Day 10 - J (AtoZ Challenge) and Day 12 - A Happy Indolent Home (Napowrimo)

Day 10 AtoZ Challenge

Art and affirmative alliteration for Day 10. 

#AtoZchallenge

Day 12 Napowrimo

The afternoon whispered secrets

Through the dappled light

That danced across the cement floor

Cracked and in need of repair.

The cat lay languid beside me

With heavy eyes it peered

When I heaved a soft sigh.

I stroked its head sending it back to its nap,

The birds’ indolent, squirrel idle

It was as if the world was for once

A happy indolent home 

Do let me know your views. You can click on the AtoZChallenge/ Napowrimo tags to look at my earlier posts.

PS : This post is posted as part of BlogchatterA2Z 2021 challenge.

Poem posted as part of the 30 day poetry challenge for the month of April NaPoWriMo2021

ps: do check out my works on Instagram.

Day 11 - Epistolary Poem - Napowrimo

Day 11 Napowrimo

Image - India Post (Wikipedia)

Dear P

Once you said that I look like an angel. I remember that very well like the carving on our college stone. You went on to mention that only the angel fell on her face first. Splash! I thought and laughed. I laughed a thousand laughs. It amused me so much that I used to remember it and laugh – in the class, in the street, in the rickshaw, even in Ashok Bhavan once while having medu vada dipped in sambhar (by the way, Ashok Bhavan is no more. They closed it permanently, why the hell I don’t know! I feel sorry thinking about that so much so that my stomach sometimes aches. I loved the vadas there, also the *thenga barfi, paniyaram and modakam) Sorry for the distraction, I went another way. But I must tell you that I laughed so much that my stomach and cheeks ached. (This is a different kind of ache). I still think of it and smile and smile do I. Oh! how I remember Shakespeare here. It’s been so many years now like the pages from The Suitable Boy that I kept losing track of. How have you been all this time? Have you made someone else laugh so much as well?

PS: in case you are craving for some sweet delicacies after reading the above, do come home. I shall prepare some for you not the things mentioned maybe something simple.

Friendly

D

Dear D

I am surprised that you still think of it and laugh aloud. Now, I laugh and laugh thinking about your laugh. I must confess that I borrowed it from some magazine that I came across in the barbershop while waiting for my turn. Hair cut those days were a thing back then. It was a place of storytelling and story-gathering. It was a foreign magazine that Somu (the barber) got from a second hand book shop not far from his place. No, he didn’t buy it. Where will he get that kind of money from?! The shopkeeper had given it away as it had missing pages and pages were torn. He told this tiny story while massaging my hair. So many little stories from so many of his massages. Luckily for me, I saw that line there that caught my attention and sent it to all my friends. I think I sent it to 10 of you. Only you remember that. It’s funny right, all this about life.

PS: thanks for the sweets and savory mention. I would like that sometime someday when I come. Sorry to hear about Ashok Bhavan as I have eaten so many nice nice things from there.

Friend

P

Naowrimo prompt:

for our (optional) prompt. This is a twist on a prompt offered by Kay Gabriel during a meeting she facilitated at the Poetry Project last year. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a two-part poem, in the form of an exchange of letters. The first stanza (or part) should be in the form of a letter that you write either to yourself or to a famous fictional or historical person. The second part should be the letter you receive in response. These can be as short or long as you like, in the form of prose poems, or with line breaks – and of course, the subject matter of the letters is totally up to you.

Here, I have just tried my hand at Indian English poetry with a colloquial-humourous strain. Let me know how you find it? I have found Epistolary poems always interesting but had never tried it before. This one surfaced when I was trying out today's prompt with some historical artist whom I am much fond of and failing at it. I wasn't feeling satisfied when this sentence - " You look like an angel...." popped up in my mind. I remembered receiving this postcard while I was in college from a friend of mine in 1997, the situation completely different from what is mentioned in the poem. Some of us were in the habit of sending postcards back then with a funny quote or some short text. When this quote popped up, I decided to create a story around it. Ashok Bhavan was a popular vegetarian restaurant in Palakkad which closed on 31 May 2019. 

*Sweet and savoury delicacies

Do let me know your views. You can click on the Napowrimo tag to look at my earlier posts.

PS: Poem posted as part of the 30 day poetry challenge for the month of April NaPoWriMo2021

ps: do check out my works on Instagram.

Day 9 - I (AtoZ Challenge) and Day 10 - Bookmark your Life (Napowrimo)

Day 9 AtoZ Challenge

Art and affirmative alliteration for Day 9. 

#AtoZchallenge

Day 10 Napowrimo

Speak to my core - wet and soft - like little waves forming

The blue silence spreads – your breath, your heartbeat—

 

Solitude surrounds and wraps like a moulding clay—

A hand at work with a paintbrush or the kneaded eraser-

 

Neither here nor up there, the melody resides within

Only you — believe in my existence — only you

 

Just that phrase repeats within — not confronting my lips

Colourful and messy, disparate and abstract

 

My voice keeps demanding for words — You know—

I know — You and me — our feelings have no sound—

 

like fragrance it spreads — it can not hide behind walls or lines—

Shadow of pain may spread long and sometimes wide

 

Fear may clutch the lonely heart — dense silence may surround

But do not give in nor cry — we all have our sunshine days

 

The rhythm of life may sometimes be wild and rugged—

Pace it fast or pace it slow — pace it horizontal or perpendicular

 

Welcome life with open arms — welcome with child-like curiosity

Let your eyes go wide — bookmark your life.

Napowrimo prompt:

our daily prompt (optional, of course!). It’s called “Junk Drawer Song,” and comes to us from the poet Hoa Nguyen.

• First, find a song with which you are familiar – it could be a favorite song of yours, or one that just evokes memories of your past. Listen to the song and take notes as you do, without overthinking it or worrying about your notes making sense.
• Next, rifle through the objects in your junk drawer – or wherever you keep loose odds and ends that don’t have a place otherwise. (Mine contains picture-hanging wire, stamps, rubber bands, and two unfinished wooden spoons I started whittling four years ago after taking a spoon-making class). On a separate page from your song-notes page, write about the objects in the drawer, for as long as you care to.
• Now, bring your two pages of notes together and write a poem that weaves together your ideas and observations from both pages.

My junk drawer poem is based on Imran's *shayari from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (Hindi movie) and my junk draw items that included a pretty big list some of which were pencils, brushes, kneaded eraser, paints, hairband, paperclips, metallic pens, clay, craftwood, bookmark etc. I jotted down the words from the shayari that I 'grabbed' with my eyes closed as I was listening to the shayari while my hands jotted down the words and abstract sensations finally conjoining the two. 

This was a fun prompt and maybe I shall try this more.

*shayari is a poem in Urdu

Do let me know your views. You can click on the AtoZChallenge/ Napowrimo tags to look at my earlier posts.

PS : This post is posted as part of BlogchatterA2Z 2021 challenge.

Poem posted as part of the 30 day poetry challenge for the month of April NaPoWriMo2021

ps: do check out my works on Instagram.

Day 8 - H (AtoZ Challenge) and Day 9 - To do list of an inane self (Napowrimo)

Day 8 #AtoZChallenge

Art and affirmative alliteration of Day 8. I hadn't talked much about this section of my challenge. The intention was to reach out to young girls and everyone who needed to hear some positive and empowering affirmations each day. Just a humble alliterative effort. I wish we could all inspire each other everyday, place a helping hand, a shoulder to rest for a while, embrace to overcome the each other's pain, ease with laughter and a extend a bit of company to one another. In short, empower one another.

#AtoZchallenge

All my art works of AtoZ challenge have been done in acrylic inks and coffee wash. 

Day 9 #Napowrimo

to do list of an inane self

to live a life of a toad

to adapt on both lands

to fly high to bellow

to sink down and be mellow

to run miles a free bird

be the songbird and follow the stars

to creak open the secret doors

to silently witness myriad miracles

to whimper like a child mid ice-cream

to ponder like a saint on carnal bliss

to invent a universe of sunshine vale

to wipe tears off my bosom souls

to stitch a cross-section of organic lands

and weave with invincible skies

bringing it all under one parasol

of blues, greens and turquoise realms

back again on the infinite sky

watch an aerial view

philosophize on our existence/ speck of a life

to gather dreams of altered souls

reigning them into the moon’s chariot

unbridled they run wild

no remorse, no affectations

they cast a path for the young to follow

to surpass barriers of human borders

to not kill for sport or bully the mild

‘uncreate’ the distinctions of human forms

follow nature and its native calls

to be one of the inhabitants and not be the lord

share an existence and not own it

to conjoin a freedom song

that murmurs in all hearts

a free spirit without borders drawn

a world where smiles reside and sorrows gone.

Napowrimo prompt:

Our (optional) prompt for the day is to write a poem in the form of a “to-do list.” The fun of this prompt is to make it the “to-do list” of an unusual person or character. For example, what’s on the Tooth Fairy’s to-do list? Or on the to-do list of Genghis Khan? Of a housefly? Your list can be a mix of extremely boring things and wild things. For example, maybe Santa Claus needs to order his elves to make 7 million animatronic Baby Yoda dolls, to have his hat dry-cleaned to get off all the soot it picked up last December, and to get his head electrician to change out the sparkplugs on Rudolph’s nose.

I started nothing preplanned jotting down in a stream of consciousness mode and the writing took over. It came alive and took its own path and form.

Do let me know your views. What do you think of the Art & Alliteration segment? You can click on the AtoZChallenge/ Napowrimo tags to look at my earlier posts.

PS : This post is posted as part of BlogchatterA2Z 2021 challenge.

Poem posted as part of the 30 day poetry challenge for the month of April NaPoWriMo2021

ps: do check out my works on Instagram.