Pupa to its Plant

Let the stillness pass

and I will show you  how I am going to light up

this dull winter sky

underneath which you and I

make love to each other, ceaselessly,

and wait for the moment of truth

manifesting itself in beauty, endlessly;

let me burst open

the temporary reality

of this hard shell

and you will see how

our pain and penance

brings the heaven down to the earth

as calmly as the unfolding of a leaf;

let the reluctant sun

with his lecherous face

hidden in the bosoms of helpless clouds

watch us make love:

I devouring

your succulent tenderness

and you feeding me

your own green self;

and let every speck of dust

witness

my unfurling beauty

as I explode in colours

when at last

to you

I bid adieu.

*Aftermath

The moon is only a glimmer

of what she used to be

in the cobwebbed sky over us

 of a marijuana grey,

as the dawn breaks stealthily.

 

There are no pains,

only their distant memories

and numbed even more by the quiet night

I let them slip through my fingers like sand

and hope nobody notices.

 

A Wind chill through our words

 making them cling to each other in desperation

even as we remain distant

mired in worlds eons apart.

 

I hear our long famished thoughts gasp

incarcerated in the stillness

of rocks feigning indifference

strewn around us in abundance.

 

I think of us as people shipwrecked

 trying not to remember where once home was

and huddled together for what there is,

I don’t know, I just think.

 

This neither is reality nor a dream

just, I’m told, a secret place in between

a pause before the plunge ahead

or a song before silence descends.

 

*the setting is one among the many quiet places in HCU where we got together after a party.

Portrait

Cycling, as always on the wrong side of the road

to the campus,

as unsuspecting as on

any Monday morning,

I  confront winter :

a tree all alone

with branches forlorn

and leaves stripped off;

yet, rides away, only faster,

no turning back

no second look.

Winter, I don’t want to write about you.

The way you devour the colours and

turn everything into a grey,

the way your every image

manifest loneliness,

oh winter, putting it down on paper,

I always end up

doing something i would never want to do,

a self portrait.

*Meaning

A poet died

back home

and I,

miles away

couldn’t make out

what it meant.

He had died before also,

almost, I mean.

Like a frog run over by a truck

many a times he had

fallen down on the black mud

of the streets,

drenched in blood,

in wine,

spread eagled,

almost dead.

There were his other deaths too,

less physical,

but more intense.

Mostly murders, i guess.

Love hate lust

and folks like you and me

together had him dead

at the cross, many times,

and yet, from his blood,

holy in its unholiness,

had risen like fire,

words,

burning their way 

right into you.

They called him an addict

and made fun at his back,

but were silent as the stones 

when he rode,

with his ‘bird’ and the ‘snake’*

like a king 

on the streets 

in the rain 

of molten, acidic,

black ink.

I asked a friend of mine

what it means when

a poet dies;

don’t know why, but she said

probably it was a 

‘trick question’.

May be 

that’s what it could mean

when a poet dies.

A trick

to end the agony 

of being shackled to life.

A question

that keeps screaming

in your head, 

never letting you 

forget. 

* In memory of the Malayalam poet A. Ayyappan who passed away recently. The poet who had led a tumultuous and lonely life remained lonely in his death also. His body remained unidentified on the roadside for hours.The poet had recently won the coveted Aashan prize.

* The poet’s favourite metaphors, the ‘bird’ and the ‘snake’

Crowded

These days

I find myself

increasingly in love with 

things which I once abhorred:

like crowds,

yes, crowds.

You see, I have my reasons:

A crowd

is the safest place to be

when you are 

a wounded animal.

It lets you

grunt and growl

and lick the wounds

till you’re ready

to hunt again.

Nobody will notice.

A crowd

is where you should be

if you want to play

say, hide and seek.

At times 

you might get lost

that is, lost forever

never able to find 

who you were.

But that’s okay

part of the game.

Once in a crowd

you can slough off

all your apprehensions.

Flimsy pretexts of 

love and care

nagging doubts of

right and wrong

won’t even dare

to come near you.

Instead, you are blessed 
with courage and skill

of course, to kill.

One can hardly miss

the unfathomable 

benevolence of a crowd.

Always keeps you locked

in its giant embrace

until  you give in

and replenish yourself

to a new birth.

Faceless and soulless. 

But do you know what the sad part is?

All its virtues

have yet not made me

the loyal follower

the obedient soldier

that I would like to be.

Still, at times

I feel

that I need to get 

my voice back

from the labyrinth of

its endless sounds.

But it’ll pass, Iam  sure.

For who can resist

and who wants to miss

the might that is 

the bliss that is

the crowd.