19th November, 2010

I have a friend who is a poetry maniac
He married on the day the dead poet released his latest book
on the day a school girl was crushed to dead on tiddim road
on the day he gave me a poetry titled "Khungee huranba"

those faces on his wedding day he said he saw them as incomplete poetry
started by some amateur poets and left when the town was called out on the field
for another routine combing operation.
The short story writer too came riding an old hero bicycle chewing kom kwa
i took pictures of him and posted in on the wall's of many bourgeois pig
who wanted gratitude of the puppies and fishes they raised in the soil of a rotten valley
filled with corpses and male whores who happily sold off their dicks for few thousands
to any political parties

On the day, the fields were bald with flames burning down the piles of hays
the bullock cart driven by the lady clad in torn phanek with khudei around their heads
chattered away the tiredness under the sun with smiles and as the can whipped the bulls

On the day, the warm alcohol washed the bitter poetry from my throat of my past lover
at Oinam Kabui Khun with a man who owns a fish farm
On the day i saw a broken bicycle leaning against a broken wall
with few boiled peas on my aluminium plates
with a whiskey bottle filled with local liquors with a bollywood tits behind my back

November is long gone now
and my friend he thinks he can;t feed poetry to his kid
unlike me who think i can feed it to anyone i hate or love

ode to my neighbor

my neighbor is kind.
whenever i feel there is nothing sweet
in my life
he will bring me a hot sweet cup of tea

he will get me movies
for my sleepless nights
he will lend me his camera
to capture my happy moments
with my sisters and friends
against the backdrop
 of this depressing city

half kilo of pork
he will save for me
in his refrigerator
even in my absence

many time when i thought my breakfast is death
after reading online news of my home
he brings me eggs and beacon

sometime he would ask me about love
that i had in my kitchen cooking pork or beef
i would say "i dont know, Tabish, you believe in theory of evolution?
it is evolving"

my neighbor is sweet
he will laugh reading Calvin and hobbes
and would say "Calvin is sweet
but dont wanna own a child like him"
he will talk of Obelix beating romans
and Asterix falling in love with Cleopatra

He reads Ghalib in urdu
like he was left alone
empty in the streets of delhi
drunk and wasted

My neighbor is kind and sweet
everytime he sees my broken cups and plates
he will buy me new ones
Once he gave me the book
"Jonathan Livingston seagull "
but the book is gone and i never learnt a thing from it

He too loves haiku

Come come


The tooth brush is gone
and no more tooth paste
please come back

“one of the great joys in life
is to brush someone's hair”
please come back

two unwashed black panties
and a pink short boxer
please come back

the silver ring misses the thumbs
Gorky cries to be back with Tom Joad
Please come back

drunk or not
winner or loser
please come back

sex, spears
or Shakespeare, i dont care
please come back.

I have taken bath with rose water
soften and sweeten my lips with honey
please come back

curly or wavy or straight or coffee or tea
next to him or next to love, dont care
Please come back

i have got a brand new hindu god
on my walls with dates of this year
please come back

No more poetry or protest
no more songs only your thongs
please come back

“30,000 Brus who had fled to tripura
during 1997 violence are now on their way back to mizoram”
please come back

About the sticky stuffs of hills
shhhhhhh! whisper as secret
Please come back

Free sweet tea are being served
in disposable glasses tagged with “Free Binayak Sen”
please come back


you dont see it, it is raining
please stand inside my shoes
please come back

my tear, a drop of water on sand dust,
my fear, you would say so
please come back

At Jantar Mantar
I was summer in this winter without you
please come back

before they make a statue of me
for this endless wait like that of Hachiko's
Please come back

the borrowed warm air blower
blew out warm poetry on my cold thighs
please come back

A brand new sewing machine has arrived,
It wants to stitch you a colorful petticoat,
please come back

Thom Yorke in my woofer woofing;
“i dont wanna be your freind, just wanna be your lover”
please come back

those piles of clothes in the shop near my place
they miss your touch and smile
Please come back

Sweet mango shaped breasted ladies all around
but no heart underneath the breasts
please come back

Prostitution is a good business
come my penis is on sale
please come back

The armies have gone
deserting the cemetery for lovers
please come back

Im better than Prodigy
i sing of you your land your beauty
please come back

James franco failed to be Ginsberg
but i can ..see “Go fuck your self with America or Siberia”
please come back
the pianist don't own a grand piano
just like i dont own a gun to dream of death
please come back

Im a dancing black swan
from Africa from Hollywood from Imphal
please come back

you don't need me like anyone else
but today is my day
please come back

today is my day my day my day
Lets march in the streets like peasants on May day
please come back

keep me in your prison
feed me your attrocities
please come back

the portugese singer sings my heart beats
unknown to me in portugese
please come back

Even Elvis meets Walt Whitman
Even Einstein meets Ibopishak
Please come back

Nivedita Menon wants me to sing
standing upon the hairy chest of Nehru
Please come back

bought a family pack tooth paste
along with a free tooth brush
please come back

Yoko writes no Haiku
She knitted Peace with her toes on Lennon's pelvic gardle
please come back

the painter is fucking fine and great
his girl friend is a flower
please come back

the sky refuses to be in my pocket notepad
it underestimates the small blankness of the page
please come back.
“$ kirikou is tiny but mighty $”
Kirikou Kirikou, give me back Kabara
please come back
rhyme my body my name my life with yours

Hachiko


No one waits for things
only dogs wait
only fools like Samuel Beckett
wrote about it
So shall i stop and fly away

English booze and beer available here

 
cooking poems in my pressurised head
covered by my unwashed hairs
and unwashed hood of my unwashed jacket
i walked along the footpath
scented by smell of burnt tadoori rotis
it was evening
and as usual my legs walked till it dropped me
at where the angel has captivated my heart

all the heavenly smell i smelt
all the heavenly sweat i could sense in my tongue

Like the rapists of delhi all over a poor manipuri girl,
the rickshaw pullers, the bus conductors,
the suited booted capitalist pricks and me
were fighting crushing each other's balls
For the Crazy Romeo Rum
some to wipe the days off
some to join to mourn
some like any one else
and me to sleep

Everyone was a crooked version of Shakespeare's Romeo
Everyone was a fighter,
no one could move anyone
we were as firmed as mountains
for the English Booze made in Uttar Pradesh

Screams and shouts!
as if we all had just listened to
“Stop Whispering”

I knew it , i knew it
i would be last one to get the last bottles
the qoute or the song remains the same
and i walked out from that mad rushing crowd
with two Sikkims in my both Manipuri hands
one for the evening
again one for evening

and the poetry i cooked was
“Im recording silence”
that too a stolen line from '24 Hours Party People'

this morning

I heard the morning sweeper
sweeping like a brush stick on the drums
by a jazz musician
I heard my neighbor's alarm
like an ambulance
on some midnight street
carrying a half dead man.
I felt a poetry at the nib
of my ink less pen
I heard silence crying goodbye
sitting on my staircase
as i broke it with my cough
I heard my sister talking
in her dream to me
"Brother, you dont need to be the man"
I felt the cold of dead corpses
in the poetry book
"Waking is Another Dream",
(Corpses of Sri Lankan Tamils)
I saw the foot prints of Goddess Emoinu
upon my naked chest
I heard the old woman
from my ktchen window
cursing her sons
as the milk steamed away
as i stirred the coffee
with a spoonful of hot water
I saw the morning getting readied
to come out of the hole of my pena
like a mouse
I heard the writer whispering
on her dead bed
"This land is my father's"
I heard me telling me
"recover my holy child"
I heard all the lovers snoring
on each other's face
i saw my bed carrying away
the marks of my back
I felt this poetry can never be complete
as another morning awaits me

The Yellow Dawn and The Coffee Mug as She named

Like The light on the cup
wish i could cup your chin
with my dirty hands and tell you
I want you
..............................
I started it all giving you this yellow cup
and now you end it gving me back its fotograph
but the yellow hasnt changed a bit
except the yellow pillow drenched in my tear
..............................
you did yell
and it echoes back
pounding my heart into dust
............................
I was called a beauty with no face
I was called a Man with no heart
but today im just mad bout you

Ode to Africa


Africa in every drop of ink
from the nibs of pens
Africa on pages
Africa on the stage

Africa in every drop of sweat of farmers
Africa streaming down in the river of words from Himalaya
Africa in my valley
Africa on my bank reciept
Africa in the lips of Sabitri
Africa in the poem of Pakistani poet
Africa in my dream
Africa in my book shelve
Africa inside the hole of my acoustic guitar
Africa in museum
Africa in newspaper

Broken Things

The city stood still.
broken men and women at bus stop
waiting for broken buses
that collapsed long before
the red light pole collapsed

broken people stood still
“People are poles”-
unbroken glasses whispered

I asked the plumber
to fix my water tape
and he said “but who will fix a broken man”

I asked the cobbler
to mend their boots
and he said “ but who will mend
the broken hearts underneath their fine suits ”

the broken singer sings
“the river of warmth from your eyes
are not to keep your cheeks warm
but to remind 'you are broken'
broken like everything else is broken ”

I asked the poet
to write a poem of my broken cellphone
and he said “but who will write of this broken country
which send poets for trial for writing of broken things”

I asked the lover
to teach me how to fall in love
and he said “Can't fall twice as a whole,
if once it is broken”

I asked the coal miner
to give me some coal to burn
and he said “it wont get burn under the broken sky
under the broken roof of yours,
the rain will leak, your destiny is here with this coldness”

I asked the revolutionary
to teach me how to revolt against this broken justice
and he said “Revolution too is broken into peices.
only they are in books or in the lips of those bearded faces”

I asked the cook
to cook me pork
and he said “the pressure cooker is broken
the plates, the spoons are broken too”

I asked the dog
to bark at broken things so that i know they are broken
but he barks back at me
as if it was me
who collected all the broken things
of this city,
who made a portrait of himself
with broken things

January Blues

The professors, they keep writing good books
and the singers , they sing old american blues
and im worrying bout money to pay the dues
my landlady not at all she is cute

my kitchen tape leaks like it is pouring rain
As life leaks away as i remember WH Auden
when ever i have headche and worries bout life
“Oh It cant be life, the picture can't be my wife”

My skin is thick even for this coldest winter
but my thesis is too thin, I can't be a winner
yet i wrap around my neck the used mufflar
And walk like a handsome man in Manchester

Summer's gone but somethng bout it is caught in spiderweb
like a helpless fly, but i feel not so bad or sad.
The pickle of colors from the jar, listening to Dylan's Joey,
I apply on my body, no im not trying to David Bowie

the coins make noise
as the bullet hits the child in joy
It is the voice of innocence
robbed by violence

the hot sweet cup of tea turns cold
in the callousness of my thoughts
my colorful friend in orange hat comes so bold
He abuses the country calling it a fraud

The french philosopher was not funny at all
but few laughed like they were doing him a favour
and the post-talk tea was good, even the woman in shawl
and the pakoras on my plate said “Politics of Nature??”

Strolling down the narrow lanes of Darya Ganj
I look for a better capo of my life to enhance my soul
They were too expensive, more than the air gun
Then, across the road i saw a wine shop

Again my broken phone LCD beeps
calling me once again to Jantar Mantar
to sing out the heart beats India has skipped
So here I am whether it is summer or winter

“Im getting wiser day by day
as i m getting poorer day by day”
I sing out loud with the father of two girls
and he says “Godamned Renaissance!”

new year day


Happy New year
It is a freezing saturday afternoon
The red roses are blooming at traffic lights
The lovers have gone away from the citylight
the poets are busy greeting their friends
everyone is a singer, the voices crack soulful melody
out of such lifeless lives...
Dancing Dancers all around
inside the rooms, in the streets
in the campuses, in me
The coffee mug is filled with whiskey
the man across the buidling greets'
“Happy New year”
“Same to you”
the popcorn popper sprinkles white
like snow from the sky
and the smell too
and the children stands in queue.
At INA market
The big knife chops slice after slice of pork
and lovers walk away with it
some like to have it mustard
some like it simple
some like it with bamboo shooth

happy new year
i say to my blanket
and wrap up myself
and watch the silent Scarlet Johannson


guava


The first bite of this season's guava
I thought i would have wth you
But it was so cheap today evening
it was ten ruppees per kilogram
so i had one big one all alone
sprinkling salt all over it
as i strolled the evening
looking for spring onion