While walking hither and thither
Thinking that tonight, the world will set,
While lying , wondering what to do now,
A headache will come in an autorickshaw
The dinner will be skipped
But what stung will not be a comparatively harmless water snake
That viper will sting
during nightly dreams
Again and again
O my! I am dead!

Then ammini, lying nearby
Will cry once,
Assuming “Oh, oh, father is gone”
While I look thinking that she cried in her sleep
Lo! She will smile
Thereupon, outside,
A full moon will laugh with her

That smile is enough
To lose sleep
Then I will get up,
Go out
While I walk hither and thither
Through the full moon’s laughter,
On the Devil Tree in the yard,
A Yakshi will cry and laugh

Then I will get tired
Duly I will come inside and lie down to sleep
The world I thought had set
Will rise in the east
Then what do I do?
Was it me who died yesterday
Or
Someone else we thought of?


(Salim Kumar , An actor)

If it were a shirt or underwear,
I could have thrown it into that corner
This, now, is body
It is not enough to wash it the ordinary way in the bathroom
Have to give it to the sea or the river
Like giving the very soiled clothes to the washerman
Perhaps it will give it back.

After the morning walk,
While returning,
Bought two bananas from the tea shop

While eating it,
Tried sketching the person
Who cultivated it, in my imagination

Where would the farmer
Who grew the bananas
That I am eating now, be?

Will he be sleeping
Or farming?

Will he be

While thinking about the farmer,
Remembered father, who was an agriculturist himself

Pity!

It was necessary to buy a banana
For this ungrateful seed
To remember its own cultivator!

O rain,
That falls
On the green
That I love most
Let me kiss
Your tender chest

Nobody to come, or go
Alone, alone, alone,
Have to bear the heat and odors of earth

Was the world built by someone?
In it, the marks of a kiss
By me or you
Is graffiti

In Ethihad’s cabin
Your name is Mariyamma,
Mine is..

The sound of someone singing on earth
Mother might be crying
You might be singing
Or else I might be muttering about myself

There is only one place to say
Peace, peace
Your mother’s ******
Only one way to come out

To go inside, at least a thousand ways, but
All blocked
With what Ammu, Ammini and you have earned

Not as beasts,
Not as humans,
It was not father
Or mother
Who gave birth
To us as us
Someone else..

Will name a dream after you
Will name another one after you
If you miss at one, you will get it right at three
I will give my name to the third dream

A mouthful of grain is a word
There is a mouth
There is rice
When these two combine
You
Like myself,
So unbearable,
Love.

Children,
Was it the food you ate
Or the tall and hefty  myself
You or me
You or me

Please take with you
The care and protection
Of this SMS
In the morning
When
Anxieties leave

As I fight like a butcher,
No,
No,
Preethi, from Maha Iranikkulam
Calls me to take a bath in the temple pond

Was it you
Or me
Or our children?

Amma,
Amma,
Amma,

Amen.

I will tell
Surely tell
Wait until Meenakshi teacher arrives
I will surely tell

That you’d pinched me
You had hit me
You’d hidden my umbrella
Your hand had delved into my lunch box
And you picked up and ate the tender mango pickle
I’ll tell everything

That you’d peeped into my math book
And copied my homework
You’d forged my handwriting
You’d spilled violet ink
On the cover page of my science book
You’d inscribed
“I love you” in my palm
You’d scored on my back with the compass
Everything, everything

You’d called me names
Didn't you call me monkey?
I’ll tell that too
You threw the marbles
That my grandpa had bought me
Into the river
I’ll tell that too
You spoiled my new slate
That my brother had got me
That too

You had written in page fifteen
Of my double lined copy book
That Padma teacher isn’t good
I’ll tell that too

Well, nope
Not saying that
What if Meenakshi teacher relishes that
You may end up getting fewer whacks

At any cost I’ll tell
That you’d eaten
Raw mango with salt
In the classroom

Before the teacher came in
You’d written
The film song on the board
For sure I’ll tell that
Just wait and see
Teacher is going to grill you
You’ll cry
You’ll burst into tears
I’ll see that and burst into laughter

When you cry
I’ll drop some ants into your bag

Oh!
Have you already
Started to cry
Now wipe your tears
Hey, come and sit
Here
Next to me.

(If
you give me a kiss
on my cheek,
I won’t
tell anything.
What you refuse to give me that?
You don’t need to give that for free
When I grow up
I’ll return that;
Will give you double
Of what you give

Forgot to ask you something
The birth before the last
You’d borrowed
A 316 kisses
From me
When will you return them?)

I wish
to go to school with you

(Letters from inside My Stomach – A Part )

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.