CJ Sutherland

1d

You've Been Timetabled

HP Writers Spotlight: Melancholy of Innocence

~
May 2024
HP Poet: Melancholy of Innocence
Age: 59
Country: India

Question 1: A warm welcome to the HP Spotlight, Melan. Please tell us about your background?

Melancholy of Innocence: "My name is Raj / Melan (as on HP). I am an Architect and Urban Planner with a MBA. I unsuccessfully pursued Doctorate (twice), but due to circumstances - could not complete it. I have worked with several International Non-Profit Development Organizations and Projects. While living in Amsterdam (Holland) for 4 years I was International Development Manager in-charge of ten-countries of the world – Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea), South-East Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines), Spain, Russia, Belgium, United Kingdom and Chile. And for separate projects I have lived for more than 6 months in Bangkok (Thailand) and Accra (Ghana). I have travelled to more than 40+ countries."

Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

Melancholy of Innocence: "The first vivid memory of mine that I can call as a poem was when I was 8 years old. I had gone to my Mom’s office picnic tour for 2-days and there I had met someone of similar age of opposite gender. On coming back, whose name I wrote “three” times (one below the other in 3 different fonts) on the last page of my school notebook. I consider that as my first LOVE-poem. My first form of “identifiable” poetry was at the age of 13 years. It was about doing “morning household chores” and helping my Mom so that she can reach her office on time. After a very long break, it was only when my BELOVED inspired me to become member of Hello Poetry, I did so in 2016 and started writing serious poetry. I have 23 books (fiction, non-fiction, poetry) self-published on Amazon."

Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

Melancholy of Innocence: "LOVE surely inspires me. Being in LOVE makes me feel - live and breathe in PEACE. Poetry happens to me when without knowledge amidst mundane incidences of life – like, while taking bath or wearing clothes, standing in front of a mirror, reading some story/poem/article/lyrics, watching an interviews/movies/songs, listening to music OR just by observing the way people behave, express themselves, their ****** expressions, their mannerisms, smiles/sorrows/laughter/giggles; the way they walk, turn and look around them, stand, sit that always reminds me of my BELOVED. I also always make it a point to peep out from my home balcony / window seeking a glimpse of sunrise/sunset, moon/stars, birds, clouds, feeling breeze on our skin, blooming flowers, bees, insects etc. and many more things…! Basically, I think I get inspired by something that touches me deep inside and reminds me of my BELOVED. I immediately experience the realization of “I being in deep true pure eternal LOVE” in our heart and soul. That’s how poetry happens to me."

Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

Melancholy of Innocence: "Poetry is a true expression of how exactly I feel inside me at that very particular moment of time and I try to be as honest as possible in expressing it with words that communicates my true and pure feelings of LOVE to my BELOVED."

Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

Melancholy of Innocence: "Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Ghalib, Tagore, Neruda, Pushkin, Kabeer, Jayadeva, all enlightened Sufi fakeers and many more contemporary lyricists."

Question 6: What other interests do you have?

Melancholy of Innocence: "I like to read. Now a days I read in digital format anything that catches my interest ) text books, non-fictions, literary-award-winning books, biographies. etc. I like to draw, paint, sketch, do photography, do exercise, play sports, watch movies, serials etc. I even have written full-feature movie-scripts. I try to download and listen to all songs of music my BELOVED likes and sometimes recommends me. I like to do simple household chores (sweep/swab the house, clean the toilets etc.), do mundane shopping errands, cleaning and arranging things around me, I love to sit and observe things – “Nature”; and especially common everyday people and wonder about their childhood years and their life’s journey. I like to introspect a lot and question my own thoughts – making sure I do not get convinced and/or imprisoned by anything (beliefs, rituals, superstitions, views, thoughts, religion, philosophy, “..isms” and “so-called” TRUTHS) that I may have come across - seen, read or heard. I am very uncomfortable and vary of building identities of I, me, my, mine, myself…"

Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much for allowing us this opportunity to get to know the person behind the poet, Melan! We are honored to include you in this ongoing series!”

Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know Melan a little bit better. I surely did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez

We will post Spotlight #16 in June!

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Below are some of Melancholy of Innocence's favorite poems and links to each one:

Disambiguation:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2624426/disambiguation/

Radha - Krishna:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3071106/radha-krishna/

I am LOVE:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2648952/i-am-love/

Colors of LOVE:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3057989/colors-of-love/

YOUR SUFI LOVER:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1550971/your-sufi-lover/

In The End:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2044267/in-the-end/

#hellopoetry #spotlight #interview #series #2024 #poet #melancholy #innocence #timetabled

CJ Sutherland 3d

You Decide Past Becomes Present Haiku

Must learn from the past
Else we call past the future
Cross roads destiny

****** killed 6 million Jews when a nation ostracize and exterminated all Jewish people. That’s happening again now. Don’t think it’ll stop with just the Jews .they’ll call for the Christians death next , as foretold in the Bible.. One can argue. This is the beginning of the end.

CJ Sutherland 3d

Mothers Day

My husband forgot
Said no, it wasn’t a thought
Best I don’t reply

40 years married
Claims I am not his mother
Feeling hurt today

Objective thoughts please
Say a Word and I’ll explode
Silence is golden

Crock *** simmering
My emotion bubbling
Which spills over first?

Sitting here alone
All I can do is Haiku’s
Strange my anger rhymes

A series of related Haiku

I wonder if this form is a
type of poem On its own
I’ll have to look it up

But he mentioned his birthday is coming up soon🤔

6d

Thomas W Case

At All Cost

I gave her
latitude,
took the higher
road.
Appeasement
never works.
She drank all
my whiskey
and stole my
parakeet.
The Romans bathed
naked in the
Tiber, and she
wins wars with
a smile.
Never mind the
casualties.

Check out my you tube channel where I read from my recent book, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, available on Amazon.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2RTVZcWtVM

#war #relationships

7d

Nat Lipstadt

Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)

Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)

”And you, dear poet, friend of many years,
have given me so many inspirations, birthed within
us words,so oft, and so well, that your pithy observations,
manufacture time, add minutes to lifetimes”

<>

wrote these words without thinking,
they’re sweet and neat, trivial but incomplete

but upon rear mirror review, Mr Poet
re-thinks, perhaps deserved of another serving,
curvy white, soft-to-the-lips, a moist vanilla kiss,
excellent ice cream in a sugar cone, words irresistible

for the sweetest poem sparks multi-coloration-explosion
of sprinkles ‘pon a skin’s surface,
uprisings of what lurks in the centrum of your
embodied universe and disembodied soul,
shockingly uprising from an internal fulcrum,
sea~tossed flotsam of a jagged life, now, all recovered
words sprinkling, beach treasures, and yet,
*adding minutes to a lifetime…

reliving old reels, is time recaptured, creating a
certain robust additive to thine cranking and
cranky engine, that’s logged much more than
a picayune hundred thousand miles on a voyage
of e i g h t decades, you employ ten fingers to
calculate your fugue of multi-voiced numerations!

can it be? it cannot be! millions upon millions of
minutes, possess and passed, yet highlight feature
films, enabling reliving so real that by watching,
seeing, believing, re-reading it is as if one is earning
life extensions…adding minutes to a lifetime…

‘tis true, rereading every small scrip, every poem,
returns one to prior-places, each a datum,
a particular spot, a point upon a schema of integrity & integration,
that rule the visions, a message of individualism
in the largest context of a true vision(arie)

“chacun un point dans une peinture pointilliste…”
“each a point within a pointillistic painting…”

in a few years, a stumbling upon shall here return me here,
and I will smile with great gratitude for the life extended,
accepting with gratitude,
these few seconds, a last lasting chance,**
to say some magic words
with a great vanilla whispering
adding minutes to you life as well

nml

may 5~6
2024

#nml #lipstadt

CJ Sutherland May 8

The Adventures Of Little Paddle

On the Center Island embankment
Mother Mallard sits on her eggs 24-29 days
One hour twice a day in the sunshine,rays
She must leaves her eggs unprotected
Starvation never realizes the unexpected

Mrs. Fiddle and Mr. Faddle
Had eight eggs under their care
Predation, Herons claimed seven there
A perfect duckling name Little Paddle
The only Duckling to survive

Fluffy, healthy, strong Full of energy alive
Fiddle and Faddle guarded Little Paddle
From dillydallying around
For a wild Little Paddle
Mischief can easily be found

All mallard ducks pair off The same way
Pecking order, preservation at play
Mother Mallards sit distant from the flock
Mrs.Fiddle Mr. Faddle and Little Paddle
Animal instincts stay distant from the dock

One fine day A mishap dismay
Wiggle and waddle they progressed
Refreshed, Digressed and obsessed
They search for their missing Little Paddle

Under a Elderly Mother Mallard’s wing
A small Beak seen it’s the cutest little thing
Out pops Little Paddle
squeaking and squawking “ here I am”

Fiddle and Faddle tired of worry walking
Mrs. Fiddle pitched a fit, spit and Spatial
A plangent tangent, of loss, of pain
But for a Little Paddle it was just a game

Harmoniously Honking all is right as rain
Mrs. Fiddle and Mr. Faddle
Have a heck of a time gripping the rattle
The parenting reins in the saddle

Growing quickly with giggles and gaggles
The adventures of Little Paddle

BLT Webster’s Word of the Day
Plangent
Such a sound that describes a loud, deep expressive of sadness or suffering
Five – 12–24 update little paddle says no more
For three days we look for him do you know avail
How he died we couldn’t tell. Mallard ducks only together for a season. Offspring the reason. Since all are dead The coupling at an end. I wonder if they waddled their separate way, if you’ll remember all the things that one astray. Losing eight offspring must be hard to take. Do mallards. Get depressed with so much at stake?