poems written by Sherin Mary Zacharia for the National Poetry Writing Month April2022 on the prompts given by The Significant League
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GhwYxpQtjN-zTuCfRWGVJ03ZNdl4S7Fn?usp=sharing
Napowrimo2022
TOUCH OF PEACE
Waking up to the call
Of a new day, new world
Music of the wind and waves
On a shiny new shore
Below a new sky, new light
Waiting is the new life
Longing to laugh aloud.
Unrealistic are dreams
Wild imaginations
Raises hallucinations
Today miserably alone
On an orange printed water bed
None of those acrid medicines
No more the scent of cleansing lotion
Room stinks
.World mourns dead children
Old lives fear to breathe
Smoke masks the city
Sign boards point nowhere
Queues stretch there.
There is light
Must be a nurse
My fingers feel the wound
Scarring the palm
As it holds my palm.
Was it by a shrapnel
Or by an iron nailT
hat had gone deep
Into the cross.
Shakti
Mother Goddess
Her countenance radiates energy, breath resolute
She binds her dear one in her heart, wraps with her arms
She fills to the brim, under an instinct unexplained
The anxious mind with soothing care, crisps, sauce added.
Only she can protect with seething fury
Protest to the world that lacks any empathy
Eyes open still in the night, her mind guards, plans next
Fast, she walks up mountains, learns, makes the mute a poet.
Growing for me in love; her mission, toils for all
Blossoms line the path uncured, to the sanctum sanctorum
Where anything is possible, for the will unsubmissive.
She seldom turns trifle mags; webinars beckon her with lessons.
Mundane promises fail to convince her, she seeks weapons of trust
Severing the head of trivial desires, she rides the tiger of challenges.
She is the one, the Mother Goddess, every day marks her victory
She is every mother, every special child’s mother.
2
Myself, I Know
My mind wants to fly -over the seas and above the hills
To see gardens and windblown meadows crafted in ink
I am a girl with dreams and a song, a song in my heart
My strength, the fort my poems form, to shelter me
My mind, a fluttering bamboo leaf, slender but abrasive
A breeze caresses gently, but can it withstand a storm?
Words drip in the chaos of my thoughts, in their pile I hide, sleep long
Verses grow wings, fly around me and wake me up.
Out into the bright blue sky, I make my way
Like a flock taking the shape of a dart
Words shoot from my pen, taking me to the horizon.
They give me the power to know my own self and
Tell the world aloud; that I hear the rivers,
The murmur of every leaf, the rumbling of rocks
As I move ahead in the colourful world of words
Armed with trust in myself and the poems from my soul.
Poems published in Rhetorica Quarterly
TOMI
Tomi- is this a kind of name you give your pet?
Short for ‘Thoughts On My Identity’; read; fun you will get.
My name is Sherin
Sweeter than a honey muffin
Use it often to tell the world I am there
Yell it out and I stand before you “I am here”.
My thoughts are true and original
I meet my reflection but often feel dismal.
A girl with real poetry buried in her self
For long I think much of myself.
When my momma sees this, she grows tense
And tells me tales to rid my sorrow dense.
Once she read me about Menorah, the frog
who looked for hours at her image in the bog.
Written by rain, Menorah read each line
The droplets read ‘true frog’ and let the Sun shine.
My search is for the me in me
Unnerved all pray on their knees.
World’s every word has a name
My name soon became a game.
When my search for me goes on
All call out “Menorah! hop on!”
Give my poems brightness, Oh light of wisdom!
The seven lamps, fill me with resilience and brilliance some.
When my name, my identity
I write below pieces of my creativity
Will only that matter
Not my anguish, my dreams that I splatter?
With my heart and my soul, I scribble
My name below, which is more visible?
How are the constellations bright?
Their names are owned by the night.
My verses speak my voice
The birds in my heart; with chirping noise
Repeat my name “Sherin,
The sweetness in you be the same therein.”
*******
In Hebrew Menorah means lamp. The menorah symbolized the ideal of universal enlightenment
UNUSUAL
My eyes meet the unusual
That have no labels
To reveal their identity.
Away in a new land
Where leaves hide beneath roots
Nourished by thin air
I see birds and their nests
Dare stand up against the Sun.
Floods with blood of the unfortunate
Rises as waves that
Beat the callous rocks
Of the sea; withering.
Nowhere have you listened
To such stories that drive
Deep into the soul.
Never told, never written
Only lived
To the last breath.
But they were there! Alive!
Once!
Singing every night from the
Sleeping houses
Moving near the window.
Over the clouds it floats
Towards the cold moon
Never the same
Above the manmade miracles
Patiently listens
Promises not to forget
Much of itself slowly vanishes.
Light will cut through the peaks
Wake up another unusual day.
Christmas Gifts
Come fast, blessed but foggy days of joy
Open my letter quick! Mrs. Claus, as you pack the toys.
My hands were sanitized, pen and paper too
From my heart, I have sent you a request true.
For me dear a copy of ‘The Book Of Good Deeds’
That is what the world presently needs.
With it let me try to light up our world
Here poverty, disease aplenty; wickedness manifold.
Gift me mother Christmas ‘The List Of Kind Words’
To ease the people in pain from terror’s sharp swords.
Race, religion, culture and gender churns
lives; and climate change awaits its turn.
Read my note you must dear, in you I trust
Keep those in Santa’s red bag, ready to burst
And to the sleigh winding down the heaven
Bells tinkling, with reindeers Rudolph and seven.
Our world will be henceforth bright
Men and women will smile, spread light
Save our earth I will try; from a gruesome fate
As the Christmas carols fill the night late.
WHAT DO I WRITE?
Brooding over this little piece
Of white paper with blue lines
Clipped motionless
To my writing board black.
Over creation of thoughts
Refusing to come out
Can the rushing waves of mind
Be slowed down?
Splashing sprays of disconnected thoughts
Be counted?
What do I write about? me?
Or the world around?
Or should I write about
The nonsense thoughts of my mind
Wandering on the numbness
Of trees facing the axe,
The meanings of unheard proverbs,
Origins of songs heard in dreams.
Nothingness fills everything
Words cannot express it all
The depth of hopelessness
In a heart
Mustering courage to let in
The faintest light ray.
BAKING A POEM
‘State of mind’ has no governer
No one rules here for long
Administrators try their best
Chaos rule here, decide the rules.
Hear with no prejudice, what the mind says
Prejudged decisions saves not a sail in storm
Mind refuses a moulded image untrue to itself
Never the reflection of self, now marinated in fear.
Quietly it bakes inside the oven, door shut tight
From the scornful gaze, red hot and indifferent
The heart roasted in its thoughts bursts
Floats in air, sticks to a paper; a poem.
Monsoon’s fury
Now the hills tremble
I crash down the slopes
My roots writhing in much pain
As the dancing water
Forces itself to freedom
Scatters everything from
-the warm motherly hug of earth.
Rivers take to new destinations
Mud paints the houses anew
In the colour of earth
Her long rejected care;No more redeemed.
Man tries to envelope in the safety
Of his newly made systems.
I drift through his balconies
With a bruised trunk
The towns rip me apart
Roots thrown on the seashore
River’s fury now fizzles
As she cuddles upon the ocean’s bosom.
Sun dries the fractured root; moulds it
Into an artist’s freed vision
Now decorates the hall where experts
Talk on ‘ Monsoon in Climate Change’