The Leaves

photo: mk harikumar

ഈ ആകാശം

ഈ ആകാശം

ഫോട്ടോ :എം കെ ഹരികുമാര്‍

സംസ്കാരത്തെ കണ്‍റ്റെത്തുന്നു

യന്ത്രങ്ങള്‍ മനുഷ്യരാവുകയും
മനുഷ്യര്‍ യന്ത്രങ്ങളാവുകയും
ചെയ്യുംമ്പോള്‍
നാമൊരു പുതിയ മറവിയുടെ
സംസ്കാരത്തെ കണ്‍റ്റെത്തുന്നു

ഒരില ,നഗ്‌നം

photo:

mk harikumar

ഗ്രാമക്കാഴ്ചകള്‍

എണ്ടെ ഗ്രാമക്കാഴ്ചകള്‍

ഫോട്ടോ:എം.കെ ഹരികുമാര്‍

എല്ലാ സംഖ്യകളെയും

ഒരു പൂജ്യം ജീവിക്കാന്‍
ശ്രമിക്കുന്നത് നല്ലതാണ്‌.
എല്ലാ സംഖ്യകളെയും കളിയാക്കികൊണ്ടുള്ള
അതിണ്ടെ കിടപ്പ്
ഒരു സമസ്യയാകുന്നു.
എവിടെയുമെപ്പോഴും ഒരു പൂജ്യം വാളോങ്ങി
നില്‍കുന്നു.
അതിന്‌ എല്ലാ ഗണിതശാസ്ത്രജ്ഞരെയും
താല്പര്യമാണ്‌.
മറ്റൊന്നുമല്ല,
ഒരു ശാസ്ത്രജ്ഞനും അതിണ്ടെ വില മാറ്റാന്‍
കഴിയില്ലല്ലോ.
അല്ല,പൂജ്യത്തിന്‌ എന്തിനാണ്‌ വില?
ചമഞ്ഞ് കിടക്കാനോ?

കാര്യങ്ങളെപ്പറ്റിയാണ്‌

അവര്‍ എപ്പോഴും ചിരിച്ചു.
ചിരിക്കാന്‍ അവര്‍ക്ക് ഒരു കാരണം
വേണ്‍ടായിരുന്നു.
കാരണം
അവരെ ബാധിക്കാത്ത കാര്യങ്ങളെപ്പറ്റിയാണ്‌
അവര്‍ ചിരിച്ചത് .
സ്വയമൊരു പരിഹാസ പാത്രമായപ്പോള്‍
അവര്‍ ചിരിക്കുകയല്ല ചെയ്തത്:
ദേഷ്യപ്പെടുകയായിരുന്നു.
അവരുടെ കലഹം അവരുടെ
വ്യക്തിപരമായ പരാതികളില്‍ ഒതുങ്ങി നിന്നു.
ദേഷ്യം അവര്‍ക്ക് സ്വയം അറിയാനുള്ളതായി
മാറിയില്ല.
സ്വയം ദുഷിക്കാനുള്ളതായി.

poem

The flying course of butterflies

The primitive butterflies resembling
the miniscule bones of time flew up
on the skyways of silence fluttering
their fragile wings

Engrossed in a detached ecstasy,
they hovered around utterly blind
to the invisible tracks
of souls that crisscrossed along
cutting and slicing each other
and turned into puzzles

Scaling heights from the depths of time,
they discarded the bodies
fallen in battlefields of
Kurushethra and Kalinga

The funeral rites of the butterflies
over the deserted corpse
of the youth lying on the plateau;
Chanting some primitive mantras
they got immersed in prayers

On the feet of the corpse hovered
the song of the butterflies in anguish
for the outdated and dusted revolutions

On the body, the democratic pollination
of butterflies for Bharath,
the land blessed with food grains and fruits

On the hands the compassionate kisses
of the butterflies for bygone ages of might and power
and also for the resurrection of broken romances
from the abyss of the past

On the forehead, the greeting thilak
of the butterflies for the physical
transformation of
Arithmetic and Brahmasutra

Over and around the body, the butterflies
still traced many an unknown tracks
that never begin nor end anywhere


As the butterflies departed after finishing
their colorful waltz, the bygone tracks
of the dead youth too dissolved into nothingness
just as the pathways of the butterflies.

poem: m k harikumar

poem

Title of this poem is not “Ants”

Though titled ‘Ants’, this poetic piece
doesn’t have either a life of its own
nor any halo around it

Sans any vain imageries of either
separation or grief
ants are breaking all poetic rules

This poem is an escape from history
without any nostalgia,
neither sublimity
nor the flow of Papanasini

Unable to withstand the sense and
senselessness
the ants are creeping
among these verses;

Without the least faith in lyricism
the ants are searching for poetic impulses
outside the walls of lyrics

The symbols in this poem are nothing but
pieces of life oft used and discarded
by contemporaries

The smell of silence is akin to that of the
frozen bodies in a government hospital

There was sensuous mourns of prostitution
inside a taxi car

There was the lament of the dropouts pasted on the
walls of the police station

Ultra modern lusty obesity of the female mass was in wait
In the condensed darkness of the
transport bus stand

The solitude of the corroded
bodies of a dog lie in the rail track
The discarded plastic cups spread scattered
in the rail tracks


The absurdity of the dumb adolescence
was throbbing inside the lingerie of mary,
a street hooker

The condom crazy feminists
The archaic quivers of the epileptic
being rushed to the hospital in a local bus

Shadows of literary criticism reflecting in the entrails
of the tomoto got smashed onthe road
before reaching the
vegetable stand

The ants needed only the symbols and not
any reviews or explanations

Refusing to become symbols the ants
bid audio to poem, scattered all over
losing their way

Even this poem has nothing to
do with explaining symbols, emblems or wisdom

poem: Title of this poem is not “Ants” by m k harikumar

Darkness of the sundown

The woman sewn in the clouds,
The vivacious beauty
designed by twigs
Charming young woman
sketched by backwater ripples
The village beauty painted in
oil by twilight
The beloved woven in
arteries by wind
The woman in love stitched
by some night green
in jungle shades

The serpentine vamp
painted in raw oil colours
of the sunset by
the dusk

I could not touch any of them
There were vivid sounds in the darkness

There were so many things
in the changing portraits
of her constantly
being sketched and erased by
some strange sign language
and folklore of
an ancient tribe

lusts of different ages
orgasmic pleasures,
forehead that was the
vestige of a cultural past
cheeks that were battle runs
eyes in which the deers of
cupid sprint

Still my search is on

Withering love

Were you here again yesterday
touching the chords of memories

Memories have gained weight of late
and are getting stuck in
the glue of life

I am weak even to ask myself where to go.
In my solitude
extinct antique passions
peep in and withdraw
How frightening!
Moments getting hot
with oozing desires

Have we ever met
and forgot each other for ever
Never, never;
or it may be only a broken
piece of memory

This isn’t the song of silence
from the coffin of verses
this isn’t despair
but only a weird
soliloquy at the
end of all tears

Never will I ask the destination
Never will I ask whether you
realize yourself

Once we stole into the darkness
and eloped with our little love
Those nights of fear
in the city
suspicion in the form
of humans,
The strangers,
The anxieties caused
even by a small sound
Unknown voices from nowhere
tearing apart the wind


Everything have dried up in this
barren mindscape

How blank are these nightfalls
They utter nothing
just like you
May be counting something
with head down

Like the burning tar roads
were the pathways of our affection
Like the cracks in a
dried up and forsaken
grassland

Yesterday also I
spent my solitude in the
cashew shades where the vestiges
of our intimacies were rotting
Got tired searching your face
among the twigs in vain
Even the chirping birds also
flew away.

How lonely are the days
which bear the entire
grief of the years
How can I say death
is powerless

Weeds of despair
mushrooming in
this mind

Immortality in all its
vigor just pays infrequent
visits to this frail
existence

After all what is now
left in this
rib-cage?

poem by m k harikumar

www.mkharikumar.com

poem by m k harikumar

Words throbbing to bid farewell

I am a sentence reeling under intense pain
Words with vivid meanings
come alive humming farewell tones
in antique darkness

Then each words start
leaving me in discord

Frozen bodies of lifeless birds
get entangled in my throat

Words become intolerant
to each other
Each word is seeking its
roots

felling that it is enough hanging on
the ladder
they part from each
other and set journey into
chronicles of their
previous lives

When they all left, I became the vestige
of a deserted voice zone

poem by m k harikumar

The clowning clouds

The clouds went on with their rituals
without a tint of aesthetics

The jungles of the dark triggered
an invisible fear

The deserted railway station
sans neither passengers nor trains
turned into just a track connecting
unknown cities

The moon bored of complaints
was cooed by the heard of clouds
with the metaphoric
consolations

He let out himself for the deaf passions
which even inexpensive love can dispense

He immersed himself in the melody
of primitive ages through the imaginary
wedding mark he drew on her
forehead

He listened to the chants of divine lust
by pinching and pasting
sandal on her lower belly
amid bits of grief strewn
by the darkness

The clowning clouds hauled
the moon into infinite pleasures
they led him into offensive and
defensive wars
as if in a black magic spell

The clouds at times recited and
performed some mystic verses from
ancient epics

And removed the veil from the
face of the moon with ritualistic
chants and lights

He became ecstatic by the mystic
ballet in the skies
He tried to kiss out with his lips
the evasive half an inch
hair perched
on her left chin

He drew a calf on her neckline
with his nose
and scribbled the fifty one alphabets
on her tongue with his
masculinity

Then he turned pale searching
in vain for butterflies
of sexual bliss

He didn’t know when
the clouds came to
veil the moon

Shedding the attires
of parting
he wandered
in the orphaned
solitude
of the
night

trans:saj mathews

POEM BY M K HARIKUMAR

The black hole

The dried almond leaves in the notebook

The tabernacle of dew drops on grass tips
The weak and withering leaves
The fallen flowers
The corridors where we had our lunch
The end of recitals
Tunes already hummed
The discussions about books

I searched for my childhood in
flowers lying on the sidewalks
Never will I get back those youthful days
when daggers stood aloft in
the island of cosmic blues
nor could I trace back the blood red
days of my college life

I attempted to touch the nights
in the barren solitude of broken love
but they eluded me for ever

The yesterdays of passionate love
The chronicles of love drops
The promises secured after long wait
and by telling so many tales
The bond established through kisses
and sexual bliss

All have vanished somewhere;
With my hands I groped all around
Arjun went to the mountains in search of
the warmth of a bygone romance;
I contemplated Shiva in my meditation,
wept calling my mother
took repeated dips in thoughts,

Plucking of jungle fruits,
The moments in forests,
The homosexual passions
Other sexual ecstasies,
And the nights beneath mango trees.



Playhouses, bridges and tents built
in between quarrels and affection;
The momentous blossoms of
pranks, hide and seek games

Her cascading romantic strands of hair
observed only during the twilight
prayers in temples

Then the ambiguous parting ,
As words failed, dead romances
dropped from lips into black holes.

The sharp edges of silence,
The pinpoints of compassion,
All have gone for ever
Looking back there is only
void

Nothing is there in the mind
and in my immobile and ghostly physique;
All the carcasses have vanished
into the abyss of time and thoughts

trans:saj mathews

Poem by M K Harikumar

Rain, wind and moonshine

Rain brought wind;
wiind brought moonshine
and moonshine brought wind
The fourth day of Nalacharitham.

In the backdrop of
the speech-less
deep dissatisfactions
of love,
the strands of rain
faltered to tell
some mystic secret

Drenched and dripping
the rain in its boiling passion
yearned to hold the wind
in its tight embrace.

Drinking the blood of moonshine
like an amorphous amoeba
the wind assumed
colossal proportions

The knights of moonshine
wearing the insignia of the
rain were getting wounded
in battles of jungle wind.

Rain lined up a thousand
guards to receive the sky
on its return from pilgrimage.

Disheartened by its vain search
of gods of wind
the moonshine finally fell
in love with rain.

Unaware about the gender
the rain opened up its heart:
“oh how long since we
had our journey together!
but we never recognized
each other”.

In the bygone past
I had had lives of a priest,
a parrot, a knight and
a banyan tree.
And what about you?

Gathering the pieces of
the different lives
I started painting
images of
surrealistic
existence;

There was my mother, my sisters
They all come alive
As I muse about the
gates where
I had fallen in love, romanced
and cried,

The dead souls
came back to life
as sunrays;

The wind turned into
a thousand souls
whispering to the leaves
the tales of my previous births.

They are taking nostalgic
shelter in twigs;
to escape from whom?
The daytime hunters, robbers,
or couriers of love?

When memories die down
the buzzing sound was not that
of cicadas;

The butterflies
were fleeing
at the sound of approaching
rain from afar.



I painted a few nudes
of wind;
A leaf from the memoirs
of moonshine
landed on the sprawling
shores of rain;

The symbolic images
of wind preferred to
keep aloof without
uttering a word;

Even that was poetic

The rain, moonshine
and the wind merged together
forming a single carpet;
the rain was blue,
wind was white
and the moonshine
was green.

When night came
rain emptied blue
and withdrew into
the skies as an oil
paint;

Wind was trying
to imitate the silence
of a primordial reptile
while the moonshine set out
on its covert
night pilgrimage.

trans:saj mathews

മുഖവും മനസുമായി

മുഖം മനസിനെ അറിയുന്നേയില്ല.
ഒരു അവസരത്തിലും മുഖവും മനസുമായി
ഒരു മുഖാമുഖത്തിന്‌ സാധ്യതയില്ല.
മുഖത്തിന്‌ അതിണ്റ്റെ വഴി;
മനസിന്‌ അതിണ്റ്റെയും

poem by m k harikumar

Oh sunset, are you
an art or revolt?

Oh how aged are
the sobs
that you carry within
you?

The chronology
of memoirs
in which human
souls stroll;

The pictures you
painted with
ancient myths;

An anonymous
voice from somewhere
asks “why you are
in chronic grief?”

It spreads like a
shooting pain
from deep within.
You are the sole
witness to all the
lust, passion
and orgasmic
ecstasies;

Life drenched
in dreams
withers on the way side.



As you mutely
chant vedic mantras
they turn into a collage
of true life portraits

A breeze gives wings
to the broken pieces
of the past

The grief of the
sundown turns
into immortal
temptations of
existence
dried up by oceans.

The distressing repetition
of romantic images;

You always flee;
your journey itself
is your doom;

Your entire words are
just statutes of beauty
which helps you to hide
from haunting
alphabets;







Are you putting
out the fire of
our sexual passions?
They were just within
our grasp,
but shattered
during the sky-splitting
festival fireworks

Why are you silent
even to miserable
lovebirds like
the two of us?

The voluminous
glossary
and depressing
color schemes
in your silence;

Are they your
creative self or not?
Why do you
gather strands of darkness
and bring them back always?

What is there
in your eyes?

Are they
monuments
of beauty
demolished
by history?

Are you letting your
silence devour the
agony and ecstasy
of others?

Oh sunset why are
you knitting
the night clouds



Will you lend
your garments
to cover my nudity?

The paddy fields
celebrate your gloom.

Are you packing off those
who lost their
smiles in the streets
blanketed by blood


An axe is heading
towards you;

Are you going to hide
once again in the echoing
spiritual hymns
mounting from within
the temple walls?

Who accompanies you
in the journey across
unknown galaxies?
Birds or bird flights?

trans:saj mathews

poem by m k harikumar

Myself

1

I am not language;
only the first alphabets of a
primitive script;

In their bid to split me into
alphabets and words
the schools stacked my head,
mind and body with multiple
phrases converting me
into a mannequin.

But I turned into a lone
suicide squad separating
myself from languages;
I moved on with sharpened passions
among the doomed establishments;
still I didn’t become a materialist

2

I am a sentence with words missing,
always yearning for meanings
When dissolved in letters, an voice
reminds me about my real self

However in my fright
I could not but destroy
meanings

3
When butterflies flew around
I too joined them as flying verses

The butterflies which were also
equally scared of meanings
were in a frantic plight
for a way out
and I too became a butterfly



4
There is now darkness of the night
The anonymous voice of the darkness
The orgasmic delights of darkness
The primitive legacy of darkness
The whispers of the dead in darkness

The varied tunes of those who never
settle down in a single body;
The nutmeg trees in the courtyard
recited some prayer

The flooding verses of moonshine
reverberating in the unknown
transparency of primitive hymns

The flower trees slept without
chanting Upanishads
I went nude in my soul
like a virgin glowing in
a hundred modes of love

5
I am a spiritual fasting not
bothered to encroach poetry
and spell its doom
The body never preserves anything;
even the mind has no such habits

I am rummaging my memory
in search of a lady bird
which never arrows down
the soul of words

I painted the chola murals in their
forehead;
I carved the insignia of the swords
on the chests of the chera soldiers
I broke mud pots of Harappa and mohan jo Daro
on their belly




6
I am grief engraved in a primitive script
My religion is that of a maggot
My love is that of the birds disturbed
By the by the chant of leaves
My legacy is not that of artists

7
I am snow flames of love
as well as love of snow flames

The primitive
plateaus of her forehead
are the skyscape of her mind

The sterile winter of the college
The antique eyes, navel pits
The scent of plantain leaves
The bhagavat geetha
glistening in the closed
eyes of my mate
the acumen of the wind
The Buddhist statue emerging
from Marxism
The face of Budha and
the voyage of the bereaved
glisten in
moonlit night

The explicit human vastness
of kathakali in eye lines
the hunter’s aim
from the horizontal
mark on the forehead
Wars that were never fought
in the annoyed nipples
yearning to turn
and not to turn in to a human soul
in the soil saturated in décor
And this is my love




7
I am the fire that set out from
Yagasaala
The fire that pierce deep into
Yearning hearts
bodies in love
and the soul of
the depressed

8
I am in deep meditation
to acquire wisdom from wind
love from light
and humanity from soil
My static meditation extends
through years

The islands of thoughts
which I preserve amidst the
convulsions for humanity
and stomach
for me meditation is an endless
ritual

trans: saj mathews

മുന്‍ ധാരണയല്ല

കല കലാപരമാകുന്നത്‌ ഒരു ദുരന്തമായിരിക്കും.
കല എന്നത്‌ കലാകാരണ്റ്റെ മുന്‍ വിധിയാകരുത്‌.
പശു മൂത്രമൊഴിക്കുന്നത്‌ കലയ്ക്ക്‌ വേണ്ടിയല്ല.
എന്നാല്‍ അത്‌ ക്യാമറയില്‍ പകര്‍ത്തുന്ന ഒരാള്‍ക്ക്‌ അത്‌ കലയാണ്‌. ,പലവിധത്തില്‍.
അയാള്‍ കലയെ തേടുന്നു.
അത്‌ ചിത്രമായി വരയ്ക്കുന്നവനും കലയ്ക്കായി ഓടുന്നു
അയാള്‍ കലയെപ്പറ്റിയുള്ള ധാരണയാണ്‌ തേടുന്നത്‌.
ഇത്‌ അയാളുടെ കലയെ മുന്‍കുട്ടിയുള്ള ആശയ പ്രചരണമാക്കും.
കല കലാപരമാകണമെന്ന് വാശിപിടിക്കുമ്പോള്‍
അത്‌ ചരിത്രത്തോടാണ്‌ സംവദിക്കുന്നത്‌.
കലയാണെന്ന മുന്‍ധാരണയോടെ എന്ത്‌ ചെയ്താലും അതില്‍കലയില്ല.
കാരണം കല മുന്‍ ധാരണയല്ല
അത്‌ ഓരോ നിമിഷത്തിണ്റ്റെയും മറ്റൊരു
അനുഭവമാണ്‌.

poem by mk harikumar

When Mukundan blew the Konch

Mukundan blew the Konch
releasing a sound bird;
which flew away afar

The he blew again to see whether
the sound bird he blew out
from the Konch
can come back to its source

But this time also the sound bird
flew out from the Konch only to vanish
somewhere

He wondered whether the long
arms and legs of the sound will ever
come back for their original
hideouts in his soul

Even in half sleep
he blew the sound birds;
And the Konch had an infinite
reserve of them

The Konch is either sound
or strength or speed
each time, he wanted
to trace where the sound birds
have glided
away from the konch

In fact konch on its own was devoid of sound;
It only has a human soul behind it

And even the human soul doesn’t possess
the sound;

The sound birds take birth
only when the human soul
and the Konch join together

trans:saj mathews

poem by m k harikumar

Mist

The misty crest of Munnar melting apart
in to clouds, sky and ocean

It becomes whiter and whiter resembling
the ever-depressing sense of separation
and gets toned down in showers

In the township, the mist
is both spiritual relief
and refreshing for the tourists

Among the tall eucalyptus soldiers
who are yet to wake up from dreams,
the clusters of mist become puzzles

The epic expanse of the mist
escorts the well disciplined
regiment of tea plants parading on the slopes

The eucalyptus trees are like sentries
in the sacred woods of eternal love

The echo-point in the woods
keep on reverberating the words,
“I love you”

The wings of swans vanish
bidding adios

The nuptials of affections
dig tunnels into the past
where carcasses
of forbidden love lie scattered

The packets of “tata tea”,
the invisible embraces of Kannan Devan hills
stretching out from the green
slopes of Munnar

The abstractness of memories
vomited by pain and
the glistening wilds which
wipe away the fearsome grief

Now there is only mist,
the language, the ritual, the religion and the god

trans:saj mathews