Smitha’s Death: A Flashback
Even while you stripped off
Your clothes one by one
No one thought, dear Smitha!
That you would strip off
The drapes off your soul too,
That, behind closed doors,
You would do a cabaret
On the end of a strip of rope,
That, you would expose
The nakedness of your mind.
When male publics
And their lascivious desires
Undressed you
Neither Krishnan nor his author
Appeared with a piece of cloth.
The Radha of the night fantasies
Of a thousand and eight princes,
No one seeks for you today.
They are all there in the city
Of beauty pageants
With their mannequined
Blue beauties,
Sleepless, hot and sticky.
To be Kannans’s Radhika
To be Kannuan’s Shakuntala
To snuggle beside and sleep
To the rhythmic shades of the flut(ist)
To leave home, bidding adieu
To the cosseted creepers,
To girlishly bask in the spiritual aura
Of platonic love,
Like virgins and Archas,
Were you also desirous?
But awaiting you were
College guys and their camera eyes,
The infamous Her Nights,
The heavens in slums
And their paper castles
The benumbed waist
And its monotonous pangs.
To be Kannaki’s anklet
To be Unniyarcha’s urumi
To be Jhansi’s sword
To be a single breasted
To conquer wor(l)ds
To set empires on fire,
To rewrite scriptures
Would be impossible for you.
Those who tied your tongue,
Bent your back, Trained you to tempt,
To act coy and suck the spectators dry,
Can’t tell you that you should have burnt empires
And rewritten scriptures.
Nevertheless
You be grateful to us!
For not stripping you
While laying you in the grave,
For covering your nudity with a shroud,
After untying and dissecting.
For not adding your name
In the abridged pages of history
And defiling your dignity!
For not canonizing you
With tears and hymns,
Vestiges and wonder tales
As the idol of Virginity!
Clone poems
Clone 1: (H)e Corpse!
(H)e corpse,
Burning red hot
In the cemetery’s
Brick furnace,
Believing you to be dead,
Your feats shall be praised
By those near to you.
Listening to them,
Shall enjoy,
Even the dead’s soul
At least a little bit.
Though dead
Undead shall remain,
The power of
The raw word.
The moment of death
Shall witness the birth of
The children of
The good word.
Hearing them
You shall be remembered,
With added vigour
Even by those distant.
Some shall portray you
As a martyr.
You shall also be cast
In telefilms.
(H)e corpse!
Burning red hot
In the cemetery’s brick furnace.
Never shall you die
In us.
Clone 2: (S)He Foetus!
(S)he foetus,
Sprout in the warmth
Of the belly’s womb,
Expecting your birth,
Even ancestors
Keep prepared,
Cradles for you.
Certain of your arrival,
Even “Amma cradles”
Lie waiting
For an orphan guest.
Though sprout,
You shall be grabed
By gloved hooks.
You shall be marketed
As face creams
In diverse labels
By the time you are out.
May you be unborn
My lass
The pet poets
Shall sing of you.
Some shall brand this
As abortive scripts
Or also as a
liberal’s lip service.
(S)he foetus,
Stillborn in
The warmthless womb
Of the belly.
Never shall you be born
Except in poetry.
Dangerous
The birth of a poem
Is a potent bearer of destruction.
It’ll sneak in
Infiltrating language boundaries
Like an international terrorist.
A time bomb fixed to its waist,
Well aware that
The dearest
Disguises as poetry,
It’ll creep in
Unapologetic,
Trusting
The popular precept
That poetry and women
Should come uninvited.
With a tight hug
Assured that none is watching
All that has been accomplished
Shatters in a split second.
Murderous
Migrants to the republic of death
Leave behind them
An empty bottle of poison
And a piece of rope.
No;
They come back
In those left behind
As desire and dissent,
Never as demons,
Or the disembodied.
They no longer need a body,
A corpse, to stay alive.
No menacing memorials
In verse,
In tears.
They’ll come unpredicted
In the dispossessed.
In the eyes of lovers
They will be alive.
In the cries of babes
Their voice will be heard.
They wander
As tramps in streets,
As madness in mental asylums,
Away from abodes of worship.
The flogged,
With ropes around their neck,
Chains on their feet,
Blindfolded,
Manacled,
Their memorial.
Only the alive believes
Everything ends with death.
Walk to their republic
To understand the dead.
The History of the Dispossessed
Like Prometheus
The dispossessed cannot
Go to the heavens to steal fire.
So
Use the coals of hunger
To set ablaze the pyre.
(Don’t ask for fire.)
Like Bhagheerathan
The dispossessed cannot
Divert rivers to the earth.
So
Drink coco (nut) cola
And swagger to death
(Don’t ask for water.)
Like Gagarin
The dispossessed cannot
Carry over life’s breath
Breaking the gravitational barrier.
So
Set off to the gas chambers
And practice pranayamam.
(Don’t ask for air.)
When Vamana’s feet
Bulldozes heads off the earth
The dispossessed cannot afford
To stand quarreling.
So
Grab the titles of
Unattainable lands
And get converted to (no)mads.
(Don’t ask for land.)
Like birds
In search of a strip of sky
The dispossessed
Cannot fly
So
Lay down your heads in some snake’s den
And go to sleep
You, skeletal humans.
(Don’t ask for the sky.)
Post-mortem
Observed
The military rules with discipline.
Stated the official records.
Remained alert
Even in the face of mist and rain.
Maintained the superiors.
Not like the other soldiers
But was a confirmed ineffectual celibate.
Remembered the colleagues.
In spite of bringing full bottles in each visit
Remained a truly aversed Gandhian.
Commented the friends.
Love a gulf NRI but never a soldier
The family had warned.
Lamented the fiancée.
The weakening of
The central nervous system leading to
A cessation of corporeal functions
Diagnosed the brother.
Came once in year
To cover with the warmth of love.
Reminisced the mother.
Shouted “Bharath Matha Ki Jai”
Even while collapsing under lethal bullet.
Quoted the father.
It was for the country after all.
Let us observe
Two minutes silence.
Suggested the teacher.
The body has been iced and (pre)served.
With due national honour
Reported the press.
Bionote
A.C. Sreehari’s poems have been anthologized in Disakal: The Golden Jubilee Anthology of Malayalam Poetry, Sahitya Akademy, New Delhi, 2007 and in the special section on 21st century Malayalam poetry in Indian Literature, 2018. Published two books of poems in Malayalam, Vayanavikrithi, 2006 and Edachery, 2010. Recipient of N.N. Kakkad and Vyloppilli awards. He teaches English at Payyanur College, Payyanur and has PhD on the topic “The Making of the Male: A Study of the Popular Art Films in Malayalam.”
