Poetry: Gopikrishnan Kottoor

Gopikrishnan Kottoor

Tonight, I Have Forgotten You

Tonight, I have forgotten you, completely.

Your eyes, small fish, I wished to cup in my hands

No, I do not at all remember.

Your cheeks, anemones struggling

Against a sea of kisses to hold on;

I do not know of them;

Ah, even you do not

What must I do to remember you again

Now that I've forgotten you?

Ah, that sea. Of that I have a faint memory.

That darkness, 

in which I touched your breasts as if, my hands,

Turtled over star fish, hundreds on that beach,

 where the sea, has an endless obsession,

to lay it all threadbare,

We spoke not of it, we forgot. 

Tonight, I've forgotten you, completely

Come, come, and ask me if I remember you,

To night

***

One Dark Cent

Or,

To A Woman, Playing Accordion,

Wishing I Would See Her Again

By the harbour, the evening lights fill.

The sun is gold, minted by a king, who'll soon go back to his chamber to cry,

Not because he laments his gone kingdom,

But because he has seen, 

And lost 

A woman who conquered his eyes.

I hear the music you play,

I see the smile on your lips

I wish I would see you again.

Just to see you, not to love you,

How it would heal me

To see you swing to your accordion again.

In a tram window, 

I sit by the aisle,

Watching your smile 

As you play music,

As you fade.

And then I take the night,

By the harbour lights,

Not knowing where you'll again be, 

Lost in your loss, I'm what I gained,

In that kind of loss, for which I never bargained.

I gained your smile for one dark cent

That I threw at your feet,

As I passed you by,

Listening as though

Birds will forever rise

And with their wings,

 blanket the skies,

And I there I find me 

Showered instantly 

With all of earth's love poetry,

 Of you , already gone,

Still accordioning me 

with your brilliantly dying song.

***

The Elevator 

He sat crouched, 

the little bit of blood

a petal on his lips,

The rest, making a torn hibiscus on the floor

as we moved up, in the elevator.

The reek of alcohol

and the puking man.

Some days, are history.

Somedays,

What sorrows, what grief, what mystery,

that throws up,

As we rise,

before the elevator stops.

***

A Blue Leaf of Sky

Somebody will remember 

Somebody will forget.

A blue leaf of sky,

Shelters a passing cloud.

Somebody will laugh

Somebody will cry.

There will be reasons,

For every good bye 

Love comes, love goes.

Through a tunnel, no one knows.

Why? What was worth

The glitter once, in your eyes?

Everywhere, every time 

Some thing dies,

That laughter between tears,

The small final truth;

It's your sleep.

Each to himself,

After the flowers,

Even Just before that stone overlaid,

A deliberate sadness,

Where

No one cares.

***

Absence

In absence,

silence comes out of the clouds,

And it is like the sun

that shines through the trees,

to heat an ancient stone,

a monument, built against death.

Secretly, wings have shed,

And once flying things,

run about madly like the dead.

Somewhere, a river sings,

Its primordial song.

But it is a song for some other.

And here, 

Colours still fall

 Though I care not at all,

Even after my kaleidoscope is broken.

***

Bio: Gopikrishnan Kottoor’s new books of poems are ‘Poems From America’, and ‘A Land in the Sun’ released at the International Kolkotta Book Fair, 2025. His book of poems Swan Lake was reviewed by Nandini Sahu in Setu. His recent poetry is included in Muse India, Special Kerala Edition. His collection of poems This Small Town is soon forthcoming. Email: gopikottoor@gmail.com Blog https://gopikottoor.blogspot.com 

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Setu, January 2025