No, it wasn’t happening for the first time

I don’t know whether anyone wrote ‘Tattered sky’ in a poem before. Maybe it was me. I haven’t met a poet in whose life memory and forgetting are so mixed up. Even if I wrote, maybe I had forgotten it..

Still, I am sure I am the first poet to write ‘tattered sky in the lake’ for the first time in the world. Otherwise, ask those crows pecking it to tatters. Or ask the kingfishers who fly in that tattered sky.

It is not the first time it is happening, you know?

I have cried in keka and kakali meters. I have begged in kalakanchi. I have lied in kalyani. I have laughed and guffawed  in anushtup and sardula vikriditham. I have masturbated in slathakakali, and ****** in anna nada, and let it flow innathonnatha. I have dozed in manjari and died in maakandamanjari. I have gone mad in mandakranta, and have lost myself in meters i don’t know the names of.

Two nuns who went to Aluva river sands to pay annual obeisance to the dead to Jesus

One day, while going via Aluva, i saw two nuns. They were two poor women going to Aluva river sands to pay to Jesus the annual obeisance to the dead.  One among them had the looks of my mother, and the other, that of my girl friend at the church compound. Even when i recited aloud VG Thampi’s lines ‘I am Jesus, unfinished’ they didn’t listen to it. They were not in any way related to me. Then, i was a handicapped Jesus.

It is not the first time it is happening, you know?

I have cried in keka and kakali meters. I have begged in kalakanchi. I have lied in kalyani. I have laughed and guffawed  in anushtup and sardula vikriditham. I have masturbated in slathakakali, and ****** in anna nada, and let it flow innathonnatha. I have dozed in manjari and died in maakandamanjari. I have gone mad in mandakranta, and have lost myself in meters i don’t know the names of.

My name was Shemeer then

In the hospital at NAD, my job was to sleep in the place of that fat insomniac doctor. My name then was Shemeer. I can’t prove through my writing how well I performed my job snoring loudly all the way.  I don’t think anyone would have worked like this so totally oblivious of oneself. My sleep was not in the least affected by the rounded ******* of doctor’s jasmine vine of a wife, or by the odour (i wanted to say smell) which was capable of bringing the dead back to life. Moreover, his two candle-like daughters used to play hopscotch on my bed sheet, which was my work place.  But what to say? They dismissed me from my job for opening my eyes a wee bit on a day at dusk. I heard a shriek. That too, a familiar one. They had brought Madhavi Chothi to the hospital when her asthma got worse. True, i did open my eyes. I am Shemeer, the one who was dismissed from his job for the first time in history, for having startled awake from sleep.

It is not the first time it is happening, you know?

I have cried in keka and kakali meters. I have begged in kalakanchi. I have lied in kalyani. I have laughed and guffawed  in anushtup and sardula vikriditham. I have masturbated in slathakakali, and ****** in anna nada, and let it flow innathonnatha. I have dozed in manjari and died in maakandamanjari. I have gone mad in mandakranta, and have lost myself in meters i don’t know the names of.

One could have adjusted at least a day..**

Something that smelt of breast milk. I think my name was Shinto or so at that time. I was an altar boy who had lost his belief in names after having cognac from a bar in Chicago. There was a little bird too. From that day, i developed the habit of calling even a crow a little bird. Whatever it maybe, there was a little bird. And that bird was building a nest. The bird brings the twigs, strands of hay, a bit of a flex sheet broken at the edge of a word. The bird brings a red wire, the bird brings. It was beginning to take life in the address ‘The Little Bird, Nest, Tree PO ‘. A day. A week. An year. Yes, it took a long, long time. Bird, nest, tree.. tree, nest, bird.. The moment i asked ‘Hey little bird, don’t you have kids?’,  it flew away. Here it comes with its little ones to occupy its home. Yes, that very day. On that day, just after those who won the tender contract, had cut that tree down. This was too much. They could have adjusted at least a day..

It is not the first time it is happening..

Vegetarian

After she divided

The gills and scales for the crow and the cat

Head for the youngest girl
Tail for the smart son

Middle pieces
For husband and his friend,

She became vegetarian

Worried about being accused of the stench,
Washed hands again and again

Devout**

Fasted
In answer to the question
Why haven’t you eaten?

Fasted in front of the innocence
Which asked “Do you want this, mother?

After fasting so many times
She became known as very devout.

While searching for Sougandhikam,
Four viruses barred Bheema’s way

He got flustered, unable to chase them
Using his mace and strong muscles

Sougandhikam was mis-spelt many times

Eyes got tired visiting all sites about flowers galore

Mukkutti.com, bougainvillea.com,
Orchid, leuca indica,
The thottavadi.com which shrank on contact with the mouse

Journey without fear of thorns
Flowers bloomed in the water springs of the rock-hard body

Muttered “flower”, “flower” frequently

Dot coms where fleshy blooms flourish
Time and again, forgot the wife who was insulted?

While sitting in amazement in front of a site about wrestlers,
A message
Subject hint about Sougandhikam

In the inbox, ‘black moon’ with the sings(symptoms) of Sougandhikam

He liked the fragrance-less flower from Latin America

Not a step more in this jungle,
He decided in his mind
And downloaded black moon

Morphed it, made slight changes
Then a color print

Panchali, who was bored stiff though she was the wife of five, jumped in glee

Took four Photostat copies of Sougandhikam and went to apply for a doctorate

An odorless lie bloomed in history.

while drawing the map of India
I know of a kid who was
worried as to where was Kuzhoor

a sketch job that took just five minutes
to score three marks
misled him many a time

between the question paper and the answer sheet
he
searched for his canal, bunds and fields

here’s Varkey chettan’s tea stall
there’s the butcher shop
here cricket is played
Subramonnian temple there
Kundoor river bank here
the friends wait here
Preethi turns into the alley here
like that he marked

even after the warning bell
India wouldn't be drawn in full

Kashmir not marked at all





Translation : Rajasree

Saw women
Waiting at the bus stop

Heard the new cinema song
From the advertising vehicle

Asked the stranger sitting near me
Whether he was not going to Pota ashram

In conductor’s seat
Slumbers a traveler without a ticket

Under the label of defense forces,
Two school children
On the Ladies’ seat,
Padre from the local church

“The lady who brings this card is an orphan
Her family was lost in floods
She is the only one for herself and her child
A blue card fell in my lap.

How did I become blind?
Beating time on the stomach,
A Tamil song stretched its arm
Became deaf

A girl became mute
“do you remember this face?”

Sat on the seat for handicapped
With a sense of belonging and righteousness.

Once, I was, with a thin body,
And a sound which roared
Louder than the ocean

Only the banned loud speakers
Are needed as proof

Remember standing on the street,
As a thousand flowering  tongue-trees

Remember standing guard in my hometown,
A torch stuck on my chest

Remember asking
How Itteera became Itteera

Today, after translation,
When I look in the mirror,
Word has got swollen,
It lies dormant behind the bars of the specs

Similes have developed a paunch
Metaphors have gone obese

Wonder whether my poems will recognize me

Cannot walk,
Cannot get up ,
Been sitting for such a long time

I wish to devour everything new
But  start gagging as soon as I see it

God almighty,
If I miss my exercise,
My 400-page autobiography
Will end in diabetes.

Flaming hunger
Oh, not that at all
A Photostat of that

As though I am sipping a beer
I am relishing a sun’s half,
That is sending golden sunlight
To the wooden chair and the money plant

O God
It will be twilight soon
Hey sun,
You will sink into the sea without a half!

Sky and earth and the sea
Will ask as one,
Lamenting and ridiculing at the same time

Where’s the other half?

The poet is laughing
After having consumed
A sun’s half completely,
Sitting in the armchair.