Amphora

Kali in the Living Room

 

Assaulted by an array of sounds. Blender grinding away in the kitchen. Somewhere in this concrete jungle a drill breaking the last remaining trace of humanity. In my living room, the Tamil mega serial that has had a run of over a thousand episodes has reached its peak. The aggression within the television, between the actors, has reached boiling point and the ensuing violent result would be telecast on the news tonight and in the papers tomorrow: Housewives have assumed the form of Kali, husbands across the world are brutally thrashed, dismembered and others nowhere to be found.

 

mega serial climax

armed with a spatula:

my mom- the destroyer

​


 

fathom

 

waves tumble and roll imploding within

foaming and rolling ripping and stretching

churning the blue inside out tossing spraying

invisible forces at work round the clock

makes you wonder if you thought about it

the complexity of nature and the natural world

the design and scheme of the living

 

makes you wonder if you ever thought about it

our purpose and the need for our existence

in essence we seem to be an anomaly

an accidental occurrence

 

and yet here we are

at this epoch

unable to coexist

unable to accept the terms of nature

unable to fathom

unable to evolve

unable to compromise

 

so fuck the stand-up comedians

the politicians and scientists

 

i say we go

it’s time we left

build us starships and set sail

into space and the endless void 

until the world has healed

 

and maybe then

we could return

some us perhaps

​

 

Cancer

 

The path walked. The path walked again. Dawns relished. Dusks loved. The path walked day after day after day after day… Until a squirrel crashed through leaves, branches, breaking the silence of the silent walk. The squirrel lands gracefully in a horrendous spot. A place filled with a trash, ripped clothes, bins scattered, littered things. A mess. Smells of death. Nothing grew there. The soil soggy and impotent. The path walked. The path walked day after day and I had failed to see, to turn my head, to shift my gaze. All along the forest, the path I dearly walked has been suffering from cancer. Rotting from the inside. Dying slowly. All because, we failed to see. I have failed my forest. We have failed our world. They say it’s not too late and yet this feeling deep in my core tells me otherwise.

 

winter revelation

green turns to black

rot reigns

​
 

stay

 

imagine being on land all your life

and then one day the walking

becomes running for your life

running from home

from bombs and death

running from war

running from land to land

from place to place

because some politicians

decided that they would take

the world into their own hands

and mold it the way they would

and you were not part of their plan

not part of their ideals

 

you find yourself on a muddy shore

at low tide in the dark before dawn

shivering teeth chattering being thrown

into a boat by men who stank of fish and salt

you find yourself crammed below deck

in a room that sounds mechanical and smells of grease

and pray to god that the people here would not eat you

at the slightest hint of some maniacal fetish

 

night or day you cannot tell

the waves and the sound of the ocean

calms your soul the sights of the sea

and its strange inhabitants invokes some peace

you finally breathe in this dark hell

comfort finds you water seeps through the hull

dripping on your hands and feet

puddles pool and you rest easy

you can tell you belong

 

that night everyone is woken to the sound of sirens

and floodlight beams tracing the dark

there are shouts and screams

people struggle and some are thrown overboard

you remain quiet very still

you can see the shore

paradise they say

uniformed men usher people into crafts

but you remain onboard

you’d like to stay

with the men who stank of fish and sea

they understood your silence

 

Still Here

 

I’ve seen the moon more times during the day in the last two months (ever since the year started) than in the years before. A pearl in the day blue sky. The cosmic eye silently observing the follies of the mortal realm. More than ever, I’ve started to look up at the sky, not to look at the clouds, birds or for signs of the mad gods. I look up, squinting, undeterred by sunrays in my face, looking for the moon. The full, the half the crescent, whatever it may be, I want to see. Whatever she shows, I will take it all in, without judgment, without hesitation, I look up. The moon is here. Gallivanting nude after dawn. Full of herself. She is here. And so am I, her ardent devotee gazing at her celestial beauty. Inside my head, it is night, sky full of stars, planets and cosmic entities engaged in sexual frenzies in ivory craters, madness some might say. I would rather describe it: Lunar obsession. 

 

naked by day

full moon

shameless spring

 

Bio:

 

Elancharan Gunasekaran is a multidisciplinary artist and poet. He has a strange love for all things poetical and Sci-Fi. A winner of the Montblanc X Esquire Six-word Story prize 2017. His latest publications are Superatomicluminal (Hesterglock Press), Gods of the Gonzo (Analog Submission Press) and The Cosmosnaut Manifesto (UndergroundBooks).