Redux
waking up alone
peace, quiet, serenity
stillness awaits me
one soul, all alone, happy
sleeping by myself again
Originally posted on I Write Her on 3/3/2019.
Solitude
Tag: alone
Ennui
Redux
something
someone
please
push me
over the edge
of my disillusionment
to something
to someone
inspiring
propelling me
to care
again
back to being in awe
back to wanting more
back to love
it’s empty here
Originally posted 1/12/2019 on I Write Her.
Amrita Valan
Solo
The long and lonely stretch
An emptiness of expanse
My elegantly furnished drawing room.
No one in it.
Obsession
The kiss I didn’t give you
Shreds salt cheddar on my lips
Sears fierce lava on my lips
Smears sad jelly on my hips
Scooches, French smooches,
Invades, ravishes my sleep.
Abstinence
Bodhisattva obtained,
By letting go.
Semi-squat abstinence
Attained at cost.
Enlightenment’s sad
Knowledge gained,
Heavy-duty Nirvana!
Alas, Kurt Cobain.
Flesh maimed, bloodstained.
Soul flailed, stubborn pain.
Ghost of fat cells recall.
Undead, shrink film elastic
So well maintained.
Petrification
A tony tear trembles
At my right eye, just so.
Pure molecular expression
Of elegant grief. Chic.
Like a facial gymnast I flex
Matrix of muscles to flick away
Puerile pain pearls.
Etched into Sphinx, I squat
Ozymandias in desert sands
Stoic and bland,
Scorning rain.
Lithos trembles
Sandstone atoms.
Watching Me Watching You
The sky is filled with dead people
At dawn
The eyes of a whole past world…
Looking on.
Diary Of One Poet
I rose at six today,
Wrote eleven pages
Rolled out handmade rotis
Perfectly puffed, for breakfast.
Tiptoe-kissed tall teenagers
Downy cheeks turning
Rapidly raspy. Leaning down,
Grinning, they received kisses.
Mighty mamma is so tiny now.
Time flies, writers write
Of time past, time to come.
Time flies, reels glide
Dead birds’ broken nests
Fledglings readying wings
Leave to take life’s tests.
The poet tastes life’s flavours
Dreads to tread downstream
Liminal currents cancel old dreams
But renews and resurrects fresh streams.
Future a dream to come, sweet past adieu,
The poet must rest in the present too.
Magic in Optics
Magic is sunshine slanting
Light angles between floor and wall
Making milk mirror pools of
Upside-down furniture, doors and
Ceilings.
Spooky serene upside-down land.
Make belief that it is a different universe.
A fairy-verse.
~~~
Amrita Valan is an Indian writer of stories poems and essays. She has been published in online journals nationally and internationally. Her published works are Arrivederci Fifty Poems and a collection of short stories on Amazon – In Between Pauses: US & In Between the Pauses: UK. Amrita was first featured in 2022. You can find her features HERE, some of which were featured in Volume 2 – Reflections & Revelations.
If you’d like to be featured on The Short of It in the future,
click here for the submission guidelines.
#TheShortofIt – Vol 1 The Sound of Brilliance and Vol 2 Reflections & Revelations on Amazon
Finding People
Redux
life is hard alone
existing
not really living
Originally published November 7, 2018, on I Write Her.
Jaya Avendel
Preceding
I pluck hearts from the sky
Count pennies amassed in fortune
On the moss cold
Under my concrete touch
When I read of Shakespeare
I see the strings in Romeo and Juliet and
I pull them.
Into Silence
I enter the bathroom and
Close the door
Steam from the bath
I indoctrinated with lavender
At noon
Tickles my ankles
I scream
Curl my voice around the trembling tile
With the cold steel taps
Dissolve like Epsom salts in water.
No one comes
No one is home.
Tinging
She lingers between light and dark
Her eyes never open wide enough to
Reveal their true color
If she wakes
It is in the night
Where no one can see.
Awaken
Everything is something else
In another form
Love is cruelty to someone else
Brutally pink; torn.
My dance is faulty
In the eyes of the soldier
Also inside me.
Satisfied
The shadows behind
The moon envelop me like |
The gentle touch of
A dying spring flower or
The gentler touch of starlight.
~~~
Jaya Avendel is a micro-poetess and word witch from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia passionate about life where it intersects with writing and the dreamscapes lost in between. With writing published at Green Ink Poetry, Free Verse Revolution, and Visual Verse, among others, she writes and dreams at www.ninchronicles.com. Jaya was featured on The Short of It in 2020 and her work was published in the anthology – The Sound of Brilliance.
Submissions are now closed but if you’d like to be featured on The Short of It in the future,
click here for the submissions guidelines.
Reblogs – Jude Itakali & Lorraine Lewis
One is the agonizing ache of unrequited love, the other is the depth of experience when feeling cut off. It seems we are constantly wrestling with one form of isolation or another.
Secret Admirer by Jude Itakali
Is it your smile
that dazzles me
The softness of your voice
that comforts me
The light in your eyes
scrying my future joys
Am I selfish
for thinking you are the answer
Presumptuous
for dreaming you can want me too
I’d like to tell you-
I’m under your spell
I’d like to speak my mind
with the melody from my heart
I’d like to say, I love you
But I cannot
Lest I spook and alarm
For already,
You are too precious to lose
And a little bit of you
Is better than none at all
Paramour of dreams
Peculiar with perfection
My heart surrenders
betrothed and bound to love you
Meant to be, Never to be
Cut off
A blanket black
Between us none can see
A box the walls of a prison
Close in
Stifle
Alone in the box fear rising
No one to hear a cry
Awareness stings
Of life
Outside
The box people
Living lives chattering
Unaware of the person in
The box
Beside
Them dying gasping for breath one
Breath but it is too late
A corpse lies dead
Staring
Solitary
individuals
extant millions among us
we endure alone
Reblog – Melancholia by Rahul Gaur
Such a brilliant capture of the feelings of loss and uncertainty. The accompanying image complements the emotions well.
The act of wanting consumes
my mind so much that
I never realise what I really wanted after all
Losing myself at the ends
of her fading footsteps
and the silence left by her echoes
and the echoes left by her silence
I only end up imitating my wants than
really know what I wanted at all
The melancholy monster consumes me for not
knowing but that is when I know
this monster is really not a monster
as I ponder…
…where do I go from here
if not inwards
To save me from the beginning
of the building blocks of my utter doom
Melancholy opens up wounds
that can only be closed by facing the fears
that created them as I realise
All I receive is connected to all I give
amidst the karmic cycle of my intents
The ignorance of the immediate fate
I put too much emphasis on
The laughter of my perpetual bloom is
connected to the whispers of my eventual tomb
Reblog – Solitaire by VJ Knutson
How does one traverse the loss of love, aging, and loneliness? VJ may not present the answer but she certainly gives us a glimpse of how real it can get.
Past love’s deadline
wolves no longer prowl
vultures, smelling rot,
circle overhead, plot
My essence is solitary
feather fallen between
wide-eyed expectancy
and maturity’s abyss
Abandonment or neglect
I truly cannot say…
(Tuesdays I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own.)
Reblog – Poem #242 by Luna
Another that hit so well, tagging memories of so long ago, a heartache which took years to dull. I applaud Luna for expressing these heartfelt emotions so well!
It gets so cold
when loneliness enters the scene
but the feeling is actually burning.
Burning with the desire to break free.
Burning with the desire to sleep in peace.
Burning when you remember things
the way they used to be.
Burning when you see the shadow of
the empty place that once had a heartbeat.
I Write Her 