ചെറു കഥ : ഉള്ളടക്കം

ആ വിദ്യാലയം നിറയെ മരങ്ങളായിരുന്നു. ഇലകളുടെ നിറഭേദങ്ങൾ ആ മുറ്റത്തിന് ഒത്തിരി ഭംഗി നൽകി. അവിടെ അവർ എല്ലാ ഇടവേളകളിലും ഒത്തുകൂടി. അവിടുത്തെ കൊച്ചു ആൽ മരത്തിന്റെ പുറത്തേക്കു തള്ളി നിൽക്കുന്ന വേരായിരുന്നു അവരുടെ സങ്കേതം. അവൻ അവരോടു അവൻ കണ്ട സിനിമകളുടെ കഥകൾ പറഞ്ഞു. പായുന്ന വണ്ടികളും, പുകയുന്ന പാതകളും അനേകം നായകന്മാരും ഉള്ള കഥകൾ. പ്രതി നായകന്മാരില്ലാത്ത കഥകൾ. ആ കഥകൾ അവനു ആവേശമായിരുന്നു. അവൻ കഥകൾ പറഞ്ഞു കൊണ്ടേയിരുന്നു. അവന്റെ കഥ പറച്ചിൽ പാതയോരങ്ങളിലേക്കും വഴിയിലെ അമ്പല മുറ്റത്തേക്കും നീണ്ടു. അവന്റെ വീടെത്തും വരെ.  അവന്റെ കഥയിൽ ചോദ്യങ്ങളും ഉപചോദ്യങ്ങളും ആയി അവന്റെ കൂട്ടുകാർ വന്നു. അവർക്കറിയാമായിരുന്നു അവൻ പറയുന്ന കഥകളുള്ള സിനിമകൾ ഇല്ലെന്നു. എങ്കിലും അവർ അത് പറഞ്ഞില്ല. പ്രിയപ്പെട്ട കൂട്ടുകാരന്റെ കഥകളിലെ കള്ളം അവർ ഉൾക്കൊണ്ടു. അവൻ വാചാലം ആയപ്പോൾ അവർ നിശബ്ദരായി. അവരുടെ നിശബദതയുടെ നെടുവീർപ്പുകൾ അവന്റെ കഥകളിൽ നിഴലിച്ചു. അവന്റെ വീട്ടിൽ പുതിയ കഥകൾ ജനിച്ചു കൊണ്ടേയിരുന്നു. വേരുകളില്ലാത്ത ഓർമകളും നേരുകളിലാത്ത കഥകളുമായി അവൻ കൂട്ടുകാർക്കായി കാത്തു നിന്നു. വിജനമായ വേരുകളും വീഥികളും അവന്റെ മൂകതക്ക് പുതിയ അർഥങ്ങൾ നൽകി. 

A Night after the Neurosis

It is a quite Sunday morning
It was a weird outing in the evening

We saw fuming ashes
We saw failed elephants
We heard the tales of fallen petals
We saw drifting continents of love and lust

It was a quite Sunday morning after a tepid Saturday night
I saw many men sulking under the weight of their own dreams
I heard many women lustfully languishing their tongue twisters

They were all eloquent
They were all spellbound
They were castrated

A Carnival in the oddest of the hours
A Caricature of my self and many other selves

Our pulses were travelling to Venus, Mars and Pluto
We were simmering in the heat of the market mongers
We were boiler plates to the typecasted experiments in human nature

Have you heard about Pavlov
Who embarked on an experiment to create machines in human mindset

Have you learned about Vygotsky
Who smiled at the smiling babies and loved their zones of evolution

Have you wept when Maykovsky shot dead himself
His poetry must have been boiling faster than his heart impulses

When I end up embracing the dichotomies of Mikhail Bakhtin
I know I have become a scoundrel, polyglot, a hedonist, pagan beast

When this hetroglossia unfolds and scarlet fevers engulf the nations
Fear of languages, life and all sort of glass house effects will prevail

Do you know the fissures in your palace
Do you know if it is made of marble, mosaic, or even a piece of pitch blend?

Now I know only about primordial stones and shadows
Who build pyramids and prisons in the middle of stone hinged and laggard society
Who are in multitudes, nameless, nation-less, necro-manic living echoes

I live their turquoise blue rings, silver palms, their mythical fear of tortoises
I dig a grave to heal their zest for anarchy, and to unwound their zeitgeist

Poem: ‘Selfie’ Pictures

Morning 9 AM to 11 AM
I was in front of a mirror
That was twisted and turned
And was full of options to deceive
Even my oldest enemy out there

‘Selfie’ they call this
When I stare at my laughing nerves

Seldom I liked my smell before
I had bought my first perfume can
That was full of unknown aroma
Yet I loved it as myself

Selfie, now I have a phone with a camera
Selfie, I had a dressing mirror so old
Both of them are silent and watching
The silent side of myself

Poem: Morning spells of a Worker bee

Around three AM, he is awake
Uphill, upon a solitaire game
Loving the heat of his sweat
The distance whispers of his honey queen
The nearness of the morning howls
The mistakes and lazy gaze at the paining finger
The smiling mirror in his fuming eyes
The smiling lips in his coupled mirrors
The worker bee is dividing his blood
One for his sweat and other for the sweet love

Poem: My black rosary with red cross and daily bread

A gaze at uncertainty in your meal time
A wave of poverty in your surroundings
Which one will spoil your hunger?
What will kill your taste buds?

Nothing for sure can eat you
Unless you have eaten something else

A pinch of salt in your sweat
It refuses to give up its taste

A pale edge of your empty plate
It refuses to smile at your disposal

A moment when mind forgets to remember
A moment when mind remembers to forget

Matters of convenience and coincidence
All this happens in our daily life

We keep a bread for the day
Shrinks by the evening, rots by the fifth day
Filth by a weeks time, frozen in your next working day
Weeks after, you meet them all in your wounds

Your despair, your inertia, your pathos and vanity
All is known to submit to the season of red black winters
Same applies to my black rosary with red cross in my chest

Poem: My land is not lost!

A simple and humble land
With nimble and neighbouring clouds

We claim living by caves and valleys
We claim a hand of steel and clay beneath
We made Gods in love and puppets with life

Schooling through the dancing rice fields
I had its mist on my palm and past
Full of frogs and fiery green ponds
I loved its longing for water and wisdom

Little by little, my land is in shades
Larger by larger, my land is in smokes

We wear mask, inside and outside
We tear skies, by heights and might

Love and life, they keep my land alive
We are making life again, not in puppets or pets
This time in the name of our future lights!
We the children, know the love of the land

Poem: Mermaid of miseries

Vaguest of the moments
Vaulted in the veneers
A veneer of his veins
A mermaid chose to steal its soul

She ran into a coil of herself
Only morning was upside
In the mourning of a mermaid
Its progeny has overheard
The lessons of a shipwreck
The songs of a crystal moth

The mermaid was a mad cow
A miserable thing of angst
A mild sense of serenity
A mellowing season of soberness




She evolved in disdain
She revered her pale roots
She caved her breast of illness
She gazed at blind bloods
She was found among the branches
Of pale old banyan trees
That mongered the fate of deserted temples
That minced the shape of kernels

She was never a case for corals
She was found in sediments
Of age old walls and molten bricks
She pierced her beliefs in person
She punished the house in poison
Worms are left, wickedness is lost

Wish her your miseries
Weave her a silk of your dried up tears
As she shall be the mermaid of miseries ever

Poem: How to dine in a dizzy street

This season of idols and icons

When rains are random and revered

When I know evening is never even to all

When my wife went to hometown

I went for a passive dinner a little afar

A photo by giancarlo de luca: under non-commercial license.

Love for noise

Love for gaze

Love for traffic

Love for crowd

Random thoughts guided me in bumpy road

It welcomed my grumpy stumpy thoughts

I am silenced by fading shades of faces

I am stoned to the fuming walls

On every second eateries

People gazed away their dinner

Chewing them like muted cows of unknowns

On the other side walks

I found them swallowing like snakes too

I found them dumping their stomach 

They were jerks and ill in my terms

The first group was silent and detached

Food was a passage of their thoughts

The second was vocal and enchanted

Food was a just a passage for blood and flesh

Both the groups were so muted

Their shadows were more vocal and hungry

Everywhere I saw crowd and chaos

But all of them were silent and tied to an order

An order so invisible and invincible

At least by this stagnant moments of night

By the time I finished my dinner

I was hurrying home

To cook my brain once again

To feed some crows waiting somewhere

Poem: Young lady and the Sea

Young lady and the sea
They began a journey
In the crust of a daily mountain

Their own nimbus clouds
They soaked the earth of their own
Veins they bleed, Voids they loved
They were countless in roots and soils

Young lady walked across the shores
She could share her eyes for all the waves to come
Yet she stared at a beacon of men
Yet she stood for the caving emotions

Waves were mad and melodious
They found her young
In their wilderness they embraced her feet
Open skies where they meet
Olive leaves where they meet

Sea was full of naked weeds and algae
A gaze through the waters
A gale of the mirrors
They carved songs beyond
Ocean was waking up to the winds

Young lady and the sea
They kept their distance
At respectable ends
They traveled in parallels and prisms
They waved their hands
At miserable moments

Young lady and the sea
They loved one earth
Their songs and blood
They were ashes and clouds
Young lady and the sea

+Gokul Alex 

Poem: A Lizard in a Garden

A Lizard in a Garden

Fresh of life
Is not lost in wild
It comes near and dear
And a lizard is born in a garden

It turned coats and spells
It skinned by instincts
Aimed the walls
But never surmounted them
Born as a reptile
Brave as a snake
Primitive of the forms

And now it bridged my silence
And now it spaces my mist

Lizard in the greens
Lizard with black dotted skin
It just was a passer by
On my way to a Tuesday morning

Neither of us where bothered of each other
Like other humans too
We crossed each other, lest nor stared and frowned
We mean each other, least by life of our own
We make space for each other, in verticals of time

Lizard in a plastic garden
It was just as amused as I am
Seeing the lusty winds
Lure of money, Lost smiles

Lizard was a wizard, I know for sure
Time was his slave, Space was his circuit

Poem: Nature and Eye

What is to live a life without smile
When he gazed at me I just saw an eye to eye
I, and this world are seeing each other
Eye, and this world, both mutant, are seeing this world

In his oddities, in his feverishness
In his sunrise, in his suntan
In his summer, in his songs
I see a silent giant of past

From strange self to self estranged
I traverse a land of kites
From head to tail, waves alone

Where is to hide from this world of disguise
Where there is no fading meadows
Where there are no loving nests
Where there is only one abode left

Keeping an eye closer to chest
I ventured a stalking night
I pierced my own darkness and pains
I pitied my own thorns of flesh

How do they talk to my other
How do they eye my shadows
Do they really see my distant dreams

Nature and I, we see each other
Nature and I, we saw each other
Nature and I, we steal each other
Nature and I, we step in to each other
And that brings me home to the land of kites

+Gokul Alex 

Poem: When I wake up as a Chess board !

This may have ended up as a puzzle
Or a game of chances lost in past
Or a maze of doors locked in between
Or a face of jumbled senses and ages
But I have set a few secret questions
Of a PoetQuest, Of an Intellect Explorer

... I gaze and whisper like a wicked ship

When I wake up
I may be a myth of oceans
I may hold my breathing tree
I may swap my will to pieces

When I kindle my spirits
I may have lost its sheen
I may have weathered a blindness
I may become a rattling snake
I may spite poison or ashes
I may turn coat and wind my needles

When I behold my tongue
I must have lost my love for answers
I must have lost my urge to question
I must have lost my repulse to regrets
I must have lost my naked skins
I must have lost my purple wishes

When I bask in memories of mist
I should pay back my solitude
I should shrink my veins
I should crush my irons
I should fresh my fist
I should flesh my love

Else for all and others in time
I am a chess board of nine lives
Seven colors and just two lives left

+Gokul Alex 

Poem: When the Rain Bleeds Red

I know a color which we call red
But I see only blood and flowers around

Here again rain bleeds red, shivering skins
Spell bound witches, Silent Myths, Streams of August

I see a leaf of life which all of us eat as green
But I know only when it kisses ground and turn pale

Mirrors yet again, who is the culprit?
My time, My space, My face, My facades

Rivers again, full of anger and mist
Why should I step into the waters again?

I tried a life of all sorts in a palette
Now fallen asleep in frozen pictures

Why do they dry my eyes?
When I am ready to iron out the differences

Open ends of a Golden knife
They turn coat at every cross roads

I bought them at large
Larger than life, longer than my breath, lesser than my lips

Now I know all the colors
They never lied to me, Nor they will ever

The palette is blank yet again
Last time it was born as a Blanket of love

In the summer of idylls, when the rain bleeds love
When the silence breeds itself, another shell ruptures

+Gokul Alex