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.

This is the song of the handsome people
bleached white bones
dark red flesh
with wrinkles deep and old
as the desert.

Their arrows having disembarked
have faded into the
molten clay of the
mean-spirited earth.

Their heritage having been
habitually crushed with cause
for hatred has been
enveloped in peace and pride
and is cloaked in
dry hides.

Feathered in cold trails of tears
to match trails of aging
they have covered up their
misfortunes with song
and smoke.

Their rainbow carried by the wind
to some far-off pasture
rides on the backs of deer
and dead bison

to be consumed in smoke
and black flame.

Today, I have encountered something enchanting
Flowing through the outer forest, alighting
With birds and deer, All flora/fauna delighting
In her presence. I was taken to demanding
From myself a further look, reprimanding
my soul for wanting to see more of this beauty
Who could she be? This brown woman, set to soothing
my sailors heart? With another wayward glance,
She vanished- Leaving behind a memory, a missed chance;
And a man with knees too weak to stand.

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..