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..

On the 9th, I was driving in a hurry from Jerusalem to Jerico, laden with kisses for you.  A cop waved me down at the Bank junction at Aluva. Unnerved, the car hit something. All your kisses scattered on the road. My hands, legs, face and ***** blushed with gashes. My kisses for you lay around in the middle of the road. The orphan kids from Janaseva were picking them up. They packed them in their sling bags. A beggar woman who was passing by picked up one to smell it. College going kids make fun of my kisses for you. A cop tramples one of them with his boot.  A pock marked tipper truck crushes it under its wheels. A procession agitating for drinking water marches past it. My kisses for you are strewn in the middle of the road and holler for the moistness of your lips. Covered in a sheet woven with wounds, I lie on a hospital bed. Lamenting 'my kisses, my kisses’, you catch a flight and land in Nedumbassery.  You come to see me. In haste, you forget to buy me oranges.

I kept looking at you.
It was raining outside.

I looked at your lips.
Then, all the flowers in the front yard roll in laughter.

I look at your throat.
Then, a white dove takes off from a mango tree.

I look at your ears.
Then, a thrush flies off seeking its mother.

I look at your strands of hair.
Then, the plumeria leaves pick lice from each other.

I look at your eyes.
Then, the well in the court yard gives a missed call to the sea.

I look at your nose.
Then, the glare outside sketches the spring.

I look at your arm pits.
Outside, yellow woods sing a song.

I look at your *******.
Outside, bird’s eye chilies stand sharply *****.

I look at your cleavage.
A mother who bore six squats outside and coughs.

I at your navel.
Outside, a thousand bats.

I at your feet.
Then, a sweet gooseberry falls on the yard.


At knees.
At tender thighs...

Always
Always then
Outside, the drum beats of a road show grow in crescendo.

I trace pictures of our kids on your lips.

Then, in the middle of the road, the souls of kids crushed under wheels queue up with oranges to meet us.

When you and I wail without a sound, a slice from it falls on the ground. I make up a simile that tears are the slices of oranges that drop from the hands of those who have not had enough of loving. You give me one more kiss. I stash it away doubting whether you will be near when I die.  Our kisses attack us asking us whether we will abandon them again. We lie on the hospital bed covered in wounds from the kisses. A bunch of angels come with syringes and bitter pills. We run away without paying the bill. Our kisses follow us like a procession of bare bodies with running noses. Unable to bear the sorrow, you hug them right on the highway. I buy a cigarette from the petty shop nearby and, puffing on it, watch you.



Translation : Ra Sha

2009 october 9,
Sharja, ajman, dubai**

Very early,
The day
Browses through the book
On suicide

“this wooden cross of poesy
Will control
The road mishaps
Of dream travel”
I told the day
That those are my lines

He laughed
Sunlight spread

Gave the book
On suicide
To the day

Let it get dark,
He said

A father for the first time
is making
His daughter
Listen
to the sea
Named after her

Ammini,
Why don’t you
Say something?

This is the sea,
Mother ocean
Mother ocean
Gave you your name

You laugh
Listening to the roar
What do you know
About its depths
Even your father doesn’t know
Whirlpools,
Deep abysses
Waves
Oysters

Huge sharks
With protruding teeth

Keep it a bit closer, girl,
The low voice
Of a goddess

After your father
Dipped you
In the ocean,
He  wrote on the bank,

That the ocean mother is a thief

It was probably
Because she was scared of you,
Ammini,
This time,
She didn’t wipe it out

…

Who is this Ranni?
To which godforsaken place does this Ranni belong ?
Whether it is Ranni
Or Konni,
I have to drink a drop of liquor
After that, everything will be all right

In the perfect Ranni room
Of the one from Ranni
Ranni
Ranni
Ranni
Ranni, etc

There are pictures of father and mother

You are blessed
The pictures of
Father
And mother
In the words of Nazimuddin
Fair wife
Obedient children

Liquor
Gave a kiss
On the forehead
Of the one from Ranni

Would Shobha
Have ever seen me
Except through the camera?
Anilan,
Mary, Mary again,
Shihab,
Must have seen me
Changing lens after lens

As  for everyone else,
I am a picture
For Shobha

No shobha
Has seen
Me

Is it because of madness
Or in order to not become mad
O forest,
In-between
In-between
In-between
These missed calls

Those that were missed were missed all right .

In- between,
Trying to imitate
You
In your language,
I failed...

There is,
In Aluva
A Sebastian
Who vends vegetables

Sells anything
Except poems

And you?

All who smoke
Pine cigarettes
In the world
Are brothers

After I die
You should give
A packet of Pine
Along with the award given

I
Was the seller
In that grocery
One day
For one hour
In some moment

My pay
My pay

This kiss
Is this worker’s
Struggle with you

A struggle with kisses

Wow!
I feel like living

Great

See, I didn’t write this
Why do words
Come and look
In places where
They are not wanted,
at times when they are not wanted?

I will stab you
It will be over with a stab,
It should be over

As soon as a poem was over
Another one!
A lady says

Is it possible to feign deafness
when females talk to us?

But this time I fooled you!
I am not reciting a poem
It is reciting me!

Now let it think!


In the look of wonder and respect,
Girl,

I become another person,

You are with your father
Even then you whisper
That you want to hear my poem

I have seen you somewhere

My children,
Poem?
It is all gone

It smells like a cadaver
If I open my mouth


Do you know
How many people ran away?

First you gave me
A huge bunch of basil

My soul turned green,
But as I stand there
Stunned,
Thinking that you are so small - a girl,
You give again

An uncooked forest of leaves again

Hey look,
You are a girl

This kiss is on your forehead
I am not one who do not fancy
The private parts of females

My kiss is firmly on your forehead.
Because
My son is a daughter..

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)