Tonight, Loneliness and the Princess

waited for such fine weather
Finally it arrives tonite
and it catches me with my loneliness
and I am trying now to hide
My existence has been questioned
This curtain talked to me many times before
but tonight it is just a piece of unwashed clothe.
how must i learn to kiss this night
with this weather?

My love, she is shooting me arrows
right at my atheist heart
reminding me the princess
who spat at my face
for the land i talked so much.
O princess, you were sweet
with your foreign tongue
forgive me as i was just the clown
in the circus of that night
forgive me as i was not a real patriot
in Imphal but in delhi

Your love slapped me
and i was Pacha Meitei
crying on the shoulder of Imphal
No! i was crying on the shoulder
of my friends,
the slap was sweet
and as quick as bullet
But it never can dry my tear
it is all i have
and i am proud for every drops of my tear

This night has lost its way
my loneliness confuse it
my existence seeks no meaning in my poetry
but tonight i see myself crumbling into the ants
and looking up at my very door
which i hit many times
cursing the land i love

Curfew

I
Starving fathers and mothers
spitting saliva
defying hunger
protesting sitting at their courtyard
sipping black tea
talking insanity of Mr. Ibobi
while their children walk out on the roads
giggling wiping their watery nose
with white chalks
writing on the deserted road
whatever they have learnt in schools
whatever they have heard in songs
"Unity in Diversity"
"Sanaleipak Moneypur"

II
Dangling phaneks and bras and panties
singing freedom in the wind of wild east
from the top of their lungs
wind kissing the fallen leaves
burning tyres spinning towards the military trucks
broken mirrors singing "Cut me if you can"
and the last cry, cupped by silence,
looking again for its way
to find its destiny in history, in books
in speeches.

love in the time of killings

Don't tell them
I send this love letter
in this time of protest and killings

but to be frank
when the ground under my feet
is soaked in blood

I can no longer be hopeful
of my generation
except our love

How insane i am
to think of making love with you
when they are slaughtering my generation?

can you believe?

Our devil minister, chief devil
is waging war against us
handing Ak47s, SLRs, LMG to the mindless dogs

and all we have is a mountain of ashes
and he knows Mountains are famous for their silence
we can not wage war against him

He is not alone too

Delhi got this "Kill East Policy"
since then our lives are dicey
I have even given up to be so focussed about life

I believe for one last time
we must make love
and let it sprays on these streets

where i walk with fear
let our screams run in river
let our sweat be fuel to burn him alive

His and their bullets may be a big full stop in our lives
But our love will live forever
wearing our old clothes

I was just telling my freind
"So what, if we are soaked in blood
Our heart is still hungry to own a land of peace"

But deep down in me
I can't wait to see our love
throwing light in this age of darkness

Yes, it is the age of darkness
I am writing this letter sleeping next to you
and i can't see you and i dont know when will you receive it

to the CM

We all know
your existence in our poetry
is not as some flowers or the moon
but as the rapist of Mother Manipur
who still sucks her dead nipples
who still melt her frozen blood to sell away
to the Parliament House;
in return you get full loads of army trucks
to make this land a funeral house

You jump over
from one death to other
sucking lifeless cold and dry blood
How long How long
the white kurtas can veil the red blood you sucked?
It is all transparent now

We all know
Our history has reserved a big chapter for you
to sit, sleep and eat with your gluttonous heart.

i am your son

Mother, I am sorry
I am still a loser
I can't still earn

Yet i know
the last few morning stars light the sky to dawn
and the dawn pulls up the sun from ocean
and morning arrives with sleepy school kids
and noon comes with lunch
evening arrives with gossip
and night with street lamps with no electricity

Still i can't manage a day
trying to do so many things at a time
as i know life is short
and i am scared i will miss what i want to be
and no one pays me, mother,
for what i want to be
such is this world, Mother
and i am a loser with a the tag
"I am your son"

bleed generation

We sat the evening in a park
with Sanjit's body and Rabina's chappals
with no key to a room
we were stranded like rats in a crowded city road
we sat with one kilogram of chicken
with one royal stag bottle.
we waited for any room to be opened
to house our tired souls
and the fake encounter
we didn't know how to handle
as we have seen so much of it
or read or discussed in many useless
conversation that lasted like
a burning of a mantu bidi

we measured our past
with many pegs of whiskey and vodka
we sang a victim's song
we fed ourselves everything we couldn't digest
we shot the night
peeling the streets of Delhi
and reached Gurgaon
among the skyscrapers
we were the ants
we were the drunken ants
who forgot to move
we were the witches
that rode brooms...
leaving behind our roots to the poet
who desires it sitting in the clouds of Meghalaya


again we sat in a field
the naked dead poet chased the roaring planes
the painter threw his phone
to a canvas of black holes.
our urinal telepathy led us to a bush
and the dawn broke
and it was drizzling with our little pissing
the city was rained with our territorial pissing
we dipped our poems
in the sweet cups of tea

we all forgot
where was the dead bodies
when we saw each other
when the first rays of sun struck our ugly
little drunk faces
and we laughed plucking the tiny white flowers
if white was the symbol of peace
then i plucked enuf white
that my land would turn into white ashes

we kept on riding, driving
as we knew we are the Bleed Generation

Tomba and the Poem

I met you when the poem was in cradle
We never talked too when the poem was crawling
We talked only after we crossed Bramaputra River
And In the noise of the train
We brushed our teeth together

You came with a pain in your heart
With your bags full of untold stories
So we stood together washing our face
Staring at each other through the broken mirrors
Of that summer train like school kids
You kept on singing “Californication” till the train halted

We travelled the city in auto rickshaws
We looked at each other through its side mirror
And a time had come we shed our clothes
But not for the hot summer
But Inside my tiny little room
Inside which I had cut my hands many times
For my idiotic thoughts and stupid worries
The poem too shed its clothes
Growing its limb as we breathed fast


Many nights you sang “Sunflower Sutra”
To the poem and it slept away like a sweet girl
Slowly you opened your bags
And words fed the poem, it cried and cried
Helplessly like it had be thrown down
From the terrace of your brick house

And you and I became the most beautiful thing
On earth while the poem wept for your stories
We were sweet like anything under your thick blanket
(Still I smell your blanket)

You read me Shakespeare
And explained as you knew I hardly understood
And asked me “Isn’t it beautiful?”
And I nodded my head and said Yes!
And we kissed

We cooked together the best Kangsoi
We slurp it like cat
The rice, we ate
Like we had been the prisoners of war in the city

In the night in the day
We always had monsoon
And still we were always eager for it
But the poem was all wet with it

One day in a crowded railway station you departed me
And I popped up with the poem and my guitar
In a strange place with strangers
There I made friends with strangers
They were all Bengalis and Marathis

One drunken night in a cheapest bar
They snatched the poem from me
On the very table where matchsticks were thrown out
Like death in my homeland

Where ashtrays were filled with stars and galaxies
They read it, sang it out loud in their mother tongue
Like the cigarette in my hand, my heart burnt
So in the ice cold glass of whiskey I dived
And with my heavy heart I slept away the night

Next morning I woke to a field of marijuana
And I, who was poor and hungry always
Had to eat, smoke and fuck the leaves
So I emerged next to the poem again
Sitting in a library of astronomers
The poem flew among the stars and galaxies
Searching for its root
It even asked why Newton was kept under an ugly Banyan tree
Why was there a stone imitating apple
And it flew to Moreh
And rested awhile sleeping
Inside a hole of a half opened pumpkin
It woke up all yellow
And again it flew back to America
For all my wanting to be a beatnik
And learnt to have free sex

One day again I popped up next to you
You came to me with no flowers as usual
We felt complete with our weekend drinks
And monsoon arrived
But the poem was walking free on the streets in our land
Like a rag-picker
It wore the blood of Paorabi Bomb Blast in October
It lamented for the highway 39
It laughed at the futility of revolution
It sang for the barber’s radio
Crying for the barber who was killed

Now the poem doesn’t bother you and me
Only sometimes you ask me where is it
You have forgotten too “Sunflower Sutra”
And I don’t know too where the poem is gone
With its broad shoulder
Without bothering our stories
Now it has become a Lamjasara
I never bother too
Where the poem is walking away or doing
But if it has done something wrong
They will come looking for me
As I raised it from that streets of orphans

freedom death

I ran away from the sun
I hid from the moon and its soothing shine
Still I heard the bomb blast
Still I heard the burning of the burnt lives
And I lost my count upon death
I became a deaf who hears only coffin nailing

And a day came
That the history of mankind
Said “when death walks upon a land
There soon will be freedom”
So again I started counting coffins
As I sold coffin
I even broke my doors and windows
For the carpenters who make coffins
I took my bills to the court
And measure at the weighing machine
The machine said justice must come first
So I left with disgust as I have never heard
Of such word as ‘justice’
And went to a church
I took off my clothes
And show the counts on my body
I asked “when is freedom arriving
When will it ever land up in my homeland?”
He said “I don’t have an answer
I was just a freedom fighter
Who had died without a light of freedom
On me”

And now I leave the question to time
As I have been forced to be one of them

Slipping Dreams

slipping dreams,
sipping darkness
of many long nights,
stands now like a mountain
asking me
"where have i been sleeping"
like my lover's favourite question

I search my answer
touching my bed
to find its warmth.
again another dream slips
from the burning cigarette
sipping smoke
without a talk.
it slips away
hand in hand with others.

and i wake to an evening
of fumes from the burning roads
with a poem
Of distrust and hate

Dogs in my Land

Dogs in my land
They do not bark
They shoot at housewives
They don't move their tails
they hide them
to be one of us

they wear masks
but they can't bear
the smell of human flesh
they use the very cup
Of civilization
that ever reached this land
to kill their preys

Dogs in my land
the most evolved dogs in my land
you will see them mopping the tables
and floors of the monkey
inside the Bungalow

School Bag

With a bag, full of dreams,
Called 'school-bag'
On his back, he walks barefoot
On the road to a primary school

Some dreams of a little man, his father
Some dreams of his Mother, now a widow
the bag carries, it wraps, it covers

The dreams fly away one after another
from the pages of small books
from the lead of his pencil
As he opens the school bag
to carry the picked grains of pea
while coming back from school

He, with a proud smile, pours
that handful of peas on his mother lap.

To him, slowly
the emptiness of Chengfu open the doors
to the noise of the city market
to the vastness of unploughed fields

Now his little pen needs no ink
it needs a bucketful of sweat in the sun
his pencil sharpener turns into a spade
His small books become the fields
where he does his homework

He still wears the same trouser,
stitched out from his father's,
it doesn't fit him any more
Nights become short
for all his tired and aching muscles

And the school-bag turns
Into the rich men's sacks
that he carries on his back
to deliver from one house to another
from one shops to another

For the Foreign made Arms

Foreign made arms arrive in a town
With great honor through Jungles
In helicopters and big ships
welcoming by the hands of God
Promising everyone to reach heaven
Sleeping inside magic carpeted coffins
Propelled by gun powder

And in the land of Rock N’ Roll
A speech was delivered
To a panel of great human beings
Who will be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Whose rights are uncountable
Like the numbers of conferences they have attended
In the name of Ethiopia, Bosnia,
Palestine, Uganda, lately Iraq, etc
The speech called out names from the graves
Everyone shed tears of grapes
And swallowed again like grapes

And United Nation observed silence for 2 minutes
And in the town with great honor people are killed
Assured for compensations and dying-harness jobs

Sleeping Hills

To you, sleeping hills
With all your silence
In your successful journey
Of motionlessness,
This helplessly hopeless Poet
Is keeping hope

To the Armed Ones

The rivers with no water
The crying children, the King’s palace
The dying grandfathers
Water drops on leaves, flying birds
Butterflies in the garden
These are all for you
We are yours
The mother who sells vegetable is also yours
Aim your gun at us
Throw your bombs at us
We will die for you
We will live for you
Even the junkies are for you
They run when they see you
And you play hide and seek with them
And eventually they will lie on your boots

It is all for you
Take away the money in my pocket
Kill me whenever you want
Rape my sisters when you wish
It is all for you
Every blood I have in my veins
It will shed in the sound of your gun
My body will shiver
When your sword pierces me
I will be cremated on your land
To make your land a fertile one
With all my ashes
It is all for you
The wombs are for you too
Dig out the fetuses with your bullets
This land is for you
A land where sky meets earth
With the smoke, a bridge
With the tears, a river that climbs

I am Meitei

I am a meitei
Remnant of a great culture and tradition
And I was born caged
With chains of skulls and bones

My amulet is filled with lies
My naked body is a sign of hunger
My throat is dry in monsoon
My nails are rusty in harvest season

I am a meitei
I never had to go to a war
As my homeland is a concentration camp
And I will die rotten along with others

Neither my skin is white
Nor it is black
Nor my blood is Jewish
Yet I am a slave inside this camp

I borrow my face from Mongolia
My red ass from Japan
My martial arts from China
yet my moves from an earthworm

Angel (named by Raju)

As I sleep away the night
In the lullaby of this city
Sung by night train
I once again jump
naked into the river
and touch the soil
underneath the water.
the summer sun
with all its ray in my pocket
i walk the paddy field
sprinkling light to the women
and we dance
with children of widows
we laugh and cry
shedding tears of pearls
and climb the mountains
of rot and death
to find a spring
out of those bullet ridden hearts
and lovely they say
I am the unmarried mother
of these children

Post Modern Times

In this post modern time
I see our pre modern
and modern literature drying out
at Rajesh Book store and Sahitya Akademi

And every one is dying a post modern dead
while everyone is making post modern love
wearing rubbers and rubbing cream
underneath the blanket of smoke and cries

A literary article says "post modern poets are the critics
of this Post modern society"
it says we write poetry
to record history,
so are we historians
of alternative history?

Falling of a post modern pomegranate
and the oozing sweet fluid with its smell
in the surface of a dreamland symbolizes our land
as Post Modern Critic says

Post modern Man dreams
a post modern dream
riding the post modern rickshaw
with fat post modern man behind him
with no beginning, no end
it just goes on like his post modern paddles

and post modern revolutionaries
are misusing the pre modern meaning
of revolution.
Pre modern whores are now
the post modern celebrities

'Post modern farmers have the luxurious lives'
the modern man said
massaging his own post modernly evolved legs
they have post modern machine to harvest
they have modern water pumps
they have post modern vehicles
and they grow only post modern paddy
not Moirang fou or Kumbi fou

"Unconditional Love is post modern
One night stand is post modern"
the post modern cultured people argued

Post Modern painters paint only stone age women
and smoke only Classic
Naked Woman is the beginning of everything
even the post modern is derived from it
Like Laiharaoba becomes post modern literature

30 years of pre modern
and 20 years of Modernism
and now post modernism
in which post modern death blooms
like flowers in different color
in which pre modern robbers and killers
become the Post Modern government
In which lazy post modern sons with class 8th grade
become the protectors of our post modern society

Post modern lovers are no more allowed
to sit at modern war cemetery
of the modern Japanese Soldiers
Post modern civil society organizations
do not want the pre modern culture to evolve
They talk to post modern phone
"the girls are wearing post modern mini skirts
the boys are wearing post modern cotton bras
Where is the image of our pre modern fanek"

Smoking pot is no more seen
the post modern way to reach the cloud
is to find veins in the post modern balls
and inject the post modern powders

In this post modern time
"everything is a loosing battle"
the post modern Christian said

and post modern singers like me
who are optimistic with our atheist heart
sing " we will still see post post modern society"