The Art of Knowing

I may not be gold

I certainly don't feel like gold

And perhaps I don't want to be gold

I would like to be something like copper

Or iron

Hard

Unforgiving

Not malleable and needy

Because gold needs to be needed... and that is its undoing

Doesn't make any sense, but i'm sure you understand...

I want to be a rock

I want to be a dumbbell

Dumb yet strong

I don't want that knowledge that led man to fall

And I wish I could give it all away...

But I know

Some things

Some things that others don't

Others can't know

It's damnation

Knowledge

Isn't power

It is weakness

It makes you empathize

With darkness

Because you know

That darkness resides where the brightest light does

In Ellipses

The soul lives in strange dusty spaces

The pauses between thoughts

The hesitation before a song

The realization before the ring and the garland

The regret before a wrong

In such a storeroom of sorrow

On memories’ forgotten shelves

I kept a key once long ago

The key to my unknown self

Perhaps that key is finally lost

And lost my soul with it

Perhaps that key is finally found

And hangs on leather band

With cactus and bells and broken shells

Jingling-jangling in your hands...

The Secrets of the Sea

The sea holds secrets
In its bosom deep
Secrets about you that you screamed beneath the skies
Secrets about me that I sealed with a hundred lies
Secrets about us that neither of us know


The sea holds darkness
The blood red ink of love
and the purple ink of my rage
and the green and gold tears I cried
on every single page
They mixed and made the blackness
That holds shards of glass
That in the cover of the night
Masquerade as stars...

Rest In Peace

After all the miles are run
Over gentle stones and humble mountains
Over raging rivulets, thundering storms
Mighty chasms from whence darkness looks into our souls
Infected, hurt, half-healed and half-given-up...
All the miles are run
All the pain has now become
A proof-less, hazy memory

After all the words are said
Tender remonstrations of love
A thousand "I love you"s a day, none meant
A thousand more "I wish you'd understand"s, none said
A million "I'm sorry"s all in cocktails of rum and tears drunk
A million more "Why?"s, none answered
And many many "That's why..."s piled on sky high, sky high...
Grudges, piled on grudges, all swept under a threadbare carpet...
After all the words have been said
My words have now become
Masks to wear to a farce -
Horseplay and gaudy sentimentality

Somewhere I erred
Somewhere right at the start
I spoke but did not hear
I heard but did not see
I saw but did not notice
What we had set out to be
'Us' was a bond forged with love
My love for you and yours for me
But in my hurry to love
I left no pause for being me, becoming me.

Being was good, until I became
Un-me, unlike what I had promised I would be
Living in violation of rules and regulations
Commissions and stipulations
Riddled with misgivings and speculations
Misunderstandings borne of miscommunications
All spurious issues of an epileptic imagination
...Words
They're trash today, see how they confuse and obfuscate
I pimp them shamelessly
Invalidate their validity

It all comes down to what has been said
And unsaid
Meant and un-meant
Proved and disproved
My words are the devil's advocates today
Erasing and rewriting lines
Between good and gone-bad
See what's become of my pride, my power
Words become whores to fakery
Honesty laid to rest in peace
Garrotted with infidelity

Peace, gentle mind, go in peace
Madness has its own reality.

Disinfected

"Breathe."
"Breathe?"
"What? How?"

The air around me grows
pregnant with summer's sighs.
No smells, no sounds, no memories
of the life gone by
I sit in a clinic awash with stern bright light
Antiseptic emotions in my IV line
My heart beats with a regularity that puts monotony to shame
My legs are numb, my hands are lame.
My 'higher' faculties in coma lie
I converse with vegetables
About the meaning of life.
I am
Disinfected.

Come infect me
Be the poison I long to taste
Pollute my air and lay me to waste
Bid my thoughts run wild and free
Bid my passions make a fool of me
A fool who lived
but for a little while

A little significant while.

I don't sing of arms or the man
Or of humanity's existential strife
I sing of myself - a hopeless cause
A daughter, a mother, a wife
I sing of my dreams and aches and fears
I sing of my truths and lies and tears
I sing of loving my near and dears
I sing of my tiny life.

They said they didn't start the fire
That it burned ere they were born
But the one inside, it died, unstoked
Left not a trace forlorn.
Where once was light, now eternal gloom
Where once was hope, now creeping doom
Where once was a home, now an empty room
Where I crumble alone.

Two little travel ditties

I cannot call them poems, though poems they are. I penned them down in a train, about seven or eight years ago, as I traveled through little humdrum villages in Kerala to attend a function. Life itself had seemed like an R.K.Narayan novel at that time, thoughts piling on thoughts, experiences on experiences, and not the space of a single breath to sort out my mind.

Yet I wrote what came to me all of a sudden. Like a little thunderstorm in the middle of summer. And after several years, I came by these lines where they lay, in a nondescript notepad consigned to be 'waste paper.' And hereby, I restore them to their rightful place...


I. In a Moving Train

Little grilled windows
through which light shines
and casts shadows
of ogres and giants
that sit inside
eating their curds and whey
and packaged food and overripe fruits
While noisy children play
and run and push and catch and shove
and squeal and spit and scratch and sigh
Little ogrelings, they.

What, to them, is an open pen?
But a sharp thing to jab
into his hand or her thigh
They, who do not buy
The chips and the chocolate and the cake
In a moving train they
and theirs now do sleep, while I wake...


(unedited)

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II. Nemmara

I visit Nemmara in my dreams
A sleeping house in a shady lane
A swept-out yard where chickens run
And twenty acres of cane.

I open its door one early morn
As the cock crows at the breaking dawn
I wash the porch and wash the steps
And kolams make of powdered rice
The dark floors to adorn.

And the cattle goes to earn its bread
And the lads run from school
While scented girls do gently tread
Beside the temple pool.


(unedited)

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