A Roofless Home
Melancholy is a pallid sparrow
on an allamanda flower.
The heaviness of its alight
on a petal is unbearable.
Madness is like baby gravels
in a wild brook.
The insane softness
is hysterically elastic.
Grief is an ashen efflorescence
latent on a sepal.
The pollen grains of angst
fly away from asylums.
Delusion is a tree of solitude;
its shade is still.
it is a cleaved path
for lighting to touch the earth.
Depression is a pressure cooker whistle;
its shrill pitch
disturbs the cacophony
of disharmonious grave sounds.
Misery is like a bloated soul;
overeating uncooked memories
cause indigestion, acidic words
float in the gut fluid.
Sadness is an abandoned home,
it is wall-less; roofless
and emanates the gloominess,
extracting dews of a secret smile.
Nth Number of Chances
Without recommendations, caesarian perceptions
turn up. Unsettling words descend not knowing
of what poem they will make, fortuitously.
I see askance in the everyday rise of the sun,
without unsuspecting a standstill star in my eyes.
Dates began on a whim, under hunter’s tutelage,
solitary shadows play in the children’s park
coaching to taste life many times offering
the nth number of chances to die and resurrect.
From aubades and lullabies to requiems and elegies,
the metronomes of the breath held on as just oxygen,
let out to the air through rusted rhomboid memories.
Parameters of Exhaustion
I drink exhaustion in the curfew hours, as a naïve soul blindly
waiting for a plethora of annual reoccurrences: of a pathogenic
pandemic infection, of a customary ritualistic festival, of a natural
recurring catastrophe, in a leftover, mortgaged uncertain psyche.
The flood green water is now a site of tourism. A catalog of loss
is the bible of these times. I am rootless to fix myself between
the periodical disasters and lockdowns. Parameters of fatigues
count the idle hours of depression and paranoia and misery.
Carbon footprints ought to pile up the guilt of our haughty travels.
The Sin Of An Agonist
Hormonal dummies move
in a queue to buy masks.
Egalitarian typecasts
disseminate causalities.
Firsthand words breast
the guilt of privileges.
Calories of liberties are
burned off, cathartically.
Public grievances are
baptized in my suspicions
We believe, we deserve
nothing short of gyration.
About the Author
Arya Gopi is a bi-lingual poet writing in English and Malayalam with half a dozen published books including four Malayalam poetry collections. Her first English title Sob of Strings was published in 2011. A contributor to major journals and anthologies, she has won several awards including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Kanakasree Award, Kerala State Youth Welfare Board Swami Vivekananda Yuva Pratibha Award, Kerala State Youth Commission Youth Icon Award, International ONV Foundation Yuva Award, and the Vyloppily Award. With a Ph.D. in English literature, she teaches literature at Zamorin’s Guruvayurappan College, Calicut University.
