Landslide
The water
drove stakes deep
into the sogged heart.
The torrent
that surfed the crest
of the landslide
imprinted leaf tattoos
on mud-soaked faces.
With the blood
that congealed, right
where the hill
kissed them.
Here is what
we could bury
in the pantheon
that the gods forsake.
A hill that melted away,
The uneasy ferment
of the shifting earth
that smothered the night.
The silence,
and the frenzy
of noises that exploded
right after,
The deluge that egged
the calamity on-
tedious newscasters
prowling for bravery
amidst numbing misery.
The torn hydra heads
that tumbled down
with the rocks, as big
as whole temples.
To burial places inside us
where, in the end,
all waves must crash.
The rebellion of bald heads
There was a glint of steel
I thought, in her gaze.
Towering from the billboard,
she clenched a tight fist
around the braided hair.
The tagline seemed loud,
embellishing the fortune
of good health, the virtues
of the hair tonic
they pitched to sell.
I wondered whether it was
a wig that she wore,
to the shoot,
Was she in remission, long hair
grown back?
I remembered the movie scene
where her scarf blows off
and stubble reveals on
the scalp, a window
flung open to the storm.
And I remember thinking
how vivid that frame was,
and just how partial I was
to Sinead O Connor
and the rebellion of bald heads.
Saying goodbye
A gawky child-man I see waking in me,
As we watch you pack
the last of the dog-eared books,
and the packet of new razor blades,
and sit and brood over trifles, like
the validity stamp on the document
that will take you away.
Only yesterday we sat hunched together
at a meeting. And snickered
together after, at that pretentious ass
spinning the yarn about stoic acceptance,
at words that came untethered
from the aphorisms that he prescribed,
the balm he said would soothe.
Find a tepid one for the word that scalds us!
How about silence, I thought,
instead of farewell, for the absence,
that will flood me after,
How about sinking instead of
silence, for the absence of laughter,
that you pack, to take away with you.
Pretend lives
Ladybug, a pretty beetle pinned
to a chart, the other ones,
for which our daughter did not
find a name, pictures
in a scrapbook and a jar
she liked to hold up, squint
against the light, spy the fur
on the legs of our spider.
The game of pretend-lives
that we spun sometimes.
A tap on the shoulder
with her mother’s belt
and now she is a moth
to the dancing flame,
a snoring sloth bear,
a swooning Cinderella.
A world of changelings-
not the one from where
children would vanish,
leave behind shells cast
in the evil fairy’s spells.
A different weave of magic
here, in the shapes
she transformed with glee.
She liked me to bathe
in pixie dust, and the faint aroma
of kindling fire in old hearths,
warm marshmallows, and
the glow of the sated that would
never ebb in her tender veins.
A glow they could not blot out
from the curves of her face.
If I could transform now, I wish
it would be into a winged elephant,
flapping against her sky that stayed
purple back then, and how I wish
I would not be that fool who flew
too close to her sun again
and scorched his flying wings.
About the poet:
Jyotish Gopinathan is a Nephrologist, clinician-educator, postgraduate teacher and researcher. Currently residing in Kozhikode, Kerala, he has lived and trained in medicine in Mumbai and Toronto. He has a book of poems to his credit: The Coppiced House