The Darkest Place : Write... Edit... Publish... October 2017

Okay so I thought I could do a flash - a spooky sort, but nope, it vanished into thin air like...um...a ghost. Then I started with another which coolly wriggled out of its obligation towards the original prompt. Inveigled itself into a thoroughly non-spooky type - aaaargh! Right, I'm falling back on poetry, much more reliable... 

So here we are - at the annual autumn/spring scarefest at Write...Edit...Publish... hosted by authors Denise and Yolanda. With design inputs from Olga, and prompt inputs by someone who has been hoisted by her own promptard and shall remain nameless.  


We have a prayer in the Hindu scriptures, one of my favourite verses - '(Lead me) from falsehood towards Truth, from darkness towards Light, from death towards Immortality.'


Darkness and Light, Anxiety and Tranquility, Suffering and Bliss. All is in the mind, ultimately. No place darker than a tormented mind.




The Darkest Place

This isn’t a poem you’d want to write.

No morning pills of positivity,

just a convulsed line rushing, falling free

in and out of digital screens and sight,

dripping fluids of unknown origins.

No trickles of moons, rivers, women’s scarves,

not an inch of no man’s land between wars.

A trembling drop in time’s sharp toothed engines.

Nor is it a poem you’d want to read

out loud among strangers, folding paper

art, to hang it like buntings of wafer

thin, lavish rhymes; jewel toned; filigreed.

This - the one you keep in the dark recess,

between the planes of sane and loneliness.




WC - 100+
FCA

And it is Diwali tomorrow, the darkest night of the year according to the Indian calendar, when we put up lamps around our homes to make sure that everything's headed in the right direction, as per the verse! :)  A very happy and prosperous Diwali to you and yours if you are celebrating! And lots of sunshine, moonlight, starlight and candlelight to you even if you are not. May your life be illuminated at all times and never get into dark places.

***

Read the other entries here and join in -

Equals

Much comes undercover in darkness, not

just the knives of knowledge splitting hard spines

open to bone white; a lifeless life still plots

its course, joins dots, fills in blanks, realigns

the needles when due, minutely adjusts

to grains of paper, grains of feelings, slopes

of steep time, the slow build up of threats, dust

storms of hope and hopelessness, it still gropes

thin lightlines, turns its fingers back to pinch

itself, its open, oozing flesh, dabs at pus

and blood, congealed velvet that makes it cringe

and turns back and goes on, hungry, listless.

Much comes in darkness, but it still goes on

presuming epiphany somehow equals dawn.

I can call it a ghazal if I like

You read it only when a spotlight shines on it,

and it’s the light itself that fades the lines on it

 

so should I fix this light or switch to pitch dark

and will you find the sense without clear signs on it?

 

nibs scratch the surface, silence leaves a deeper mark

so ink or blank? and now they both look fine on it

 

can’t say for sure which fades first, which stays fast

nuances its meaning and goes on, refines on it

 

who stands by me while I make the darkness last

no matter what the blank white light defines on it?