MEDUSA, THE GORGON

I, Medusa the Gorgon

With eyes that turn to stone

All men who brave the waters

Of the Mediterranean alone.

Yet I was once a beauty

All womanliness was me

Limpid gaze and full of grace

I symbolized sensuality.

Consort of the Lord of Death

All my beauty for his eyes

Hot in passion, cold in breath

Men’s envy was his prize.

One day to the Temple of Athene

I, my fateful sojourn made

And there met charming Poseidon

And thus sealed my fate.

No mate or husband did I seek

But a companion to share

My world so very dark and bleak

And show some love and care.

Just as passion cast its wondrous spell

And we were one with the Universe

Came Athene, her wrath a Death Knell

And hit me with her Curse.

My soft and silky tresses

Now turned to writhing serpents

My world now full of hisses

Oh! Too late her repentance.

I, now a monster with a deadly gaze

Yet all that is Woman for all Time

And never so terrible is my face

As hideous as her crime.

Glory Sasikala

Dangerous Driving

Come, let's go for a ride

Tonight

Through prepositions and conjunctions skillfully weaving,

Of the rules for the construction of sentences quite unheeding,

To drive past their restraining hand - audauciously daring,

Trusting with poetic licence that the charge will be sparing.

To take both hands off the metric,

To reach over and switch on the rhetoric,

So loud as to drown out the insistent whine,

Of the prude's angry siren to keep to the beats of the line.

To turn the simple into the complex, and compound the complex,

Till against the road block of expression all our sharpened reflex,

To fly right over it, of the clause the other side

Honest invincible meaning, hardly shaken for the ride.

Cutting corners with metaphors,

Taking tongue twisters too fast

Bending to pick up phrases and idioms

On horrified wayside similes to cast.

To go bumping over a smattering of slangs,

And eulogizing the slope

To stop precariously at the edge of creation

Hardly daring to even hope.

That I can gently back my car

Into the right track

Where only gentle euphemisms and riding rhythms

But its true! I am back!

Till quietly slowing down, with a punctuation and a pause

Come to a final halt in front of Verse's house

To lean over and share a moment of ecstasy,

To still be well and alive - and very glad to be!

Glory Sasikala

          

... He Loved Her All The More

Rocked by a love so strong and yet so tender,

He gazed and gazed in the most lovesick fashion.

But she knew that if she had to give him back to her,

Must gently and yet firmly thwart all his passion.

And with such pain in her love-filled heart,

She turned away, to make for the door,

His gaze filled the distance from each other apart,

Pleading that he could bear his love for her no more.

But with some strength from God within her growing,

Turned firmly away from his warm cocoon’s lure,

Never to walk down his route ever again, yet knowing

That he loved her all the more!

GLORY SASIKALA

CHASM

Small the hands

In mine.

Big the responsibility

Of seeing her

Safely across the chasm.

Glory

MARRIAGE

 

Marriage

Where the beautiful, blissful

Dreamy state gives way too soon

To wide awake reality

Of mounting bills, pregnancies

And worrying non-pregnancies

And donations and loans and mortgages.

Where finances and sex and sexual preferances

Seem to rule.

 

Marriage

Where the poise and grace

And character

Of a child reflects the cook, the nurse

The tailor, the teacher and various other

Roles that the mother has donned.

Or none at all -

Reflects the sagacity and sincerity

And responsibility of the father

Or none at all.

 

Marriage

Where with passing years

One learns to read, not just facial expressions

Or the atmosphere of the room,

But each other's thoughts

Across the Globe -

Where attitude during the day

Shows on the attitude in the night

When the so-called big things

That seem to matter so much during the day

Lose out to  the small, small indifferences.

 

Marriage

Where moving in different directions

Works like a spring

That pulls back - resulting in headlong collision.

Where the romantic notion of give, give, give

Soon gives way to the disillusioning reality

That it is give and take, give and take, give and take

All the way....

Where bread winner and bread maker

Work as a unit and synchronize

To make an institution work

For the betterment of some other little human being,

Putting themselves last on the list.

 

Marriage

Where flirting to gain her attention

Backfires -

Because you cannot take it when she flirts too -

Where ninety nine point nine percent does not work,

Because behind all those humdrum finances and relatives and sex

And children and mortgages and bills

Marriage is -

And always will be

Only about Love, Protection and Security.

Glory Sasikala

 

REFLECTED

Sitting still on a park bench,

Watching the placid lake,

I see the mountains and trees

And sky and clouds

And the serenity of my thoughts

Reflected.

Standing in front of a mirror,

Watching myself there,

I see the lines, the marks

And moods and character

And all that is at this time in my life

Reflected.

Standing in front of you,

And looking into your eyes,

I see the music, the fire

The dance and the ecstasy

And all the pain and joy of my love

Reflected.

Glory Sasikala

IN OUR WORLD

There is no one else

In our world -

I exist,

And he does.

There is no one

In our world

Except us.

They are talking money,

It is meaningless.

Money does not exist

In our world

I do,

And he does.

Power is what all people seek

But what is power to us

Who live to love

In our world,

Where I am,

And he is,

And no one else?