Paramakudi – Six Poems

1.

There are prescribed rites
To take around the corpses
When death strikes.
Some bodies are taken away in army vehicles.
Some bodies in decorated chariots.
Some bodies in sandalwood coffins.
Even if they are with no power or lead no easy life,
When their bodies traverse the streets,
The vehicles have to give way
The seated have to rise in respect.
The rules are for humans.
But, even animals have their rites.
We observed a corpse.
One man to hold each hand,
One man to hold each leg,
It was carried thus.
The head kept bobbing up and down.
From where the bullet entered the body,
Blood kept streaming
All the way.
Words kept streaming from the mouth.
Dreams kept streaming from the eyes.
If it was treated as a human,
It would garner respect.
If it was the body of an animal,
It would join a feast.
We observed that corpse.
From beyond the moving clouds,
God too must have observed.
The body of an untouchable.
We observed
And forgot.

2.

Dense jungle where light enters not.
Breezeless, wordless.
They are imprisoned
Within invisible walls.
When the need arises,
They are summoned and ordered
To clean up the houses the streets
The offices the premises the toilets.
In fact, all spaces
Except hearts.

3.

In tranquil moments
Butterflies flit around
All over the place
As if they are imparting
Lessons in freedom.
An army of children
Follow them everywhere.
What befits more
Than the colours on their wings
To teach about liberty?
But,
When the storm blows from the direction of the fortress,
When the dead bodies are soaked in the rain of blood,
The butterflies are not to be seen at all.
Children do not realize this.
When the wind ceases  to blow,
The butterflies start flitting around again
And start preaching to the
Corpses lying in the bushes
the virtue of liberty.

4.

As someone somewhere scrawls on a wall
As someone somewhere obstructs someone
As someone somewhere seethes in anger
As someone somewhere draws a gun
As someone somewhere convulses and falls.
Some said it was only one.
Some said it was ten.
Some enquired whether
They died from the lathi blows
Or fell in the firing.
On the roads, in the side streets,
In the open fields,
Like the wind under
the shady trees,
Everywhere, we confront
The bad news.
When the Government says A,
They retaliate with AA.
From now on it is time for
Statistics and
Enquiry Commissions.
Thus runs Time!

5.

His voice resembled
Someone on the FM radio.
What registered in my mind was
Just the word Death.
It was soaked in blood.
I wiped my ears.
My fingers came smeared with it.
Wiping with my palm
the blood that overflowed from the wireless,
I ruminated on what I had heard.
Death Death Death.
That singular word
Kept repeating itself.
I turned it into a lamp.
Carried it home.

6.

He said Paramakudi.
They said it is the name of an eatery.
He said Paramakudi.
They said it is the hometown of an actor.
He said Paramakudi.
They said it is the abode of the Goddess Parameswari Amman.
He said Paramakudi.
They said, “ Wait, the bus will come soon.”
He keeps crying out.
They keep conversing.

I

Death is a peasant
sowing seeds.
We can bury anyone anything
anywhere like seeds
bodies clothes thoughts images
audio clips memory bytes
shared smiles spaces gods
kisses
anywhere like here there
like we buried him today
the man who loved her
in this glade.

II

the ventilator sang when he saw her
after many eruptions tides
many bird migrations many autumn leaves
the pulse oximeters sang the ecg song
the monitors hummed
the defibillators celloed
the syringe pumps drummed
the intestines played a taut violin wail
the vertebrae fingered the piano keys
he sang the room sang
the decayed organs sang
when he saw her after
many splashings of the timeless waves.

the world’s luckiest man
died singing with her.

III

we will make more room
our bed will be as large
as this graveyard of simmering dreams.
I will sleep with you;
You will sleep with me;
He will sleep with us.
All my loves
All yours
Will sleep with us.
Even the dead ones.
Even those in the seeds.

—-

Image: Cemetery by VityaR83

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breaking the cell walls
stirring the fluids
carving out the corners
digging in deep
drooling into each
crushing, crushing, ooo crushing
the flesh cans of pickled juices
listening to the mirth of the splintering bones
fusing the capillaries
kneading the meat into bloodied dough
jelling the screams
scrambling the voices
peeling the hearts
welding the throbs
plunging from lung to lung
jamming the nerves.

All metabolism frozen,
All life ceased,
In one radiant cloud
mushrooming the sky.

One melting bubble
popping from womb to womb
in silent love.

***

Pic by Wow Wow Wang

Sins are package deals
Made with the twilight zone
Of  iridescent dentures and
Phosphorescent  skulls.

Sins are playful serpents
Basking in the orange sun and
Brainmapping their lazy hoods
On altar rocks.

Sins  are networks.
Even if we don’t go to a sin,
A sin always finds us
And putting its arm around us
Discusses our first and last night emissions.

Sins are semen swabs.
And sometimes like sex toys,
Nipple rings in gold,
Clit clutchers and tongue twisters and
Smooth ceramic purring pills,
Imaginative and vegetative
Like succulent  apples
And supple egg fruits.

Sins are love smiths,
Masters of mechanics,
Conquerers of coitus interruptus,
Cavemen with enormous clubs.

Sins are fun things,
The eternal fount of youth,
The geysers of the world,
The minerals and vitaminsSins play hopscotch,
Offer their bodies to you,
Open, fearless, fulsome.

Because a sin is a tiger ride
A rodeo
A sybian mount..

***

Notes:

Painting Seven-sins-at-the-seaside by Nancy Farmer

A fish named Ram
 
Ram is a fish
In Rameshwaram.
Each door, each window,
Each soul there
Smells of Ram.
 
Kambippadu is a hamlet
Submerged in the sea –
Whole temples and houses,
Hospitals and cinema halls,
Skybuses and metro rails,
Primetime news and parliaments
Meditating in the salt.
 
Hey Ram is a boat
That puts out to sea
With a load of icy hopes and crippling fear
And a sea wide net to catch
Organs and limbs.
 
We are a crew of
Wordsmiths and imagecasters
Trolleymen and cranemen
Weaving our magic footprints
Among the crabs and shells,
Fishbones and feces,
And windblown sand from
Blasted bunkers.
 
Hey Ram returns
Punctual as the dawn
With its catch of men
Mutilated and chopped.
 
Budha floats neatly along
His axed head stapled to his bosom
Rayban for his eyes
In true vaastu tradition.
 
The Camera starts wobbling
To the voodo of death
As the sea sweeps to the shore
A shoal of sliced pricks.
 
Hey Ram, mutters she
As we kiss in the rainy dark
In the rainy shack of blood
In the rising waves of nausea
Wishing the waters would plant us deep
In the installation under sea
She, a taut bow
Me, an arrow
Ram’s Foot, the target.

1.    This poem is dedicated to the film Sengadal which tells the story of these fishermen and Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka fleeing from genocide. We spent a few days with Leena, the Director, and the crew.

 2.    Land’s end at Dhanushkodi, Rameshwaram, is just 20 kms from the Sri Lankan coast.

3.    There is a temple with imprints of Lord Ram’s feet in Rameshwaram.

Picture: Magic – Paul Klee

in her grave

When I met a memory
On the nowhere road
She hitchhiked with me
From sand to sea.

She told me of her village
Where memories came to die
And old memories buried the new
Or burned them to ashes
To strew them in the wind.

She was a memory
who fell in love with a memory
that died without any
memory of her.

We made love, memory on memory,
On the shores of that sea
That smelt of lived lives
And decaying souls.

When the day broke
The sea was parting
And she was walking
down the sea road.

My tears were a memory when
The sea walls caved in.

*SOLARIS is a film by Tarkovsky that speaks of a far away planet named Solaris that brings memories back to life.

Painting :  Blue Planet – Elizabeth Zwick.