Your eyes are marble, your heart is cold,

In your veins: water, your skin is stone,

If you didn't rejoice when she was born,

For her fluttering innocence and youth of gold.

If your soul doesn't scream now, Sir- you are sold,

Sold forever, and theirs to own.

In agony, if you don't turn at night,

Sceptres of her whitening corpse don't chase you

Or hunt you down in midnight dreams,

If you don't see her in every field,

By every shore of every stream, shame on- you-

Should know, we still fight, we will fight.

In haunted prairies for the grieving dead,

In the haunting visions of her last days,

Through the riveting stories that in memories fade,

Through fighting for them and rallying our cries,

Our voices will rise, rise and swell,

Into the bold bugle of battle- Unafraid

My shrink quotes Parental Neglect,

I like to believe I raised myself,

The last time you killed a bit of me; don’t you touch me again

Or tell me I’m not beautiful, that I couldn’t be brave.

If I tried and failed, I won’t count on you then- So,

Dear mother,

I wish you’d loved me closer,

Held me tighter and maybe when I did good,

I wish you could-

Tell me, (please) love me and hold me:

I wish you’d been my mother

I shrink from your perfectly smooth manicured nails,

I remember when they were on my face and raked,

Skin from skin- don’t enter in,

I have a love now, she’s not a him,

I would’ve told you-I want to- but,

Dear Mother,

You didn’t love me closer,

Hold me tighter and maybe when I made you proud,

You weren’t around, to-

Tell me, (never) loved me and hold me,

I so wish you’d been my mother

We shrink from the way we tear each other-

Down- to having no common ground: I’m still alone

You’re trying I know: you wished me happy daughter’s day,

We’re in the same house and so far away,

Your love isn’t motherly warmth, it’s the ding, message received

Lighting up my phone; Alone in my dreams crying-

Dear Mother,

I want you to love me closer,

Hold me tighter and maybe when I need love,

You would with warm love,

Tell me, (try to) love me and hold me,

Won’t you- I love you- my mother?

they had a feast/ a feast for the living

for the dead?

an endless murmuring refrain

on gatherings full of his grandchildren

on weddings of his nieces

ghosts of him in their blood and etchings of his face

neverlasting lights burned him that day/

forever in our midnight dreams/ whiling away

time with my aunt's whims and her braiding my hair/

love is love is love is her ghostly touch and fiery air

white whittled wood

red red redwood/ i can

not remember/ the wood they burned him

on/ cancer sucked his soul and he was a log/

of wood on/ a pile of wood

maybe he was cancer

his wife died hollowed out from inside out/

she was carried by her brother/she did not have cancer

I wasn’t there/ for his death, I live far away

I hope the next time I visit them

newness in decay, graves in bloom: nothing will be the same

a divorce

is the perfect path to freedom:

from riptides of psychopathy

from your husband and your son

it is liberation for my aunt

long-suffering and in pain

she’s carried the cross too long

complaining, tired- she wept;

cue the blood rain

i divorce

i hold, we share in our hearts

the guilt of spectatorship of crime

it was youth that barred me

from ripping that psycho apart

it is liberating to me

to see her safe and sound

and around

people who’d never harm her like him

and that’s all i try to see

the sparrows nestled again this time

in my bathroom sill

i turn the light up at night

and their cries are tinkering bells

i’d never kill a sparrow

i’d never hurt one but in turning the light

up at night

i wonder

if i hurt them still

vivaldi/spring

words linked by white gold chains delicately throttling them together

like i throttle sweaty and tired coca cola bottles/

late in the morning of sluggish summer

a pianists' fingers/ the one thing my musician and i portion/

isn't it lovely all alone- all for one, two for none

lurking below veiny thin wrists/

alone in angsty angry fists 

all my love for you and the tension on our strings

snip 

snip snip

and then-weightlessness

i offer half blown blushing roses as a sacrament

generously dainty even in death 

vivaldi, saver of myself from me/ vivaldi of venice verily vehemently vain/

vivaldi guard me this one last day/

waves of insanity rush like office-hamsters on spins

cartwheeling and shaking their drenched-not droused-locks today.

hold out moses' staff/part the red sea/

make way make way

Saffron isn’t the colour of injustice,

But saffron will be the colour of shame.

Second wives and of saffron lies,

Of saffron brides unrecognized,

Of the Plains and what the Lotus claimed,

Will be told in the darkest of our tales.

Green shrouds sprout in the west,

In the ruins were found:

A broken crescent and stolen dignity.

The only thing for free is: captivity,

So stand on thin ice, and believe the sound,

Of the love we give.

Saffron isn’t the colour of injustice,

But saffron will be the colour of shame.

Saffron isn’t the colour of bigotry,

But saffron will be the colour of shame.

Veiled eyes spark black with pain,

Almond-rose skinned infants were snatched:

In the dead of night,

In the saffron reign,

By: hate greater than love, all strings attached.

From the Mothers of the Valley- hijab-bound,

And free,

I learnt more freedom than the Stars and Stripes,

Could ever teach me.

Saffron isn’t the colour of bigotry,

But saffron will be the colour of shame.

Masters of trickery won the second we

Chose: Patriots over humans; stagnation over revolution,

And the snow vales ran red.

ISR-yes you went to school with him- is a backstabber and a massive coward. And my hatred for him is so dense and deep, that past-me would have destroyed all semblance of societal respect he ever had. You’re burdened with his life, charged to- preserve him, conserve him and guard him. Who else would? 

You’re not a saint-never were, but you like to believe that you could be: good. Till yesterday, you were everything you chose to be and acted however you wished. And then- responsibility a foot tall is shoved up your nose, it is acid: vaporizing and burning your throat, it numbs your mind and paralyzes you, so when you, nerves shaken, try to run hellbound, it leeches itself to you- forever stuck. You tell yourself, crudely honest, yes I hate him but I don’t want him dead right? Then go on, try and save him.

                                                      You’re taken back when he apologizes, lies lies lies slither inside, flashbacks flash tilted in time, whirlpooled back to when his manic girlfriend called him ‘mine’, and believed the stories over dinnertime, of him, hanging out with them, never even trying to save the both of you. Resounding slaps clap by when you say, “I cut myself.” That time, lost in your history, you remember, in the cafeteria: him being glorified for the jagged lines running like crooked rivulets along his thin arms, you remember him smiling when the next day, more of his fans try it out. Stupid teenage notions. He’s alone, lonelier than ever, SOSing you, so you tell yourself to accept this leech called responsibility; to be the good actor you are on the stage lies lies lies slither inside. You say with the straightest face you can manage, “I am here for you.”

Name: Pravartika (inserted above is a picture of ME in superzoom)

Why I've started writing on Prose: WtW and their unfamiliar and hostile environment with awkward newbies has officially made me squeamish to the point that I'm starting to greatly dislike it. And, due to the buildup of Prose and because of y'all here, Prose is 10x more supportive and active a community than WtW.

[Also, @poetri and @phantastical05 really pushed me over my moment-of-painful-doubt-edge by expressing their wishes to slowly wean off WtW. Y'all rock.]

Hobbies/Interests: (pardon the flexes) Indian Classical music, string instruments (especially the synth), novice competitive tennis (haven't played in YEARS tho), smelling old and yellowing books, destroying people with logic: especially people on the wrong side of history, digging up gruesome cases and performing case studies, befriending people, oration and elocution, directing and acting in plays. That's about all.

Friends up here: @Samina (secret hometown buddy)

@sunnyv (the Texan tornado)

@poetri (In-the-awkward-phase 'Aquaint')

@phantastical (Little Anou, Eater of shit, Baby Brother)

@inanutshell (the Political Bunny)

@elliem (WtW's Gorgeous-est Gift to me)

I have a lot of hopes for the things imma do here. Hope y'all are here or around here somewhere. Welcome me, won't you? (lol)

Love and light,

P

For as long as I am alive, Marshall Applewhite -his skin sallow mustard and brittle like ageing paper, his eyes screaming wide with insanity and bared teeth placed so absurdly close together, will be my demon. I fully believe that he was Voldemort reincarnated: that is just how much terror he inspires in me: the Messiah of a cult of hippies and conspiracy theorists, 31 of whom committed horrifying mass suicide, beginning March 22, 1997, in white Nikes. This was the Heaven’s Gate Away Crew.

      I wondered how could people trust a man who had blinked 38 times in an 8-minute tape and ardently maintained a philosophy that sought to intertwine the Bible and Star Trek. Then rushed in the memories of the thousand and one times golden-haired, saffron-clad politicians pulling fast ones on the international populace and the meditative gurus in their ashrams and holy priests in their chapels on oratory stands, voices rich with righteous anger and the shepherded public listening with hot and glowing fanaticism. 

                          Folie à deux or folie à plusieurs is a psychological disorder where symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. Cases include the Erikkson sisters, the Papin sisters and the Parker-Hulme murder. Test, check, recheck: your beliefs. Any person in the vicinity of a potentially deranged patient is vulnerable to this form of madness, and because anosognosia kicks in, it is impossible for you to realize that you might be under the Evil Piper’s spell. In an ever-expanding realm of misinformation, and hence of paranoia, trust none but reason.