Night Skies
And love turned me
Into a fish, swimming in your eyes,
And I was content,
As though your small pools
Were more than ocean.
And so I swam.
How you turned me, just a body,
To all of colours,
How you blossomed out your heart
As a sea flower
For its clown fish.
And you had me there,
Brightening myself for you
Over and over,
Forgetting the splendour of red sunsets
Turning to loss,
Eternally in the tossing high seas,
Forgetting,
That love is but imagination,
Put to test for truth
In dying night skies.
**
Eyes
Take away from me
The nibbles you made on my flesh.
All the whispers you made as we sat by the river bank
Making paper boats.
And when I came closer, you said, careful
Even the leaves
Have eyes.
We let the sundown
Turn to goldfish
And sink down to sea.
Back in the car
It is me
All about you
All over you
And your words
Breathing poetry
Into my face
And I tell you
Look, though it is dark,
Though you have put on
Wind shields,
Even the rain
Has eyes.
**
Fire Ants
There, in the garden,
They have built a nest.
A small green
Balloon of jack leaves.
And, fire ants,
They are all over.
On a wire beneath the leaves.
It is as though they have found a treasure.
Each one, running.
Some returning, some advancing.
Where to?
And in between,
Their kissing.
In between all that hectic dynamics
Their stop over, in brief kissing.
Looks like they’re sure.
Sure, they kiss, and kiss,
Much more than humans
Ever kissed on earth
Give way,
And in that language unearthed,
Unlike us,
They don’t murder their brothers.
**
After the Party
The puppy is out
On the rounds.
He’s sniffing candy,
Doesn’t want sugar.
He licks off a plate of roast
Beef. The tables have
Their share
Of empty bottles,
Left over meat,
Tossed over bread,
On which the moonlight
Is marmalade.
All the distances
Have evaporated.
There by the tree stump
The last poet
Recites his poem.
He is drunk,
But the poetry escapes,
Turns landscape,
Becomes tree scape,
Puts pressure on the stars,
Soft as her breasts.
**
Bees
And to tell you the truth
I tell myself all lies.
I don’t care now,
Where time stops,
Or where to, it flies.
I tell myself
No, it cannot be,
How can it be that you paint bright glass,
With shadows that speak
Of western dark?
I tell myself,
Yes, it was you
Who opened the door
But not you,
Who closed all our together sea.
And to believe
In your optical illusion,
I’m in penance
Having made for myself
A home of bees.
There’s the music of pollen,
Half way abloom
The sounds of darkness
Of the cataract of lips
Across centuries
Met and parted,
And your wet hair
Perfuming the wind,
Stringing every sunflower
In endless sunflower fields.
**
Vanishing Trick
And you came and bowed
And then you said,
Watch me,
I’ll build brick,
Red brick on brick,
So red,
But all that’s just part of the magic.
And as the bricks
Layered themselves
One by one,
You pointed to me and said,
You, yes, you,
Would you like to come with me on stage?
And in such applause
To your held out hand,
I climbed up to what I thought was just a stage,
But I was in that mausoleum
With you,
And you said,
Now, go where you want to,
See,
I’ve set you free.
But how long, how long?
Such bright magic,
I’ve never before seen,
The red bricks
Turning to piano keys,
Humming their song of blood.
**
What They Want To Teach You
At the MFA, How To Write
A Poem
Write that poem
That burns the body
Rents the soul,
Lets you embrace
The sea in the rain,
Touches you
With the evening sun’s
Sinking crimson,
Plucks the rainbow
For her lips,
Surprises the eyes,
Folds her heart
In your diary
Like a pigeon wing
Caresses your secrets
Turning all that lust
To love.
**
Because,
We Played That Game
Corpses of children
Coming out of the school gate
White shrouded,
Laid with white lilies,
Corpses of children,
And the nearby church
Tolls its bell
This morning
With weeping nuns praying
Such mourning when the children are lined up for the school assembly
Praising God
And the small corpses keep coming,
Each one, soft as bread,
And their mothers somewhere broken,
All that silence
That had such butterfly voices,
Such dragonfly run
Because,
Those we trusted,
Those we sent to their thrones
Played secretly
Their poison game,
Such small corpses
With a whiteness of seeds
You wish you could sow them
Rising in blossom all over
Earth again.*
*Tamil Nadu , Karur, India. Food poisoning in school food distribution .
***
Gopi Kottoor is an award winning poet. He presently edits Chipmunk online poetry journal.
