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| Arya Gopi |
Mercurial
memories are nameless. They stand at ease on busy highways
filled
with ridiculous people. They walk fast as if they never reach their
destination.
They never touch the ground as they march fast. They never
fly
high. They bed-down under the maze of taciturn often and it did not
occur
to them to get filtered through the accidental flow of pebbles of
pleasures.
I hide myself in the resonating crab shell; I exist as a timid tiny
sand
grain. The abandoned sea reverberates in the eyes of a colossal
memory
whale. Love in the time of lockdown catastrophe is vaccinated.
We
don’t have much time; I travel through timeless acres of pretensions
as
if I can understand all apparitions of human language. Silly me!
Electrocuted
kisses are buried in the aquarium of antique fishes. Death
is
the dish that we cook daily in the cooking pans of stainless grief.
I
sleepwalk through mundane geographies; latitudes of disbelief are
drawn
on a mapless world of indifferent people who are remorseless.
Syphilis
For
Rilke, beauty was the beginning of terror;
And
terror was a religion of unbearable fright.
For
Ramanujan, prayer before suicide was fuck
And
only
single-thighed
mermaid would listen-to-it.
For
Kerouac, road-less journeys never ended;
And
sluggish milestones went uncounted.
For
Haig, lip-less kisses could freeze time;
And
echoless voices copulated with cogs.
For
Allende, the marginal city was full of beasts;
And
bankrupted fears walked through the epicycles.
For
Milton, gods ate all accidental humans;
And
procreative love escaped from my wounds.
For
Catton, the luminaries of fate died prematurely;
And
fortune-tellers lied of the deathless crux.
For
Dickinson, the instigation of an appetite was slanting
And
ablative spaces grew out of our silhouettes.
For
Nietzsche, aesthetic standards drew a line:
And
cockroaches and butterflies played rummy with cyborgs.
For
myself, poetry was verdict and trial together
And
I am worried about how I could end this poem.
I
taste sweat, perfume, blood, mire and tears of Karu*.
Tripwires
are set around me.I trap birds of poetry.
------------------------------------
*Kerala's
renaissance leader and philosopher Sree Narayana guru's concept of a "pointless
point in the space"
The Scarecrow’s Tongue
Languages
are
breathing
scarecrows.
In
its achromatic iris
brittle time
creases.
Its
syntax leaps
in
the images
of
no man’s land.
Not
in the land of
ignorant
grammatical
nuances
but
the
singular promised land
where
we
had only one tongue!
where
we had only one tongue!
Suddenly silver
words of
postcolonial
ancientness
were
dispersed into
algebraic
Astellas.
Its
blood is special.
Its
flesh is pellucid.
The
moment scarecrows
start
speaking; all your
fraud
cadences will collapse.
The
Parables of a Scarecrow
violate
all the theories
of
your unwrinkled tales!
Blond
history
of
rootless shadows
muttered
only
complaints.
Cordial
lies were
cooked
with negotiations
by
poets of revenge.
I
lick the fingers which are
like
burning trees
and
s
w
a
l
l
o
w
the
tongues of fire
and
get
burnt and burnt.
Scarecrow's
words blot
with
a shameless
underlings
of unforgettable egos.
If
njattevela* can't be stolen
What can’t it
do?
SCARECROW
WONDERS!
Scarecrow
opens its eyes!!
As if like a Philomela
with a phantom tongue,
it screamed and screamed:
‘I’m not a robot’.
I’m
not
a
robot!!
------------------------------------
*Njattuvela means 'Vela of Njayar', which means the journey of the sun. It is an
ancient system that prevailed in
Kerala for the calculation of specific periods for cultivation. There is an interesting historical anecdote from the annals of the
Zamorin’s court captures the sentiment every Malayali feels about Thiruvathira
(star-astronomy) Njattuvela.As the Portugese landed on the coast
of Kozhikode, Kerala, and visited the Zamorin’s court, they were greeted by a
resplendent and welcoming nobility. During this time the Portuguese were given
the permission or rather they coerced the Zamorin into giving them the
knowledge of exporting and planting pepper saplings to other territories.
Zamorin’s minister, Mangattachan, vexed by this move raised his concerns with
Zamorin. To this the Zamorin replied, “they (the Portuguese), can take the
pepper saplings but not our Thiruvathira Njattuvela”
***
Bio: Arya Gopi is a
bi-lingual poet who works both in English and Malayalam with more than half a
dozen published books including five Malayalam poetry collections. Her first
English title Sob of Strings was published in 2011 and in 2023 she
published her new collection titled One Hundred Lines of Discords. A
contributor to major Malayalam journals, she has won several awards including
the Kerala State Sahitya Academy Kanakasree Award. Her poems have been
published in Guftugu Magazine, Muse India journal, Teesta Review, eShe Magazine,
Modern Literature international journal, The Usawa Literary
Review, Kavishala Magazine, Samyukta poetry, Indian Literature, Malayalam
Literary survey and elsewhere. A PhD holder in English literature, she teaches
literature at The Zamorin’s Guruvayurappan College, University of Calicut,
Kerala.
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