New | Poetry | Sumedh Jog

 

Quetzalcoatl

I am not a good housekeeper

There is a piece of thread

On the floor

That I have failed

To sweep away

It moves

In the wind

Jerking its knotted head

Till a gust sets it afloat

Alive -

Flying snake

Feathered serpent

Quetzalcoatl

It turns its hungry head

This way and that

Till it catches sight of me

Describing sinuous red curves

In the closed room

Winding and unwinding

It coils

And makes its way

Towards my bared neck

Draws its

Fangs to bite

And spills over onto my skin

Streaming red

 

Arms

I fall to the floor

And hold out my hand

For you to pull me up

You pull - so hard

That my arm pops

Out of its socket

And into your lap

You sit there staring at it

No blood

No splinters of bone

No ragged tatters

Of flesh and sinew

A clean break

Like the popped out arm

Of a plastic doll

You get up

Holding it

As if you are going to try

To push it back in

I make an indifferent gesture

With my one good hand -

Keep it I say

And shut my eyes

Wondering

How I will ever get off the floor now

 

 

Simulacra

Yesterday

By some conjunction

Of light and shade

Your face appeared

In the wall

Like a Marian apparition

Or like Ganesha

Growing out of a banyan tree

Your lips moved

And you promised

Further miracles

By the light

Of the setting sun

I am hopeful even now

That these shadows

Will turn inside out

And mark me

In flaming stigmata

That shall be

The final scorched proof

 

Flash (1)

Last night at 2 am

As I lay staring up

At the ceiling

A light flashed outside

Three times

Casting long shadows

Through my room

Who’s there - I thought

Burglars, aliens, spies -

As I lay waiting

For them to come

For me

But it remains dark outside

And silent

Until this-

The light of one more day

 

Flash (2)

There I Iie

Half awake

Floating

In the wet grass

Your words flash

Overhead

Like meteors

I don’t hear them

But their echoes trail

Like falling stars

In the drooping purple sky

To light up

The drowsing reeds

 

Your Word

You don’t know this

But last night

You spoke my name

While you were sleeping

And your word

Pitter pattered

Across the lonely ocean

On the back

Of gulls and albatrosses

And dolphins and killer whales

Till it reached my arms -

all breathless -

And there it is resting now

 

 

Dust

In the times of yore when Thuban was the pole star

In that golden age of truth and honour

In that time of the glorious sangam

When king and poet sat side by side

Looking over that land of fields and rivers and beautiful women

The king in that time fearing death and forgetfulness

Built a mighty city of stone

Whose tallest tower rose like a mountain

Proclaiming immortality to his Amaravati

But as the builders lay stone upon stone

The poet built word upon word

To compose such a mighty epic

That no word was spoken in their language

That was not in his poems

So that the widow lamenting the hero

The faithless lovers

And the very tiger as it pounced on its prey

Spoke only in words that he had spoken

So that he could then boast to the king

Your palaces shall come to dust

But see you what I have wrought

Whereupon the king said

Be careful of the wheel of time, poet

That shall grind away your at words as surely

As my temples shall be ground to dust.

He had the poet strangled

For his insufferable immodesty

Till as he had foretold the wheel turned, time changed

Forgetting both brick and verse

And leaving behind only a broken wall

And a secret incantation to Kali

Now known only to three Tantriks in Banaras

image via FineArtAmerica, from  (Quetzalcoatl: History and Mythology of the ‘Feathered Serpent’ God (realmofhistory.com))