Smithereens of Memory

• 

It is winter in the month of May here.

And the flowerets have dropped their sweaters

to souse their sweetness to the unsound season.

The wobbly armchair has been drooling out

age old anecdotes, out-of-order, since last May.

I have been called to watch the blue May flower

drowsing tenderly in my grandma’s upended palms.

I see it red. I wanted to say.

But whispered to her ear: “It’s beautifully blue.”

The red toy car of my nephew is her new aid.

And I was not allowed to touch it, nor my nephew.

When he cries for it, she cried more louder.

The toy car is all her then,

for its easier to calm down the five year old.

The ripened Malgovas in the backyard

has lost all its redolence, now a trifling thing

fallen uncared, open to chipmunks.

I have seen Sobha akka, the maid-of-all-work

wailing before grandma, cursing the God of ‘memory’.

She used to oil grandma’s long curly greyish hair,

which has passed from sight over a year now.

From a distant temple, the broken hymns

chanted by the true-blue saints glutted my ears,

shattered from inside, dissolved to the ache in blood.

In hopeless nights, out of all the pain,

I sings for her, the beauty of moon.

The moon, dribbling starry lights of laughter, as her.

The summer sun of grandma’s winter

goes wide every morning.

The massive rays waggles her armchair,

all-embracing smashed memory.

Image Credits: Pinterest

വിഷാദം

• 

വയലറ്റ് പൂക്കളോട് എനിക്ക് പണ്ടേ പ്രണയമാണ്. വിഷാദത്തിൻ്റെ നിറത്തെ പ്രണയിക്കാൻ പഠിച്ചത് എന്നാണെന്ന് ഓർമയില്ല. ഏറെ നാളായി എൻ്റെ മുറിക്കുള്ളിൽ, പകുതിയുടഞ്ഞ മൺചട്ടിയിൽ ഒരു വയലറ്റ് തൈ നട്ടിട്ട്. ഇരുട്ടു നിറച്ച് കണ്ണീർ തൂകി ഞാനാ ചെടിയെ നന്നായി പരിപാലിക്കുന്നതാണ്. എന്നിട്ടും ഇതുവരെയായും ഒരു വയലറ്റ് പൂ പോലും മൊട്ടിട്ടില്ല. എൻ്റെ മുറിയിലെ കർട്ടനുകളുടെ നിറവും വയലറ്റ് തന്നെ ആണ്. വയലറ്റ് കർട്ടനുകൾ എൻ്റെ മുറിക്കുള്ളിലെ ഇരുട്ടിനെ കൂടുതൽ മനോഹരമാക്കുന്നതിനാൽ ഞാനവ ഒരിക്കലും നീക്കാറില്ല. സിൽവിയ പ്ലാത്തിൻ്റെ ഒരു ബ്ലാക്ക് ആൻ്റ് വൈറ്റ് ചിത്രം അലസനായ ചുമരിന്മേൽ ചാരി നിൽപ്പുണ്ട്. “Intoxicated with madness I’m in love with my sadness” എന്ന വാചകങ്ങൾ ആ ചിത്രത്തിന് താഴെയായി ചിതറി വീണു കിടക്കുന്നത് കാണാം. ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് സാഹിത്യം പഠിക്കാൻ തുടങ്ങിയ അന്നു മുതൽ രാത്രിയിൽ ഉണർന്നിരുന്ന് പ്ലാത്തിൻ്റെ കവിതകൾ വായിച്ചു കരയുന്ന ശീലം ഇന്നും തുടരുന്നു. ചില രാത്രികളിൽ ഞാനെഴുതിയ കവിതകൾ കേൾക്കാനായി ഒരു നത്ത് വരാറുണ്ട്. പരന്ന മുഖവും വലിയ കണ്ണുകളും കൂർത്ത ചുണ്ടുകളും ഉള്ള ഇരുട്ടിൻ്റെ പക്ഷി. കറുത്ത കടലാസു തുണ്ടിൽ ഞാൻ പകർത്തുന്ന കറുത്ത അക്ഷരങ്ങൾ എനിക്ക് മാത്രം വായിക്കാൻ കഴിയുന്നവയാണ്. കേൾക്കാൻ ആളില്ലാത്ത അക്ഷരങ്ങൾ അന്തർമുഖയായ എഴുത്തുകാരിയിൽ തന്നെ മരിച്ചുവീഴാറാണ് പതിവ്. അങ്ങനെ മരിച്ചുവീണ അക്ഷരങ്ങൾ ഇരുട്ടിൽ ചേർത്താണ് ഞാനെൻ്റെ വയലറ്റ് ചെടിയുള്ള മൺചട്ടി നിറച്ചത്. ഒരു മേഘം മാത്രം പെയ്തിരുന്ന രാത്രിയിലെ സ്വപ്നത്തിൽ ആ വയലറ്റ് ചെടി പൂവിട്ടതും പടർന്നു പന്തലിച്ച വയലറ്റ് പൂക്കൾ എൻ്റെ നഗ്നമായ ശരീരമാകെ ചുറ്റിപ്പിണഞ്ഞു കിടന്നതും കണ്ടു. എന്നെ വരിഞ്ഞുമുറുക്കിയ വയലറ്റ് പൂക്കളുടെ ഗന്ധം മരണത്തിൻ്റേതായിരുന്നു. മൗനം മാത്രം സംസാരിച്ചിരുന്ന എൻ്റെ അക്ഷരങ്ങൾ, ഇരുട്ടു നിറച്ച മൺചട്ടിയിൽ നിന്നും താഴെ വീണ് ഇല്ലാതായിരുന്നു. പ്ലാത്തിൻ്റെ ചിത്രം മാത്രം, അപ്പോഴും മാറ്റമില്ലാതെ ആ ഭിത്തിക്കുമേൽ നിൽപുണ്ടായിരുന്നു.

Image Credits: Google

Paper Boat

I was six,

when I made a paper boat

with the broken wings of

a preprint newspaper,

that was bearing

a thousand unspoken words

in an agonised italicized print.

Some of the words were deaf by birth,

Crying out from the restrained throat,

fading away from the splintered pinion.

Some flew away,

while I was fashioning

the paper boat of imprinted assorted words.

I was fourteen,

when I made it float

on a rainy day, in a nearby brook

where peril pebbles were marking time

for the comer, free of sin.

With an apprehension of a novice,

it floated and glided and then hovered

at a place where a nugget wrangled

with the loony rain drops.

I had to go home then,

leaving the paper boat forlorn,

run away from the sternness of weather,

getaway to my comfy asylum.

Today,

I am twenty one,

to see the still stuck paper boat

in a corner of the sluggish, timid brook.

Many of the words sank down

to the depths of evocation

for no one to forage the hazy gist.

Not sunk, not eluded,

the paper boat still lay in hope,

for a sail so facile, so far.

A puff of wind blew out hope,

that swung on the bow back and forth,

reminiscing all my undone goals,

awaiting for a sail so hard, so close.

Image Credits: Unsplash @Mltodru Ghosh

Breathe

The gray clouds of foggy mind

swished around its corners,

where I tied up all the messes

to an unbending pendulum

that which tends to lose

all its rigour now, today.

From the murky mind,

the messes bounced in

through an unseen byway

to get crushed among

the frenzied breathe I take.

And now, my breathe,

like the slowest turn of Venus,

spinned around an axis

of futile tranquility.

I can see the darkest clouds,

suffocating from the throat of sky,

sharing my selfsame state.

Neither of us could breathe,

that breathe has been prisoned

by the hurdles of life.

Somewhere from an edge

my still sanguine heart kept

on saying…. Breathe..

Image Credits: Unsplash@Fabian Moller

Amid

In between the vast solicitous sea

and the great promiscuous sky,

I stood as an addled loner,

brooding over whom should I go with.

As a little child, I have always

been pampered by the loving wavelets.

Showed me the whole seashore

and taught me how to swipe away

the messy cobbles of life.

And the enchantment of singing waves

cheered up the baby girl in me.

Now, I am away from the sea,

looking at the doting sky

who showed me the colours

that no one have ever unveiled for me.

I could hear his voice

in the thunderclap

and his kisses drizzled

on my coying cheeks.

But there stands the sea,

with her arms calling for me

to have her love at the depths.

And afar, my cloudy sky

calls for me with all his heartbeats.

Today, I see only dusks before me

Where I am standing amid

the vast sea and the great sky.

Let me ask you..

Whom should I go with?

Image Credits: Google

Reflection

“I am the moonlit sky;

lamenting for an unlit star,

that camouflaged into a

fire comet in all my ignite dreams.”

Image Credits: Pinterest

Sigh

Encircled by a virulent aura,

my scuffle to draw breathe

ended up in a scant sigh,

that dissolved in this lethal globe,

inert, yet alive, for another sigh,

where solace ensues.

Image Credits: Google

Torn and Broken

So I was hearing the mumble

of a stack of clothes

from the corner of an unvarnished,

older room, of my great grandparents.

All at once

I found them beguiling

and wanted to wear them out.

I stepped towards it,

to catch their talk.

One was weeping

and the other was in vex.

Remaining laid down dispassionate.

They had many stories to tell..

the same but of varying pain.

Stories of sore orgasms and of

bloody marks on bare breasts

of the body, once they bedecked.

Now they are torn apart,

no more could they adorn her.

May be she too is torn apart..

But I could find no figure of her.

Wonder who she is

and where she went..

My ancestral home

is numb now.

And I was searching for her..

Time has slipped from

seconds to hours

And still my ancestral home

is numb.

From the other corner,

a broken glass mirror

was laughing loud.

Now I stepped towards

the laughing glass mirror

who showed me

the figure, whom I was searching for.

Drooping blood from my

damaged lips taunted from

the shattered howling mirror.

A demented laugher from me,

cried out insanely, saying

I found her.

Image Credits: Pinterest

Dew

The wet eyes of white daisy,

looked at the morning sun,

who grinned to make those tears

fall-off as drops of dew..

And down from the meadow,

the dew twinkled, gazing at the

shy daisy who now beamed

with charming white petals..

All her coyness mirrored

in the glassy dew drop,

took the shape of daylight,

and flew back to the winsome sun.

The dew knew the hearts,

heeded the sun and the daisy,

yearned for their merging, and laid

on the meadow, with a glancing blow.

Dawn slipped away the sky,

paving her way to more sunbeams,

those peeped into the soul

of the dewdrop, melting her away..

And now the dew faded

from the grassy meadow,

leaving the daisy, in hope of

filling her eyes in the next dawn..

Image Credits: Google

I Killed You

Slept, under the darkest sky,

I was strolling down in a sublime dream,

where I killed you.

I killed you,

And I was laughing.

I was laughing,

that I could burn your toxic frame

into ashes, from which

no more venomous lover would ever come.

I killed you,

And I smiled, thinking

of the meaningless,

emotionless words that you gifted me.

Those words.. I need no more

for what I killed you.

And from me,

take no more poetry,

for it belongs to one who have soul.

But this, you should take,

as a leftover cigarette,

that would still burn

in your ashtray,

letting those cigar ashes

recall my poetry.

I killed you,

burnt you to ashes..

And now, from the ashes,

you can’t mock me,

for being too emotional,

for being a withdrawn poet

And for all what I am.

Into a void, i have pushed you aside

as a heartless, soulless corpse of anonymity

for whom, i wait no more

with all my love poems.

Image Credits: Pinterest