You join dots that glint like the tips of a tantrum
to form alphabets that are onesies dangling
from pink plastic clips of lisped words
fluttering into sentences like shape shifting wind
settling into a sepia memory like winged butterflies
on a flower.
Can we spend some more time, here, together?
~ In response to the Peter's Prompt at dVerse
watch the mind for five seconds,
watch it watching itself
like an alert sentinel
realisation pierces through
the parallax of demands like a diamond cutter
shredding shearing
the flab flak
of the unwanted the unneeded
convoluted ingrained patterns of
thinking thoughts
the residue of purity unadulterated consciousness
decants into a moment of
meaning that spotlights existence
and everything becomes clear
sharp like the crackle of fire
~Written in response to the Brendan's Earthweal Weekly Challenge : Deep Time
"Call me to lie down in fragrance" ~ D Margoshes ~ Season of Lilac
Sunny afternoons
when I sat in your warmth
tracing the picture of a red apple
its nascent curves, remnants
of baked memories
Fresh earth washed by raindrops
Each the size of a teaspoon
Full of your wise words
That I missed in my hurry to find a place
Under a grey sky raining needles
Green possibilities
When I can cup the glow of fireflies
And listen to the ditties of the cuckoo
Taste the tartness of the grapefruit you once peeled
And walk, with you, along the colours of the rainbow-bridge
~ Written in response to the dVerse Prompt: Poetics: Beginning at the End by Laura Bloomsbury
The glitter of gold is questioned
Groupthink has had its say
One invisible living atom quietens
The uproar of invincible economies
Honesty is looked upon as a hydra-headed handicap
And values morph into gibberish fit for the sidelines
Although nothing is a surprise anymore
Nothing is a mystery
Hope remains
That kindness will prevail
That gentleness will proceed to work out a way
That rules will be followed and roles will be respected
While acknowledging the transience of
Perishable life in a scarfed paradise
~Written in response to the prompt Writers' Pantry #54: New Dawn at Poets and Storytellers United
A piece of short fiction that I submitted to Visual Verse is up at https://visualverse.org/submissions/the-ship/
Thanks for reading!
The captain knelt in front of the altar and raised his palms in surrender, for after two hundred fifty days of voyage, exhausting their store of canned food and no respite in sight, sea sickness consumed him and his men like conflagrating wild fire.
‘Sire, land ahoy!,’ cried the men, banging their fists against
the teak door of his room.
The captain opened his eyes to see the top of a light house glowing
incandescent against the dark sky, its light as soothing as liquid moonshine.
~Written in response to Sonya's Three Line Tales Prompt at https://only100words.xyz/2021/01/21/three-line-tales-260/ - Three Line Tales 260
Manya sat in the midst of papers, swirling in a sea of indigo files. She couldn’t hear the clock ticking but knew that each moment gave way to the next with speed of lightening. The Deadline would creep in, deadly quiet, and stand there, thin-lipped, hands on her hips, demanding her pound of flesh.
Manya stood up and stared out of the window. The red-tiled portico was unpeopled except for the aged gardener who was hunched over, picking tufts of dried grass lining the edge of the green lawn.
How she wished she could join him. Did he want a potted petunia for his garden? Or a gladiolus, may be? She would choose the best ones from her own select array and gift it to the man. Tomorrow. When it would all be over. She would gladly trade the coldness of the ivory tower, where she stood, to the greenness of the grassroots with which the gardener worked. Carefree. Shorn of inane responsibilities. Happy.
But then again, wasn’t happiness a bi-product of the mind, just as suffering was. It was all in the mind. What stood between her and happiness at that moment? It was her mind. Her imagined fear of a missed deadline.
The gardener stood up, stretched his back and made as if to wipe the sweat off his brow. He sat down in a huff, muttering under his breath for a couple of moments, and slowly proceeded to pick up where he had left.
Manya looked at the clear sky. It was dotted with wispy white clouds. Clouds that predicted good fortune, she knew. The Deadline was inching, slowly and surely. Battling it, tackling it and nailing it, was the Hobson’s choice she would choose.
She turned around and found the indigo blue files staring at her. They were the same colour as the colour of the sky. She picked one and ran her fingers over its smooth surface. She was now holding a piece of the sky, her very own sky.
~Written in response to Rommy's Prompt - Weekly Scribblings #53 : Beautiful Words at Poets and Storytellers United. I chose the word Zuiun: clouds that predict good fortune. Word Count:341
https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2021/01/weekly-scribblings-53-beautiful-words.html#comment-form
Life is all about engagements,
entanglements of
thoughts of action,
actionable thoughts
action and thoughts,
and sometimes thoughtless actions
meaningless thoughts
until the colourful skeins transform into
one giant, jumble, colourful ball of ideas.
It takes a calm mind,
cool and clear
to separate and put them to use
or to see meaning morph from
what is far from a mess.
~In response to Earthweal Weekly Challenge : Entangled Up in You from Brendan
https://earthweal.com/2021/01/18/earthweal-weekly-challenge-entangled-up-in-you/
It is always easy to unentangle
the Past into clarity,
fork and ingest, decipher
her epiphanous meaning
under cones of the clear white light,
shone by fleeting Present. But sometimes, when
she lingers long enough,
her diaphanous flecks
spill purpose onto the swell of Future,
transmogrifying into a slip-fit link
so life becomes one long roller chain
of purpose.
~In response to Prompt at dVerse by Merril D Smith : Connections
https://dversepoets.com/2021/01/19/poetics-connections/
Here we are, at the cusp of a new year.
Last year was a painful year as a gigantic wave of loss swelled and spilled onto the banks of the normal idea of normalcy, engulfing many in its folds. It was like as if God had tightly closed the lid on our world and was rattling it like a salt and pepper shaker.
If there is anything the pandemic has taught us, it is, according to me, the need to be kind, the significance of being understanding. It has reminded us the ephemerality of our thoughts, our desires and our existence. As long as we are destined to be here, let us be kind to one another. For, long after a person is gone, what remains alive in the hearts of the living, are the wispy petals of kindness that she has dispersed.
Let us begin the new year, gripping the torch of hope firmly in our callused hands. Let us stand united and lend each other support till we can together surmount the challenges posed by these trying times and make it to the shore of safety.
Happy new year!
A piece of flash fiction that I wrote is up at https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-writing-responses-maria-izquierdo. Thanks for reading!
Krishna is now two and a half years old and at home, thanks to the pandemic. Much as I try to slot the days into neat little compartments of learning, art and outdoor activities (which has reduced to a bare minimum), I have not been able to. For, the mind of a two year old is as playful as the flitting butterfly that refuses to get bogged down by the rigors of discipline.
I try to cram in as many activities as possible for him, into the lone hour that I get, before leaving to office. Ten minutes of which, gets spent in cajoling him to arrive at the table to read. I finally abandon my futile attempts and get him to sit on the soft duvet, a bowl of raisins in one hand and his favourite water bottle in another. He uses both of them as distractions to suit his whims, once every two minutes when he finds the process of listening, tedious. I carry on like this for the next fifty minutes in the solace of the knowledge that we are 'making incremental progress towards a meaningful goal', a la Earl Nightingale.
And then I hand him over to my mother to carry off from where I leave and proceed to office till I return in the evening, hoping to read to him but never actually getting my exhausted self to do it.
One of these days, hopefully, things will change. And hopefully the process of learning will get to be more fun for both of us, actually all three of us - my mother and me, as educators and my son, as a diligent learner.
My poem titled 'The Destination' has been published in Buddhist Poetry Review. You can read it here at https://www.buddhistpoetryreview.org/archive/vol-three-issue-three/preeth-ganapathy
Hello,
Happy to share with you a couple of my recent publishing successes.
Willawaw Journal published a poem that I had written - 'The Flourescent Orange Swimsuit' in their Fall Issue. You can read it here - http://willawawjournal.com/category/journal/fall-2020-issue-10/page/3/
A piece of micro fiction that I wrote was published in one of my favourite magazine - 101Words.org. https://101words.org/divine-justice/
A poem that I had written in response to their prompt - 'Figures on a landscape' by Bertram Booker has been published in The Ekphrastic Review. It's up at https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-writing-responses-bertram-brooker.
Happy writing! Happy reading!
Today is the last day of my three day mini-break in Coorg.
I must say that this time, I got to see a completely different face of the land that I belong to, the land whose beauty I just can’t get enough of, I just can’t stop raving about.
We arrived on Saturday morning after a short detour to KRS(Krishna Raja Sagar) dam. Our car tootled on the cement pathway to our home in tune to the light beats of a thin drizzle, when I caught sight of the patch of clouds hanging delicately on the tip of the distant hillock, a hillock I had never noticed before. They bowed low like hosts, eager to please, folding their palms.
It has not stopped raining since the time we arrived. The volume of the rainfall varies from time to time, alternating between heavy and light, but never stopping altogether. This sound of pattering rain is a pleasurable change from the constant din of honking horns of a dreary city life.
During the past two days, Krishna, with his outstretched palms, has been sampling drops of water dripping from different surfaces – from the red petals of wild hibiscus, from the tips of green unripe coffee berries, from the eaves of the two dog kennels, from the edge of the porch – all while we entertained ourselves to some outdoor carrom, a game at which I fare very poorly and would have happily joined my toddler in his adventures instead. Nevertheless, we did have some great moments of family bonding, ones that will remain in our mind for a long time to come.
Today morning, we visited the kere, a small pond which serves as a natural well of irrigation to the estate. It was as green as the leaves of coffee shrubs themselves and Krishna was pretty excited to see all the different birds that hung around the pond. We tried to match them with the birds we had seen from his book, but practicals are always a different ball game when compared to theory.
Otherwise, I’ve been trying to nature-watch, bird-watch, insect-watch, flower-watch from the comfort of a sheltered porch trying to soak in as much as possible.
With a book on my lap and a fountain-pen in my hand, on our first evening here, I remarked to my husband who was sitting beside me, sipping from a cup of hot coffee, ‘This is my dream life, you know. Writing in the lap of nature.’ Like one of my favourites, Ruskin Bond. And another favourite, Shivaram Karanth. But now at the end of the third day, I realize - I was so lost in her beauty that, in three days, I could only squeeze in a short poem in her praise.
The days and nights have been cold, a kind of cold that lulls you into sleep and prevents you from getting on your toes to make yourself a cup of coffee, to take a bath or to reach for the phone that lies on the table a few feet away from your bed. ‘Lie down for some time more,’ the cold seems to say, a wicked smile playing at the corner of its lips. The only other place that reminds me of this kind of cold is Mussoorie , which happens to be another favourite.
‘The chill in the weather is much better these days. When we were young, we would find it difficult to even have a change of clothes,’ my mother used to say. But today, when I call her up, I will tell her about the rains, the wind and the cold. This pleasant kind of cold.
And hope against hope that this is the beginning of a reversal of climate change.
a sunny day
caught in the folds of a month of raindrops
a bumble bee
amidst flies flitting around flaps of skin on a swivel chair
a page of my favourite book
savoured in the middle of an indulgent work break
the glow of fire in a lighthouse
waiting for salvation on the jagged banks of the Arabian Sea
