~
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!

~

train myself to write anywhere and at any time...
as commissioned by ms. melan
~'~'~'~'~

so I, being a being,
a poet who carries his mind scheming
with him:
drags along his body and soul,
just in case:

that his hands might feel the touch of
beauty, skin and beyond,
the exteriors of his interiors,
to feel, to feel, to feel
every one of his surfaces,
the reality of his peculiar real

his eyes so one can envision the unimaginable,
and thus, never be satisfied,
for all is
always new,
beyond original

that his ugly, ungainly ears,
may never miss the sound of his tripping & falling
head!over!heels with the realization,
he just might be foolishly
in love

the tastes of life's living that
make his pulse race,
crease his smiling face,
causing his blood pressure so high
he pleads to surrender,
just begging to let his tongue
survive

and smells that arouse,
producing & promising
words proud &  profound,
that have yet to succeed
in capturing
the fullness
of the
special musk odor
that masks
allure of attraction

no, not a lot to ask for…

5:26am
SunSep13
two zero two five

~ for the poet by the same name,
Melan,
a name derived from the Greek "melas"
meaning "black" or "dark"~
<>
oft have we warned you, be wary,
every phrase, a provication,
a cribbed script from a message,
a poem, even a pen name, says,
marke me man, the notion of the
Melancholoy of Innocence
a burr buried in my head's bed,
a sleep robber, a pseudo~scholar,
so intriguing this grand challenging
notion...
of the purity of melancholoy's essence

my oldest friend from an early age,
before I knew the word to grasp~capture it,
in my youthful tristesse grave,
what rendered my soul so vulnerable
to an emotion that had no direct visible cause,
but powered me with a puzzling
strange insight of keen visibilty,
that filtered a glow about all, about what
my eyes saw, my heart felt...

nearly now, the better part of a century,
I recall the first days of exploration,
of a world, that
dished out equal portions of
ecstasy and misery,
and well taught me the value
of silence
of observation,
and how to record
a memory so that so many, so many decades later,
is crisp with its original fraglity
that overwhelmed way back when
I was but a toddler

a world that was cruel,
a lesson, that came very early,
but made me quiet but not surly,
observant of the human quirks and their potential,
the people surrounding acting in an up dated version
of a Bible Tale..

where guilt and innocence were precise and clear,
and there was no middling muddle,
to confuse, or be abused,
to obfuscate or obscure

lines of demarcation in black clearly drawn,
so it was soon gone, the innocence,
that was gifted to us all at birth,
and though I mourned its loss,
very quick came the silent thought of,
well, that's no surprise!

that melancholy matures, extends and distends,
now and then, even shocks,
by the newness of returning old sadness,
and the ceativity of its constant reintroduction,
accompanied by a startled,
well, that's no surprise!

and here the shocker though,
acts of human kindness are not so far and few between,
just perhaps, less well advertised,
so when spotted. self similar words emerge,
even happy shouted,
well, that's a surprise!

Objectified manifest's dimensional delineations are totally tangential to trajectory extant.  Infinite possibility's exponentially extemporaneous eidetic prospectus perpetrates incorporeity ideology's perfectible ontology.  It's sheer omnificent ubiquity.   Manumission's vicarious recalcitrance to epistemological entelechy's maieutic had an exogamous homogeny with spatiotemporal telemetry's exigence.  The basic fecundity of cosmic continuum's radix repartee's mesomerism becomes corporeally preternatural's impetus intrigue to intuitional intrepid.
 
       Livid lucid lambent loquacious emanations that presage synergy's retrospectively retroactive to nuance fulgurous fulham's fulcrum.  Cognizance categorical imperative's cognitive, clairaudience clairvoyance, omniscient omnipotent omnipresence.  Unary's unbridled aorist actuator's ethology's entelechy.  Zoomorphic zoolatry's social contiguities to demagoguery.  Hegira to Xanadu ne plus ultra exodus.  Elan Vital's apotheosis.  Hectic duty deontological probity.  Noumenal sentience's irrefragably inevitable semantics.  Pandemically phatic futurity fatidic to kitsch kithe.  Chicanery dynamism's fealty! 

I'm sorry Melan but I don't believe that we must lose track of our corporeal being's identity to experience the true essence of love.  We should enhance each other's  cognizance constituency.

There's blood-
Its warm as it dribbles
Melan-choly with the floor
Half somber,

Its changing things slowly
Brok-er-ing gravity-

There's cruor
Incanting elixirs
On never-read
Centipede's fiction

And we stir softly
For-never and always
As the slabs begin
To grow--

Cold.

You
are
so
mean

Incredibly
mean

You
take
from
me
all
given
things

and take them
for granted

How do I

  know     this for sure?

When I've kept

manipulative

    lovers who loved more to reprogram me

How do I

      separate the abuse from the present?

I
am
so
sad

melan
choly

Romance means a process
and I've watched for years by your side
with my eyes aglow for my god
as you cut your tether to me with
the courage to do nothing else but
tell me otherwise, like I haven't spent
thousands of nights wishing and wanting
for the light of my life
when she was right there
right there

"Art is not in crisis,
Art is where Christ is…

Mandatory
Art is like Isis,
that’s where the Light is…

Melan story
He(art) is not just typing this,
Heart is just what Time is..."