FORGOTTEN PATHS

Sreekumar K

Some, like dressed chicken,

Have no heads or tails

Some, like burnt documents,

Have no margins

Some, like broken affairs,

Are left half way and lost

Some reach somewhere

Not knowing where they are from

Like the spot on arrow

Of a stealthy conqueror

 

Inside my all reflecting bald head

Among my grey cells too

There must be lost nerves

Just like them

Not sure of where

They had come from

Or what they were

Supposed to connect with.

Straining my thoughts

Scratching my head

Knitting my eyebrows

Looking at a distance

Nothing helps

 

An excited heart

Pumping bubbling blood

Down ticklish capillaries

Would have found out.

Faded pictures

A broken memento

Notes on the margins

Of old calendars

Books waiting to be returned

With creases on the corners

Of many many pages

Where one had left the plot

And smiled with closed eyes

Thinking of life’s offerings

Would have helped.

 

Furniture too could have helped

Or, where one sat in the garden

The shades of trees, thorny bushes

Which have long since disappeared

A dried up well, a dead pet cat

Festivals celebrated no more

Vehicles stripped and melted

To be made into chairs and railings

Notebooks wet with humidity

Given over to hawkers

All would have given some clue

Of who you were under a cloudless sky

At noon, one sultry scorching summer

And what I had been to you all along