AMPAT KOSHY

AMPAT KOSHY

BRIDGE OF LOVE OVER RIVER OF TIME

The bridge of love over the river of time?

Was it ever there?

In memory now

fading

Was it in the words of a mother

peal of her laughter in happiness

or in a father's, who knew how to love his grandchildren

in everyone who you drift away from

or those who drift away from you

like stars do

in the ever expanding universe?

All that is left the blackness

their lights having become too far apart

Brother, sister, wife, children

may they not too become mirages

not bridges

of love, over time

and fade

remain only in the mind like undeveloped negatives?

Only death has substance

Subsistence is for its sake

its shadow

The living barely subsist

I cross over on a self-made bridge of love

over the river of time

always, in the shadow of my own or someone else's grief

RUNNING GAUNTLET OF

SUITORS SINGING JASMINE RHAPSODIES

There they stood like an obstacle

steeple chase

hurdle race

horses and women all milling around

Steel glinting in the hooves of the first set

The second were made of steel and always killed

gently with their jasmine rhapsodies

Running the gauntlet of their suits presented

in chronological order

you lose successively

first, outward things

and then one by one

your eyes your heart your liver

and they garland you with their white flower strings

snow white leopards come down from the hills

to the plains, free ranging sprites and spirits

You never get crucified more gladly

than when your jasmine suitors signing rhapsodies

murder you

and you run their gauntlets of sense and nonsense

antelopes Beckett called gantelopes

The muddled flesh falls down distraught

The revels are ended

The flowers turn brown

The last suitor is a woman called Death

THE SUNLIT SENSUOUSNESS

OF THE DARKENED SOUL'S LANDSCAPE

There was writing on the mountains

In English and Hindi

As well as Roman numerals

I could only make out some letters and numbers, never the full words or sentences

There were drawings on the mountains

There were paintings on the mountains

There were caves of snow with ice in them

Light in them!

If I/we brought back a report who would believe y/our witness

That there I saw a river of sand

That there are abstracts in the valleys and skies

In the patterns of leaves and the beautifully sad eyes of dogs with wolf blood, camels, horses and donkeys; not to mention the yaks

I had seen these before in my dreams

The same half clear writing on your full buttocks

The semi-sketches on the peaks of your breasts

The lights and ice in the hollow eaves and caves of your eyes

The sand and its shadows and decorations on your stomach and thighs

The paintings on your hands and legs

The abstracts on your face and back

The roads on the rest of your body and the tracery of your veins

Noble animal blood in you

I had seen the pebbles I took and put in my pocket in the rock salt nipples you bear

I have seen them again now

In the sunlit sensuousness of my darkened soul's landscape

In my waking hours

"I am, therefore you exist."

Who will believe my report?

AMPAT KOSHY

"Dr. AMPAT KOSHY is a seasoned poet whose CV is peppered with numerous books and publications. He has written seven of those books and co-written four other books. This freethinking and unconventional doctor has edited and contributed to several anthologies that would read as a virtual countdown of the world’s best literary works. He wrote a seminal book on Samuel Beckett, the Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. It is entitled: Samuel Beckett's English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language. When Dr. Koshy was a kid, he won an international prize for poetry. He made a mark as a Pushcart nominee for poetry in 2011. The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honours the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot." After that, he won several awards for writing as critic, academic and poet. However his crowning glory so far was being adjudged best academician this year in his university, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia, where he teaches presently as an Assistant Professor. He is presently working on a novel, a film script, as well as grinding hard as editor for a book of essays and four or five collections of poetry etc. His books have been to Frankfurt, London, Dubai and Turkey, not to mention Indonesia and the short stories collection Scream and Other Urbane Legends have been shortlisted in the Hindu Literary Prize. He has also written online and offline in anthologies etc…basically, if achievement is a muscle, then he is muscle-bound! Above all else his zest for love, life, wife, wine, women, family, the grim reaper, romance, sex, God, autism and song inspire him to write potently and prolifically."