Resmi Padiyan
I am an experimentalist.
As art comes to artist
I was chosen by the ways of seasons, or
was it the ways of the moon?
Experiments are to be detailed
in facts, numbers, measurements but
how do you reduce the interplay
of thoughts to mere numbers?
I rarely roll me into my memories
on those fine mornings of quietness,
those days of clogged clouds in throat.
Blurred pictures and yellowed curtains
colours me with exquisite melancholy.
In muddy borders of yesterday and today,
a young me carries scuffed memories of her.
I was told the invasive eyes accounting
my ways of breath, spells I cast,
the smile I wore, and scars I hold.
The way I walk and talk and sit and dream.
Through prints of bugged cloth
in the mouth that cries aloud,
through the dreams, I believed and fates that crossed,
through the darkness spread on me,
they tag me names for the ways of man.
Aloof. Poised. Posed.
Life is never a tale, you see,
But a stack of lies of forgone dreams.
Sorted. Labeled. Blindly categorised.
And you?
You become the warehouse of stories retold.
As pressed leaves running out of breath.
Pale. Soulless.
Won't you ask me the process it takes? Or
Don’t bother.
They are all lies after all.
Lies don’t count, do they?
Later,
When I hid in the corners
with frost patterns of my brain
Don’t you see I was tired?
I was tired even after. For,
I tread on believes and
fell on demons that fed on them.
Did you know the demons by chance?
They crawl through you
hibernate in the folds and
lay eggs in the veins and stay.
Stay.
Stay longer.
Claiming the sun and moon in you
Assurance and reassurance offered wasted
They wake you up in the middle of the night.
Tired. Tensed. Hopeless.
On that day, when it didn’t rain,
When the wind went lazy
And clouds didn’t clog
I seemed like a potter
Crafting the patterns of me
on a potters wheel.
The 'n' number of patterns I shared
The more ‘n’ number of casual wrecks I made
I told you,
I am an experimentalist.
I am an experimentalist,
Let me reiterate to you.
My life like all lives,
Mysterious, irrevocable and secret
Tailored with seasons and moon.
Now,
You tell me
How do I categorise myself?
How many impersonations did I leave?
Wait,
Before you begin, let me tell you,
I am an experimentalist in the process
to be a sea beautiful to watch.