M K Ajay was born in Kozhikode, India and currently lives in Kuala Lumpur. His poems have appeared in several publications in India and abroad including Orbis, Niederngasse, Cerebration, Chandrabhaga and The Little Magazine. He has written a collection of poems titled 'Facsimile of Beliefs'.
AT MALIBU PUB (KUANTAN BEACH)
Corona of guile
moving as restless feet,
drunk in caprice
and bleak alcohol.
Is that my fear
laid on the table
with roasted peanuts?
My other side
waiting to become?
Outside, the South China Sea
has struck the moonlight
on the white sands.
The crabs hear
the raucous whisper
of the waters,
a vulgar groan
rippling into the night.
A wound opens
in somebody’s heart.
We see them dance in glee,
those festering wounds,
to loud beats
dreaming aloud.
Why do men
retreat to this womb often?
Why does a tug in the chest
increase the air’s heaviness
like a trauma’s recall,
like a rank cigarette puff?
A waitress drops
her hint, and a few
inches of her neckline.
Outside, a dead jellyfish
is washed ashore
from its smug comfort
and sinister home.
An entire world
twirls under the strobe lights,
everything inches
towards instinct,
towards an island
of covetousness.
The hours move
through the smokescreen
and glint of earrings,
an irresolute advance
stumbling twice
before the girls
can say ‘yes’ or carry
men on their frail shoulders.
“Its my life”, the tune blares.
I see what poets
can see and celebrate;
loneliness etched into
the worlds of smoke,
a distance from crowds,
an adamant clutch
on things precious to self,
a bridge we cannot cross
in this loudness, this heat;
a filth that makes
all virtue worthwhile for some -
an addiction of the flesh.
I remember the jellyfish
and its clotted,
translucent tissue,
and a certain nausea
that accompanied the sight,
a visual epidemic.
Then, it rained,
pelting the marigolds
on the resort’s quadrangle
and the palm tree
dotting the swimming enclosure
where bare bodied tourists
made a pact with Narcissus.
We watched the rain dance
through the tinted glass,
hissing rains,
amid macho laughter,
and needy band girls.
The slug that clung to
the rock on the shore
was fat, shiny, silvery,
like an angel from
tinsel town.
“Are pubs in Bombay
like this?”, they ask me,
reminded suddenly
of Bollywood –
all those trees, and songs,
and pretty heroines.
“Sure. Pubs around the world
are the same for a teetotaler”.
The sea’s breeze
pulls a raw nerve;
when I walked yesterday
on high tide’s slender corridor
I felt the same sting,
the same sadness
one feels when sentences
become defectors of the spirit.
We laugh, three skeletons
filled up by light,
floating on bar stools.
“Cheers”…clink of
soul’s mirrors, beer glass…
the seashells are attractive….
let the rains cease….
we are sure to find
jellyfish stranded on the shore.
The peace missing
from our vocabulary
was silence, sitting sullen
in a corner, sane, reproachful.
“Do introverts die
the same way as others?
Them with their fantasies
of after-life, unending
silences, enjoying every bit
of that drifting away from
the crowd, like the palm
sprout we saw, drifting away
from the shore’s onlookers”.
Refill for the two of them
as I watch self-consciously
at my orange juice receding away.
A sea urchin smeared with grime
is a witness to the sea’s temptations.
Adjectives of the night –
gloom, isolation, longing -
are studded on a coral
lying on the sands;
they search for the right words,
careful not to breach
what their consciousness
would not permit.
Me, a curious observer
of their concealed motives.
Is that my fear
laid on the table
with roasted peanuts?
My other side
waiting to become?
Outside, the South China Sea
has struck the moonlight
on the white sands.
The crabs hear
the raucous whisper
of the waters,
a vulgar groan
rippling into the night.
MALACCA
Lights on the night bridge
weeping pearls
vast straits beyond.
The Portuguese came here
with their ships
and brought with them
beards and storms.
It was little William
who became immortal
whose tombstone sits cold
among the fallen bricks
of St.Paul’s cathedral.
“If you can stand
the smell of durian”, she mumbled
against the tiresome groan of the sea
with a faint hint of finality
her voice trailing as the breeze
wafting into the colonial pavements.
Everywhere I turned
I found scents of broken history
souvenirs for the soul
postcards of paradise.
The watchman at hotel Equitorial
regaled us with stories
of Malays butchered
by the sea, possessed,
only to be traced
by the scavenger birds.
At the hypermarket
on the glassy road
a Muslim girl unveils
the taste of McDonald’s,
a steel miniature of the twin towers
reflect the distances beyond
this coastal night.
From my balcony
I see the sun
sink its teeth
into the flesh of Malacca.
Turquoise blue clouds remain
my last memory of the day.
©M.K. Ajay