you will drift
into the heart of the moon


Image credit Anna J. Sasin

Have a wonderful evening!

Whimsical Moon



Image found here
https://www.polyvore.com/always_in_my_dreams/set?id=176781229

I DIVE INTO THE DEPTH 2 July 2016

I dive into the depth for your sake
or else I closed the vault, put a lock
and threw the key in the deep deep sea.
I dive in the depth once again
to retrieve the key
from the choppy sea.
It's pain, much pain
to revisit the lost shores of a lost sea.
thousands of shells,
with thousands of pearls.
Watch them swept away in the wave.
The days of ecstasy are gone.
Shadows are long,
but I love them as they frolic around.
Now no malaise is found
anywhere on this familiar ground.
A subtle air scents the breeze
when in the silence an echo comes from you so real and so near.
For you my dear I shall weave a dream,

Loquacity

May 22, 2016

Loquacity
is dreams fragmented running on the wind,

love,
as it swims in waves and tossed
in abundance of words.

Loquacity,
when I inward turn
for language,
and outward breathe,
and dance,
alone like a dervish
to the rhythm of words.

Loquacity,
when a morning dawns
on the crest of the mind
and throws off-balance the silence of passion
and the mind, let loose,
vainly searches for the anchor of words.

It's a moment rising in a crescendo,
a color of scarlet rose spreading in ripples
and dyeing the ocean red.



Sushama Karnik

Anna del Valle Martí originally shared to Wandering Thoughts:

The Loquela

loquela

2. Humboldt calls the sign's freedom volubility. I am (inwardly) voluble, because I cannot anchor my discourse: the signs turn "in free wheeling." If I could constrain the sign, submit it to some action, I could find rest at least. If only we could put our minds in plaster casts, like our legs! But I cannot keep from thinking, from speaking; no director is there to interrupt the interior movie I keep making of myself, someone to shout, Cut! Volubility is a kind of specifically human misery: I am language-mad: no one listens to me, no one looks at me, but (like Schubert's organ-grinder) I go on talking, turning my hurdy-gurdy.

Roland Barthes. Fragments d’un discours amoureux, 1977.

Image: Patricia Whittle, Royal Ballet by Bob Willoughby, 1962.

#literarytheory #barthes #dictionary #photography #willoughby #ballet

Sunflower Seeds

Apr 8, 2016

Sunflower seeds
lying low in the fields.
Just a little longer the wait
and the field will be all aglow
one by one the sun will touch and signal the seeds to row
their boats in the subsoil sea.
One by one the the bud will turn
its little mouth to the flow
of the life from heaven to grow
From strength to strength
the fields will rise.
There is no end to the surprise
the earth can show.

Your wind swept petals,
the sun will kiss your heart of gold,
and in a tremor of delight the pollen will blow
to impregnate the wind
with the air of  the perfume of the soil where you grow.

Elson Liu originally shared:

《把春天背回家》

正是那小手，
讓奶奶的竹簍子更增添了滿山春色⋯⋯

春天到了，我們把春背回家。



攝影-----袁琦，攝於四川甘孜州鄉城縣。

in my search for the scent of you
I found myself diving deep.
into places I swam
where I heard not even a peep.
flapping my flippers through
worlds where things float and they creep.
in search of a friend through waters
I had heard that she flew.
nothing less than pure witchcraft
brought me to this bluish blue.
for friendship we know
is the strongest of glue.
wherever you swim
I will be there with you.
me......hows that for a poem about finding
            wonders below the surface of the sea?
me2....It's not bad if you mean beneath the surface of glass
            on the computer in this cyber world.
me......cyber shmyber....this is the world, this is life. every one
             of these incredible people has a small and a heartbeat
             and falls in love....there are no less real for being met
             here on google plus than down the street.
me2.....True.
me........I met you here.
me2......I was always on the same side of the glass as you poet.
me........true, but some aspect of you came to life when I
              began meeting others out here.
me2......You've got a point poet.
me........I've got two of them.....they rise up under my hairline.
me2......You devil you.
me.........just call me poet.  to hell with the words.....:)

Kevin Walsh

THE RETURN OF THE WHALE

The whale returns.
The white, the red,
the purple or the marine blue;
we fought the weather under all the shades.
My boat swayed as I abandoned the mooring
to step onto the precarious raft.
The whale, elusive, dark, ducked under waters
deeper, richer with the knowledge of its vulnerable light,
a light the whale could not hide;
it had to be carried till the end of the tide.
The whale was my mentor I hunted
for food or vengeance--
I did not know.
And the whale did not know when that moment had come and gone;
 that moment when I transcended the passion to kill
and fell in love with the endurance, the will,
the light and the passion for the life under the sea.
Away from the rage and the fury,
there was a life of stillness
when the moon reached under the billowing waves
and brought to me a vision of something I wished to cherish--
the whale sleeping, swayed by the sea,
a gentle cradle, a tranquil sleep
and whatever would happen in that bliss
the whale was going to accept in peace.
In that moonlight I dropped the rage.
I loved the moon; I loved the whale;
and when the morning came,
with the morning came back the whale to me,
peaceful, silent, swimming with the tide.
I took back the oar; I returned to the shore. 

DARKNESS OR LIGHT

Untitled 5

Your darkness, or was it my light
 muffled?
Our phases of love and indifference
intertwine like day and night;
like the light of distant stars,
light-years between, as  from the star and earth,
our messages reached
but the meanings followed after aeons had passed.
Your flaws?
They were screens of smoke
generated by the campfires of the caravans passing by.
and I was a straggler who stayed behind
drawn into your world of anguished sorrow
wondering whether you were a little sparrow
or a clown weeping behind a mask that could not be torn apart
or a saint whom the caravan forgot to take along.
I linger with those who do not walk with the crowd;
I lingered to look behind
because I was tired of being dragged with the caravan;
the caravan in a hurry to reach the morrow.
I saw you singing magic songs, the songs I could scarcely follow.
Some melodies I had heard and faintly recalled.
In a deeper trance, they urged me to turn
  to hear a language that spoke no words I knew,
yet sounded like some familiar names
uttered with an intensity, an intimacy
 that warmed me up in my winter gloom

My caravan is waiting in perplexity.
I have no heart to leave you and go.
But go I must , if not today, someday I must.