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AM Joseph Jun 2020
No, it didn’t happen in classrooms                                                       ­       
Of syllabus and assignments. But
Somewhere amid the iron rusty
Windows Of 28-rupee bus tickets
From yellowed Platform signs. All  
from          
                                            ­                      (Kayankulam to Cantonment)
No, not the gust, but visits a florid                                                           ­   
Breeze after 6 over my garnered age.
Sliding beneath her gold embroidered
curtains, under the ashen newspaper
Speaking of potholes and crows.
How you commute in colored notes                                                            ­  
                                                                ­                        (Adoor to Adoor)
from district to the next is unfamiliar.
Surely, spicy how it rolls from me
Tongue to hers/his/theirs. Carried on
To the red slits on their skin. Fleshed.
Pages, the her-story of breasted warriors,
with ease. You slip off the sky’s night
gown. On the same earth hurried kings,
Queens, and ivory throned British malice.  
                                                                ­                                            
                    ­                                         (Adoor to Thiruvananthapuram)
Exiting from a throbbing earthen stilt
kindness, a dry sandy footstep. From your
children’s 44 rivers, where song and dance,
clamored from the shore. Must be that glued
pride, divine of your esteemed royalty
                                                                ­                  (Periyar, Achenkovil)
Perhaps a brown rattlesnake, you slither
into all riding on health magazines, pamphlets
and late news debates. In hymns of praise and
folded envelopes of austerity from the rain dren-
ched postbox.
Like drizzle at night from a cup.
And if you were a spirit, you swim about
in the death of fishes in cat mouths begging
around with crows in busy smelly harbors, stray dogs
with their tongues out flicking ripened mango                                    
                                                          ( Aluva Central Stn. To Thiruvalla)
pickles on railroad tracks packed with rice and Coconut milk.
Children of mammal and mamma fighting out for
A leaf foiled bundle or rise and rotten fish.
You and I
We share a familiar vision of spring
Bedding an acid sting like memory
                                                          ­                      (Kottayam toThrissur)
Of raw plantains in mouth. Coconut oil                                                      
On head. Crying with my tooth on a
String from my greasy door handle.
There’s a way she rolls of my mouth
To his/hers/theirs.
After all it’s the better language
To kiss with. And after bury with.
                                                                ­           (Adoor to Ranni,Kollam)
156 · Jun 2020
The pilgrims are old
AM Joseph Jun 2020
Tanned days rest futile and barren, effortless.
Wan old woman on a mahogany chair. Balding.
Folded torn date palms amidst desserts thirsting.

Blue-black nights spent watching lovers, kissers
eat lips, tongues. At soft tips of sanded hill castles.
I dream of full, silky fleeting rivers. Oh Krishna.

You are the giver, taker, war, peace and refugee.
Plane songs, sorrows and all the remaining dreams.
I’m empty, yet a ripened bunch, ready to submit.

Like a dog at your altar. Running knives on my back.
I cannot grow, the blue is too far a lover. Or wither, the
ground too close a migrant. Just a blessing cut down for

those curses fettered in pages, drawn beneath gypsy tongues.
Crop me off this pilgrimage, myself running out of pilgrim
Age.

— The End —