is full of
seas rivers
trees humans
and air.
words make
life
words make
love
words make
language
words make
poetry
words make
lifebreath
words make
tears
words make
the milky way
words make
sex
words make
friendship fear affection belief betrayal
hunger starvation murder blood suicide flesh
phlegm jealousy pus sacrifice chastity lust pain
seduction ardor wisdom joy ecstasy
sorrow madness illusion art war philosophy
light knowledge beauty darkness sky
words make
the voice
words make
the nipple
words make
the thin line of hairs drawn down from the navel
impassioned wet lips
green veins in the eye
ass spit forehead eyebrow cheek
cum-taste hair eye-gunk
shoulder thigh mole armpit tip of the nose lines
of the palm curve of the waist back earlobe
ankle dimple finger wrist
foot nape of the neck
words make words make
words make
words make
the
Word
outside my window there is no ocean there are no stars there are no clouds there is only the silent cemetery overflowing with nothingness the plant i bought you as a gift hoping you would visit on my birthday told me that my name is inscribed on a headstone there in the cemetery and then the plant died i keep watering it over and over trying to revive it as the leaves drop off i continue to water it i am obsessively watering a dead plant my friend laughs my life is vacillating between death and madness my eyes are searching through the window bars for the headstone with my name on it…
On the porch under the tiled roof
of the house scarred by tradition,
a large
green frog
sat glaring at him.
He tried to wave it away
but that stupid frog
could not understand his sign language.
He trapped it
under a plastic mug.
Is the frog aware,
as it hops up and down
inside the mug,
that the man has killed two serpents?
That a third serpent escaped, wounded,
and is even now seeking
its vengeance?
A TRAVELER MEET
THE PRINCESS OF THE SHADOWS
In the market
at the edge of time,
a traveler asked the multi-shadowed
Little Princess,
“Give me a shadow.”
“There are many shadows.
Pick the shadow
that suits you,”
the Little Princess said
with a smile.
“I want a shadow
that has the fragrance of your hand,”
begged the stranger.
“What does a traveler want
with a corporeal identity,
a memory’s fury?”
asked the Little Princess.
“As soon as I answer that question,
my journey will come to an end,”
pleaded the stranger,
“and until then,
I need a likeness of your shadow.”
“You’ll have to explain that
to the original,”
said the Little Princess,
wringing her hands.
“The music you love,
the poem you love,
the flower you love,
the friend you love—
you can never explain
to the originals of all these things:
your space,
your time,
your air,
your life,
make the essence of love,”
said Chamundi.
He gave her
music cassettes
and sweetmeats.
Hearing a tinkling laughter,
he said humbly,
“Clamoring
meaningless
obese
words
are all I can offer,
my Little Princess.
Can nothingness
offer plentitude?
Can flesh
offer the cosmos?”
To him who did not
comprehend the act of giving,
Chamundi said:
“Give her
your dreams,
your tears,
your smile,
your silence,
your self.”
You are the witch
who has cast me
into nothingness.
You, floating
down a stream as a twig,
are transfiguring me as well.
Now—
“Extreme love will kill you,”
you said, “Do not follow me.”
I’m a man who cries torrents
over a dead plant;
you have overwhelmed me.
“Don’t you love me?”
I asked.
“No,”
your voice said.
“Can you look into my eyes
and say that?”
With no reply
but a sob
you vanished
into the mirror.
Not knowing how to
liberate you from
the glass,
my ears rent
by your silent screams,
I tried to withdraw
into a long stretch of loneliness
away from the memories of you
I tried to withdraw
into the smell of my solitutde
As I set off,
my nerves shuddered
my veins
exploded
the pain seeped
into the center of my bones.
How can I be separate
from you,
having lost myself
in your black iris?
In the vast universe
floating molecules
collide
somewhere in spacetime.
On a bench
in a deserted train station
you sit alone.
I sit on the next bench
writing a poem.
Our eyes meet;
you show no recognition.
You rise,
walk to the edge of the platform,
and return to sit.
Why are you so tense?
This waiting…
You can’t complete the thought.
You don’t even know
why you are waiting.
The poem,
the waiting,
the tension
go on.
Turning a poem into reality,
reality into a dream;
is this real?
Or is it real’s shadow?
A shadow’s dream?
A dream’s poem?
Huddled
in my burrow
drowning between
sleep and sleeplessness
Yanni’s music
/> brings me to the surface
A little boy
sits on a porch at noon
A woman’s corpse
lies there still kissing her lover
A child’s anklet
lies alone
like a crescent
in a starless sky
Eyes stare blankly
out of a shattered face
Somewhere, a dog howls
Dried blood on the path
“Hook
your time
in your poetry,”
mocks the Little Princess’s voice
Is it possible to capture
time in a poem?
The living dead
wander the Earth aimlessly’
I stand shocked
staring at
the headless body’s
erect penis;
remembering the angry hordes of feminists
out to castrate
poets who dare to valorise love,
I run
and bury myself
beneath the Little Princess’s footsteps.
Pretending that
her breath is still lingering
in that dead space,
I begin to search.
From amongst the corpses
crawls out
a weeping child.
NOTES FROM THE SPHERE
OF DARKNESS
On that day
a mute soothsayer
mimed,
You claim
you deny yourself, and your words
but
you
who claim
poetry is dead
will someday
live in
those poems.
He gave no reasons.
Today
if I say
it is my life and blood
that becomes the poem,
you will laugh at me:
“Do not kill me with
your withered words.”
What is it then,
that fills my emptiness
and pens the poem?
Is it your silence?
Your writing?
Your eyes
widening in surprise?
Currents flowing from
your enigmatic memory?
Are you really you?
Or are you Chamundi?
Or are you an intangible
mystical symbol?
Don’t just dismiss this
as a madman’s rambling.
With my poem
I am postponing my death.
TRIALS
In my previous birth you were my lover
before that you were my mother
and even before that you were my sister.
Before everything, you were
my Chamundi, my God
and before that before that
before that
for ages and ages, I have loved you.
You promised me that in your next birth
you would be my daughter.
I trusted in you
I spoke to the stars
about my daughter-to-be-born,
and to the moon, too.
I imagined that I carried you piggyback
and wandered the forests.
I dreamt that you whispered in my ears,
“Carrying me will strengthen your back.”
In the horrific game of nature
even as you were born
you lost your breath and lay dead
I kissed your curled fingers,
slit my body with shards of glass
I bathed you with my streaming blood
I plucked out my single eye
and tucked it into your curled palm
The ancestors’ voices screamed at me—
You may have been born dead,
but
before I lower you
back into the Earth’s womb
I must give you a name,
they said.
Startled, I wondered:
What do I name you?
I pondered and puzzled
God, as She passed by, said
your name was Genesis
Genny Genny Genny Genny
Genny Genny Genny Genny
Genny
I kissed you from head to toe
and sobbed.
Won’t you part those coral lips
and call out my name?
Open those lotus eyes
and look at me?
Extend those delicate feet
and kick me?
Your warm touch
the taste of those lips
grabs my memory
I howl with pain
Expression
that filled the vacuum
of the dead
turned his muscles
to poem
and then froze
into silent rock.
Centuries of pain
were living inside
the rock
as curried fire.
The language of the void
putrefied
and from the rotting eyes
a poem oozed out.
Standing at the edge
of death
with the scorpion clinging to his stomach
He plucked out his single eye
and flung it
The rock exploded into
smithereens
The augur, travelling
through the mountains on a train
in the dark, said
“She
was the offering
God loaned to the world.”
Shakthi was nothingness
in the void.
Unable to bear
the burden of the emptiness,
to relieve
her pain,
She created
the cosmos and the atom
planets
galaxies
fire
water
air
earth and flowers
forests and deserts
birds and beasts
all these
and many more
Shakthi created.
She roamed the forests, but then,
feeling alone, sat on the seashore
and called down the stars
for company.
The barren desert
was violently desolate.
Neither knowledge nor unknowledge
was of any help—
She created man.
With him
again She roamed
the forests.
By the sea
on the shore
She sat with him
and pointed out the stars
Tiring of the meaningless
company of mortal flesh,
She returned to the forest.
Two serpents
coiled in copulation
entwined in pleasure
The universe trembled
She wondered
was this an apocalyptic storm
a cosmic dance
or a divine drama
Comprehending the barrenness
of the desert
She beckoned the man
Come, have sex with me,
Entwine your body with mine.
Scared,
the man refused
Weary Shakthi
Created a second man
and summoned him,
told him the story of the serpent.
Come, have sex with me,
Entwine your body with mine.
He too refused
petrified with fear
She created
a third man
Even he refused and
ran away
Shakthi withdrew
hating her loneliness
The third man told
the first:
Shakthi,
All-Powerful,
Creator, Protector, Destroyer,
Let’s fuck her
Appropriate her powers
Neutralize her!
Thus by treacherous sex Shakthi’s
powers were stolen
Creation, Protection, Destruction
The three men divided
the chores amongst themselves
Tired, they returned
to ask Shakthi,
“Where’s my chapathi?”
FEBRUARY 4TH
This day is a special day
for it was today
God gifted this world the Little Princess.
The forest-dweller, having nothing to offer
either the known or the unknown,
asked the moon
“Do I have anything
I can give the Little Princess?”
“Don’t play with her temper,”
warned the moon.
“Warnings are meant to be
disregarded,”
murmured the forest-dweller.
Here
this day
this moment
this object
is not the abstraction
of any particular.
Awesome and pure
is the dust
touched by your feet.
35
IS THIS REALLY A NOVEL, or merely a bunch of notes thrown together intoabook? Nano, Muniyandi, Surya, Misra, Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain, Thayumanavan, Genesis, Neena, Shireen, Avanthika, Fuckrunissa, Aarthi, Kottikuppan, Anandhasami, Thirumalai, The Honorable Tamil Writer, Monica, Deepthi, Kavitha… is this just a list of random names? From among the scattered sheaves of paper, the imaginary character Nano asked Muniyandi, Did you create me just so that posterity would have some record of your existence? In his memory the past never leaves a trace, and there is no clue about the future. He is constantly at time zero; this zero time is traveling on a line made of uncountably many points, as an imaginary point. You have read all these pages patiently; at this moment, while you are still my reader, I am trekking across the snowy Himalayas. I am leaving you. Since I have emotionally detached myself, leaving you is not sorrowful. What else can I do? Please, go ahead and search for meaning in the host of words scattered in these pages. I try to bring it to a close, but the words keep endlessly pouring out. Our conversation may end here or be followed by an ellipsis or
Zero Degree Page 17
