About CC

Gopikrishnan Kottoor, the founder of the poetry journal ‘Poetry Chain’, has 4 novels, three plays, a book of poems edited, called, A New book of Indian Poems in English. His translations include the bhakti poet Poonthanams Gyaanapana. His poetry collections include: Piccolo, Milestones to the Sun, Sunbirds in The Rain, Father, Wake Us in Passing, Nirvana, Rev. Father Benedict Goes to Heaven or, The Mainatharuvi Murder and Other Poems, Mother Sonata, Buchenwald Diary, Victoria Terminus, Poems: Selected and New, The Coloured Yolk of Love Vrindavan, Tell Me, Neruda, and My Little Tsunami and Other Poems. His new novel Chilanka- The Anklet and book of poems My Blue Alzheimer’s Sky are in the press. He can be contacted at gopikottoor@gmail.com.

1. The Direction

Next to the farm house of death

is the small ghost town.

God knows the time I took

to get in here

Nobody gave me the right direction.

I had to find my own way.

The lights

kept vanishing.

Betrayals,

turned to fat bandicoots

snorting the dark

Love stripped and dumped

was a stopped moan

of a raped fetus among the leaves.

Past seasons in orgy

crucifying fire.

Ghost town looks neater,

so quiet,

laid white like a table cloth

by a straight nun.

It wasn't at all

like they said it would be.

The cherry trees hold still green cherries

that don't need to turn red and fall.

Time puts me in safe mode

on delicate hold

Yesterday's rivers turn to ice

and flow on.

2. The Doll House

Dolls don't live

In doll-houses.

They cry the tears

Of our young daughters

Combing long hair

Thinking love

Will precipitate

The mid night air.

They don't turn fools,

These dolls...

They jump red lips,

Play see saw upon eye lids

Dream of young heroes

And idle to sleep,

Wink with blue eyes

Dressed with opulent lies

Open their tresses

Like news satellites,

Ah,

How they wet dreams.

But they never slit their veins.

They never bring forth blood.

They know no railway tracks

Though love is all they need

They don't ever need to cry

Or, fall down suicide point

To die.

And, they don't live in doll houses.

They float in the air,

Their arms ever ready for love

Sans infidelity.

Dolls.

Late in the evenings

After a few sad beers

they don't drive into unlit

Doll-houses

Like we do.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

3. The White Spider

She has grace, and is Miss Beautiful

As she spreads her beauty in white mat

Upon the orchid flowers.

Her blue eyes are dark roses,

Bred in sky breeding among the white clouds.

She knows she is beautiful,

That she won’t scare you

letting you get near her.

Her web knows the art

Of turning diamonds into morning dew.

You let her climb you,

Oh, she’s sheer white

Folding into softest wafer

That can glide between kissing lips

And you want to go and touch her

Refusing to believe

All that they say

That she’s richest

Poison bag

in love's perfumed garden.

4. Glass

We tell each other

it must never crack.

That's why you blow the sand bubbles so light.

like your first time kisses.

That's why you wash it

beautiful in the river.

Like your tears that mirrored all our love.

let the glass be,

so that its crystal flowers will look

like love looks

as though it is born never to die.

But we know when love dies, don't we

though we don't tell each other

and the silence rises and sets.

we hold the glass saying

we mustn't let it fall.

But inside us my love,

it is all very clear.

Better it breaks now,

when we are still together.

5. In Waiting

She’ll not be moved by the tears in your eyes

Shipping broken hearts past the Bermuda,

Wondering about her ocean, to weigh anchor;

Rather, she’ll be amused by the lights,

Signaling harbour, all lit for her,

Waiting for her just one call.

Now from what is known, it appears

The realms of sadness and parting

Are not hers. Never were.

Queen of the kingdom of ice,

She throws up to you

An icicle of forgetfulness.

One among them in waiting,

Helps her with a red winter coat,

And she disappears into the fog,

Having won the night and all its dead stars.

Then the lights go down in the ocean,

Gently, one by one,

Leaving all the poets to wonder.