Best Kinsfolk Poems
Hymns of salvation
That my own body
is my greatest enemy
was unknown to me.
Deluded,
O Lord, I was reveling in its pleasures.
The ones that
do not listen to Your tales,
never speak the truth and won’t feed the starving,
worry not about what is right and what’s not,
would not obey the Guru,
do not remember Your name;
O God, why should anyone care if such folks
are alive or dead.
O God, fed up we all are
kinsfolk with weeping ,
relatives with cremating ,
moms with giving birth ,
I with getting born.
20/Nov/12
Form: “Suzette Prime” with the syllable count, per line, of 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 etc , all Prime numbers.
For: Su Crous’ Prime numbers and Philosophy contest.
By: S.Jagathsimhan Nair.
* The philosophy of the poem is borrowed from the hymns ( in Tamil) sung by one of our( Indian) saints named” PATTINATHAR”, revered for his words of wisdom and deeds of miracles. The reference in the 3rd stanza is to the innumerable incarnations each soul has to go through, age after age, till it gets freed from the cycle of births and deaths on attainment of salvation. Here he is praying to God for his own salvation : ” In this never ending cycle of births and deaths ; times without number, have my close relations wept for me whenever I died, my near ones cremated me as many times; times without number, mothers gave birth to me and times without number I was born into this world. We are all totally fed up, going through this process repeating itself again and again. O God, deliver me once and for all from this terrible fate”.
Stanzas 1 and 2 are self-explanatory.
For SKAT's contest on 15 Jun 13
I’m a very early riser - the first settler’s
alarm clock you might say-
If you haven’t heard my native name
Wiradjuri guuguubarr- That’s OK
you would know me as a Kookaburra.
You’ll often hear me laughing with my kinsfolk
from treetops to greet the morning
Then at day’s end we bid it a fond goodbye-
with a jovial, raucous chorus.
You could mistake it for human laughter
but it isn’t imitation- we’ve been laughing this way
since the beginning of creation.
I have a diet that will often make people shudder.
I can eat a 3 foot snake and then go looking for another.
I stun it first by dropping it — then whack it on a tree
And then, believe me — I swallow it — carefully.
I blend in well with the bushland
bark brown and dappled shades
You can’t see me in the gumtrees—that is
until my laughter gives me away.
I saw a dazzling rose,
Whose red petals cast blinding hues upon me.
She shot her cupid arrows from the Kabaka’s backyard,
And punctured the cocoon of my innocence.
My heart burnt for a feel of her spangled petals,
My ferocious passions lost their sturdy grip on restraint as
I, like a pollen-famished bee, sniffed her whiff;
I gorged on her rosy scent, like a Don Quixote.
Then, I plucked her off the tribal bough;
And navigated the Nile River with her,
Tacked in the valves of my heart,
For a cross boarder allogamy.
What a welcome from my kinsfolk!
Furrows ridging the faces of my kinsmen,
Spittle of disgust masticating the hungry soils,
Grey beards wagging and waging a silent war;
Alien!
When I hear the chirping of bizarre birds in the morning,
And see the sun gently rising; golden rays adorning;
And feel the graciousness of the almighty upon me,
Who, by his abundant mercy, gave me a day to see;
My heart overflows with joy like water from Angel-falls,
From unknown, brightest heaven, for a fullness of life, calls...!
Neither in riches did I crawl; nor in poverty, blaze;
Health and wealth, like rhythm in a melody, filled my days;
Love of kinsfolk, like honey from flowers, I did cherish,
Sorrows and sufferings, though like moths appeared, did perish;
Respect and reputation, like shadows, walked with me,
Fears and panics, like flies before fire, fearfully flee...!
I have my values; I live them; I find my goal attained;
My body, mind and soul are nourished; I never feel chained;
God-given potentials keep me young; I esteem my strengths,
Each moment has its surprises; joys have no breadths and lengths;
Mindfulness has been minding me; I am Zen in my deeds;
Gratitude has become my concord; God sees to my needs...!
5 July 2022
"Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas time.”
– Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), American writer (of the Little House series of books), teacher, journalist, wife, mother, and native of Pepin, Wisconsin, USA
The holidays arrive with fall’s last call,
As frost’s glazed fingers tuck in frozen earth.
Thanksgiving gathers kinsfolk one and all,
With memories and fun beyond mere worth.
The calendar soon finds December late,
With Christmas joy and greetings all at hand.
Details to tend to prior to that date,
But season’s meaning – do we understand?
A New Year may refresh our souls and roles,
With resolutions we all hope to keep.
By weighing more than just our wants and goals,
Improved relationships we’ll sow and reap.
By smartly skipping season’s snares of strife,
Our holidays give happiness for life.
Stilled again across the canals broadening
Girth;
Mesh cages of rock-filled Gabions
Reinforcing patches of exposed and arid earth,
Reflecting the glints that gleefully
Twist and dance in the hot glare of the sun...
Provoking images and stirring indefinable feelings
That begin to irrevocably up and run;
Pictures and voices crowding into my mind:
Immersing me in the flooding moments
To which i am briefly resigned.
Now momentarily staid by the shimmering
Instance
In which i find myself inextricably caught,
Perplexed by something rather intangible,
Seeming almost to tease and laugh
Whilst confounding upon my evasive and
Fleeting thoughts;
As glancing across at the opposite bank
Where drawn up a line of densely packed trees..
I swore...I heard the reel of a high squealing
Fiddle -
Playing ever so briefly alongside a tricky little
Breeze.
For stood there I, wondering,
On a grey painted swing-bridge:
Of brightly painted Steamers, dirty Trampers
And of double masted white canvassed Brigs.
Oh! The everlasting glory of a New World order
Redefined:
Entrusted to those instructed in her Majesties
Construction of sprawling Victorian sublimes!
The men who heroically dug, picked, blasted and
Strove:
To securely fasten an Iron cast girdle around
An ever diminishing blue globe.
Dreaming of long ago, dutiful, Golden-Age days
Rigorously pursued down, what are now,
Weed strewn, abandoned byways.
Faustian clothing and a Velveteens cap;
The thick buckled leather gaiters held about
By the strap.
Many the word spoken in a soft southern brogue:
All hail the glorious navigators -
The navvies of old!
Staunch and desperate men forced to resign
Their native Gaelic shores
And burden unto themselves with
Mattocks, shovels and garishly painted-up whores.
Under the high flaming beacons
And over the obscure little brow -
They carved out the new waterways
To float the laden down prow.
Yes! Men of the Emerald Isles
I salute you and your kinsfolk
From lands cast westwards afar:
The magnificent "Paddies" from the verdant island -
Of Erin-Go-Bragh!
IMPRISONED (collaboration)
by~ Jun-jun Villanueva
Urbane cavalcade - flaunt in gaiety
Warbling hymns in ego - cyclicity
Jigging gracile moves in vivacity
Relishing in zest in this gravity
Kinsfolk in flamboyant fete - oh its fate?
Smiles, elation in face delineate
Like nothing's wrong makes me exasperate
No one cares? No one adores? it's too late
Recurrent nightmares peeve me in sublime
Making incubuses remorse in rhyme
Bequeathing qualm, fright and fear - death like crime
Kith and kin in laughs while I'm in grave time...
by~ Poet Destroyer
Twittering chime parade of glee
Unspectacular weed flowing trough me.
Boxed in a box like a tick or flea.
No one understands- what they can't see!
Outside myself holding my breath-
Or should I say what is left?
Trapping torment with false courtesy.
Preexisted past, without certainty.
Locked in a sanctuary grave of ivory ribs,
My life in a vault- trashed crib.
Feet lashing against my skin.
Twirling the rootless valves of sin.
No one cares! No one adores!
My prison trash coffin brought ashore.
A collaboration with * Jun-jun Villanueva
My collaboration contest
A twelve year old boy, village-bred and very shy
Having but token familiarity with buses, routes and places
Escorts his mom’s mom, very sick and about to die
To the town forty kms and four hours away those days
Involving three buses, two junctions needing directions
And a km on foot, where her other two daughters lived.
She sat on the road and vomited, so bad was her condition,
The boy waited without a thought till she once again moved.
Finally on reaching the house wanted, everyone there was aghast
On how we two made it and critical of my mother’s foolishness
In entrusting a boy who knew next to nothing with such a task.
(But mom with none to help did what she thought right in all seriousness)
Grand ma gets promptly admitted in a hospital nearby.
Along with others, the boy goes to see her daily. On the third
She pleads with him to stay back with her that night
But, no, he runs away because he wanted to play with the other kids.
He never knew she was going to die that night till he was woken up
To board the ambulance which was taking her dead
Back to her native village, and the boy who sat with her was I.
My dad’s dad was dead before I was born
But about him I used to hear a lot all through my life
Because he was a big landlord who owned a village
Of twelve hundred acres, as the head of a joint family
He was a monarch of sorts, albeit, without a sceptre and crown.
Trained in herbal medicines, which he dispensed for free,
And a scholar in astrology and all those esoteric things
And a man of great virtues, he was much sought after.
Then suddenly the rules changed and the system
Of joint families went and after partitioning his estates
Among his kinsfolk , without taking an inch of land for himself,
He shifted to his wife’s place where too they fed a hundred daily
But they fell on hard times with the litigations that followed
The new laws which ruined families and my grandpa died poorer .
Inherited the dreams of lunatics!
like a "straw eaten up" blowing by wind
to mind's eye," so I rushed
cleaves the heart whiteness in anger
from the upcoming days.
Ah _ oh( lunatics' wisdom)
How many wounds you left in the mind!
When submerged herein
So! I reached a half crazed,
and half sagacious.
Inherited the dreams of lunatics!
So fantasies came drunk,
like a ghost roams ecstatic hilarious
Not for the mind - eloquent
Nor ear sober.
Laughing and crying
Then crying and laughing
Then cry
An exquisite images without hypocrisy,
Nor unambiguous as if a kinsfolk road
became Straight.
Shouted in amazement for a half a minute,
and then died.
So there is no grief fueled by or poultice.
Urbane cavalcade - flaunt in gaiety
Warbling hymns in ego - cyclicity
Jigging gracile moves in vivacity
Relishing in zest in this gravity
Kinsfolk in flamboyant fete - oh its fate?
Smiles, elation in face delineate
Like nothing's wrong makes me exasperate
No one cares? No one adores? it's too late
Recurrent nightmares peeve me in sublime
Making incubuses remorse in rhyme
Bequeathing qualm, fright and fear - death like crime
Kith and kin in laughs while I'm in grave time...
========================================
*rhyme (with ten syllable count )
jun-jun villanueva
july 30,2011
*********************************************
It really annoys me when this nightmare always visit
me in my bedtime ... this thing is my fright to happen
~~~~dying like no one cares ~~~~
*^*
====================
Urbane cavalcade - flaunt in gaiety
Warbling hymns in ego - cyclicity
Jigging gracile moves in vivacity
Relishing in zest in this gravity
Kinsfolk in flamboyant fete - oh its fate?
Smiles, elation in face delineate
Like nothing's wrong makes me exasperate
No one cares? No one adores? it's too late
Recurrent nightmares peeve me in sublime
Making incubuses remorse in rhyme
Bequeathing qualm, fright and fear - death like crime
Kith and kin in laughs while I'm in grave time...
Storm clouds nestling Earth crying myriad tears
Totem poles stand like Death’s coming soon – near
Feeling of being neglected –in fear
Am I really being loved? Cry? can’t hear. . .
================================================
IMPRISONED (collaboration)
by~ Jun-jun Villanueva
Urbane cavalcade - flaunt in gaiety
Warbling hymns in ego - cyclicity
Jigging gracile moves in vivacity
Relishing in zest in this gravity
Kinsfolk in flamboyant fete - oh its fate?
Smiles, elation in face delineate
Like nothing's wrong makes me exasperate
No one cares? No one adores? it's too late
Recurrent nightmares peeve me in sublime
Making incubuses remorse in rhyme
Bequeathing qualm, fright and fear - death like crime
Kith and kin in laughs while I'm in grave time...
by~ Poet Destroyer
Twittering chime parade of glee
Unspectacular weed flowing trough me.
Boxed in a box like a tick or flea.
No one understands- what they can't see!
Outside myself holding my breath-
Or should I say what is left?
Trapping torment with false courtesy.
Preexisted past, without certainty.
Locked in a sanctuary grave of ivory ribs,
My life in a vault- trashed crib.
Feet lashing against my skin.
Twirling the rootless valves of sin.
No one cares! No one adores!
My prison trash coffin brought ashore.
~~~~~an entry for " POET DESTROYER's MY COLLABORATION CONTEST"
My brother reprobator and oedipus.
Nimble selictor, nisus impersonale muss.
Improvidence, goggle eyed or irrational,
Instigate inane dowdy, kinsfolk isolate fuss.
Paramour or inamorato objurgate carlish,
Impune contrivance, obfuscate gobble tush.
A partner inauspicious or inartificial indigent,
Not same as before lumber or lurcher hiss.
Irremissible offence fidget formidable lead,
My parents exaggerate emotions I ever miss.
JACK FROST.
J ourneyer of jazzy winter in a jovial mood comes Jack
A rouses aspiration in little angels for snow fight balls
C asting crystallizing icicles on icy forest and crispy lands
K aleidoscope of frozen frost,kisses goodbye to kinsfolk of rain
F rosty,fecund,fur favouring but gets ferociously frozen at times
R hapsodic winter lovers go skiing along the snow ground razzmatazz
O odles of snow,oncoming chills,skating thrills in his strolls offers Jack
S himmering silvery snowful scenario adds to the shine of Jack's abode
T roubadour of winterland prooves to be God's trustworthy tycoon.
P.S-May GOD bless you all with a wonderful winter.
Contest:Jack Frost
Sponsor:Shadow Hamilton
3.12.2015
The Minster's quiet grace speaks from a time
when life was simple, kinsfolk came to pray
for hope within this haven so sublime
that famine and disease be kept at bay.
The temple thrives to prove the power of God,
it bests the test, as celebrants have trod
her cloistered precincts dressed in robe and cowl
to swell His praise through seasons fair and foul.
Today we slay and maim all in His name
people whose God displays a different face;
we trample on chaste values and defame
this land we hold so dear, to our disgrace.
His church endures, the crumbling building stands,
a shrine of truth on time's all-weathered hill;
shall we learn life's lesson, hold in our hands
the answer, or will it elude us still?