by Gopikrishnan Kottoor
Our brand new Ambassador car
Was all painted ivory.
I remember how then, I danced round and round
Like it was a golden tambourine.
Mother kept jasmine flowers
Hanging upon its laughing bonnet
Young smoking father, he
broke two coconuts
upon its engine,
to drive away the devils and the gremlins.
And our driver stomped into the hard steering
driving his Bela kiss mush
and lit the jog sticks, and pinned
them there
like she was a girl that must be perfumed
before first night fucking.
We turned the yellow thing
Into a pinned lemon butterfly.
Well now with hands gone shaking
this morning I wake from sleep,
in a dream of dead dogs
& red kitten heads
rolling from
the old school book shelf,
With the ghosts of father and
mother
framed upon dead skin on the wall
and love
Steaming from its boiling radiator
upon my childhood dead in its red oxide dickey.
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ABOUT THE POET ~
Gopikrishnan Kottoor has won numerous awards for his poetry, including leading prizes in the prestigious Poetry Society (India)- British Council All India Poetry competitions. His poems have been published both in National and international poetry journals, and in Special issues on contemporary Indian Poetry in English. His selected poems from nine books appear in the collection ' Victoria Terminus'. His impressions on the concentration camp, Buchenwald, Weimar (East Germany) are cited as prayer in the reflective book by Barbara Franklin, of the ' Adorers of Christ, USA'. Kottoor's eleventh book of poems ' Vrindavan', a Radha- Krishna poetry cycle with 214 poems has won rare encomiums both in India and abroad. Kottoor has read and worked as invited poet in Europe and the USA.His book of poems ' Father, Wake Us in Passing' translated into German, (Wolfgang Heyder) appeared as a Laufscrift book choice (Martin Langanke). His oeuvre includes Novels (A Bridge Over Karma, Presumed Guilty), Plays ( The Mask of Death, Fire In The Soul), Verse translations (Puntanam, Kukoka), Editing ( Poetry Chain, A New Book of Indian Poems in English) Writing for children, (Wander) Lyrics, Scripts, Stories, Life style ( The Twelve Petals of Enlightenment) and literary reviews ( The Hindu Literary Supplement, Deccan Herald). His forthcoming books are Hill House (Novel), A December Night's Train (Script and poems), A Woman In Flames (Play) . Blog : www.gopikottoor.blogspot.com. Email : gopikottoor@gmail.com. Reference in Wikipedia : Gopi Kottoor.
Last updated May 25, 2012