Our Private Literature

My friend Thoiba visits me every evening.
We recite poems inside this hut
To each other like we were at Shamu Makhong
With hundreds of listeners.
We recite all kinds of poems; sonnets, haikus and ballads.
We write them, we memorize them, we sleep with them
Our themes are about deaths, evils, bats and sex.
We recite them with mouths packed with Raja Khaini

Thoiba addresses me as Comrade Akhu
But I don’t know why?
We haven’t even seen the Communist Manifesto
All we have read is Animal Farm
We have also witnessed Nandigram
But remembering my late grandfather,
He died of lung cancer,
Who recited the Communist Manifesto on his death bed
Makes me think I could have been a Marxist in my previous birth
Thoiba and I suffer, yes you too suffer
We often forget that you suffer too like in Africa
Our suffering makes me think
That I could have been a Bureaucrat too
In my previous birth who wore the widest neck tie
If I have to believe the old man’s saying,
“If you are unkind, dishonest and corrupt,
You will suffer in your next birth”
So in my previous birth was I Marxist Bureaucrat?
Or was I born in Cuba with the sickle printed cap?

Sometimes Thoiba asks me:
How would our Poems make them Sleepless?
I replied, “We are not Tagore
We are not Nazrul Islam
We are not even Dalits
Who are placed at the center of the Map
They symbolize the downtrodden
So the universities study their literature
We are not even women
Who paint with their vaginal blood.
You and I are just ‘private literature’
So they will sleep the best sleep of their lives
While you and I fight the nights
While we crawl under our bed
To stay away from the firing bullets.
Our poems are not meant to be published
But to be carved on our tomb stones.
That is again impossible
We are not Christian
We don’t erect tomb stone on our grave.
So let us forget about the poems
But let us not stop reciting and writing
Even if we are so hungry
Yes, we are indeed very hungry
Hungry for peace
Hungry for rice
Hungry for everything under the sun.
To satiate my hunger
I can even chew their bullets
They’ll be as good as Iron vitamins
To men like us, for sure.
Every night inside this hut
I scold them so badly, so abusively
That my tongue bleeds.
But I am scared to scold them in public
Outside this hut
Lives are very cheap as you know.
People get killed for articles they write in the newspapers
You may get killed too for the little Gandhian five rupees note
You own in your pocket or wallet.
Even the ‘Kargil War’ hero, Retired Gen. Ngamba
Died because of a fly buzzing in his ears.
Our lives are the cheapest thing on earth
It costs only a Rs. 35 bullet.

Our valley is no more like our old poems
Where the poets wrote
‘We are guarded by nine ranges of mountains.’
But now any chopper or plane
Can land on our shoulders
And snatch our own balls away from our bodies
They did exactly this somewhere
And sowed the balls in their fields
And a very good Indian history grew out of the balls
And today the students have to study it in school
The kids even mug it up
And eventually they will wear the neck tie
Sitting on the leather chair
And will command someday to hang us for our poems
But we can’t afford to lose our lives so fast
We have to continue writing poems
Till the last drop of our blood and breathe
Someday, I believe, we will be read.”

Damned Intellects

your talks
your thoughts
are confined in one room
your class's room

go back home
you will find new tombs
you won't know where they come from

look at the situation
find a solution
there is no confusion
between prostitution
and corruption

you had enough fun
with the whores' cunt
while we were burnt
We are not yet done
we have just begun
to see the real sun

We need you Professors
and your english spoken daughters
to slaughter
their Bulls
do you know they are fools?
all they know is how to pull
the triggers
but don't we learn from history, Misters,
how to fight them
how to bang them?

NonSense

Summer dies with Bullets
Winter arrives with Bombs
Autumn fades with Death
Spring breaks with Sex

Days pass with the funky Smell
Nights slip away with Bottleneck Guitar Slide sound
Mornings drown in the old man's Sweat
Evening too drown in the young man's soup

the roads know no Kerouac
the trees stand still like morning penis
the rivers sigh crying for a simple song
the men curse their wives for shaking all night

Children of Kangleipak

Welcome Jack
Welcome Allen
welcome to our valley
we are the children of kangleipak
we rule the valley day and night in our poetry
Please forget your old Whitman
here you wont hear America singing.
All we have here is Thangjam Ibopishak
who wants to die with an Indian bullet
and some odd poets
who believe Loktak is an ultimate poem

We got hundred scrolls of poems
which were never read by any one
Lets recite it in the army camp
lets play Jazz in their jukebox
lets drive my father's new car
on the highway #53
along the highway #39
from Ukhrul to Moreh
from Imphal to Tamenglong
from CCpur to Nambol
from Sekmai to Mao
This is how we dream to celebrate Manipur

Lets smoke all the marijuana plants
growing on the bank of Kongba river
Lets wear the tricolor flag
around our waist with no underwear
underneath it
Lets have sex with the mountains
Lets kiss the sky and cry with laughter
Lets see how the soldiers masturbate
with the ak47 slinging on their shoulder
lets write a story
that runs faster than 1400 miles per hour
and lets carve it on the mountains

we have got a friend too
who is wilder crazier than your buddy Neal
his name is George
he had sex with all the girls
while the soldiers are busy with guns
he is unmarried unlike your three time married buddy
he celebrated Imphal
walking every streets
against those sulky dull bored faces
he is a patient now
he is now in rehab

Lets start to recite
Mine is here: " Wake up children ...."

drunken poem

the sky is fucking blue, so i cry
the beggar is stinking, so i sit next to him
the valley is not so happy, so i drink
the mountain is not so high, so i am higher
the prostitute is not so vulgar, so she is hungry
my wife hates me so i love her
my children scold me, so i watch them after they sleep
my roof is torn, so i keep awake all night
my days are gone, so i remember them
my mother used to love me, so i get her picture on my wall
my father bought me drinks, so i still remember him
my guitar used to be a machine, so my hands were chopped
my voice were "sweet like crow", so they threw out
my poems were rubbish, so they burnt it
my hands were like hammer, so they nailed it
my friend was killed, so they whispered in my ears
the river was blood, so i bled to see anything left in me
the man was armed, so i had to bite him
the birds were spies, so i were the gown
the priest was judas, so i crucified him under my bed
the politician was obsessed with sex, so i chopped his thing
his wife was in love with me, so i used my spear
the police was aggressive, so i snatched his bullets not gun
my soldier was dead, so i cried with my swelling eyes
i was shot , so i am limping
i was drunk, so i am now

my fucking sweetest crow

your comrades are dozing right at your face
my search for the "sweetest crow" has ended now
inside this air conditioned, carpeted sound proof hall.
where have i not wandered in search of the crow?
the lampposts, the gardens, the garbage, the beggars
i have even tried to be a poet

looking at you i find a long poem
written in the air, on the wall
your hands waving in the air
like you are talking of the most poetic dream
your sweater is as flamboyant as your accent
as your english like your walk on the stage.

And the most dumb girl in the pink is so lost in your words
she fixes her eyes in the air and not breathing at all.
the old handsome ex-half russian sitting
his leg crossed, worrying about his ironed shirt
not to mark a wrinkle, not singing a love song
despite of his old senile romantic heart

the german who thinks everything in india
is interesting is sleeping too.
the chinese, admiring his bottle of mineral water
for protecting him from indian germs,
keeps combing his hair with his kung-fu hands
the director seems to be trapped in a brane world
with his head sticking out
like a Pharaoh's head out of a huge pyramid
the string theorist keeps interfering
and i keep thinking "i dont fucking belong here"
with my mind listening to radiohead

black day

i didn't know why they called it a black day
there was nothing so black about the day
blood, gunpowder were all that i smelt
all i could hear was mothers and daughters
since the day
before the great red sun sets
the roads have become deserted
and a long silent black night walks the roads
while the unknown soldiers are loading their guns
till the innocent hungry children wake up their mothers
till the rickshaw pullers exchange their sweats with the rising sun
till the dawn overpowers thousands of dreams of freedom

now my days will be black
as the red hot bullets in my chest complete me
as i was born armed with my anger
in "the land of the half-humans."
all i sense now is the light flashing in my eyes
with the strangers' hand
giving me my last warm comfort
all i hear now is the lonely vehicle
howling in this silent black night
Oh! this black night is swallowing me

Haiku

Haiku is a form of Japanese Poetry which is made out of three lines. Haiku has a unique structure; the first and third line contains five syllables and the second one is made up of seven syllables. Haiku mostly depicts or sketches a particular scene of a season or Nature. It is the form of poetry which is closest to Nature. Like any other poetry form ,A haiku also gives a reader several meanings. But when people write haiku is English, they break the structure for example Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet's Haiku :

Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
No difference.

it doesn't obey any of haiku rules and don't talk about Nature too.

Richard Wright (1908-1960), who was the author "Native Son" and Black Boy," wrote haiku during the last eighteen month of his life. He wrote around 4000 haiku. He followed the traditional rules of haiku. His Haiku are apolitical and talk about nature unlike his stories which speak about black Americans.
Some of his haiku are:

All right, You Sparrows;
The sun has set and you can now
Stop your chattering!

I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.

With a twitching nose
A dog reads a telegram
On a wet tree trunk.

Lets come to mine :)
I am here trying to follow the rules of haiku which is formed by 5,7,5 syllables. In my haiku s i am trying to sketch old childhood days which i spent running into fields , playing around the band of Imphal river or simply watching Mutinao and Urit (a small bird of yellow and green color) hovering around bamboos in my backyard. And many dawn in which the Tillers headed for the field with their bullock cart commanding "Ar Ti Ti" to their bulls and bufalloes.

I am here trying NOT to be political unlike my other poems.

Summer Pray

The old man smoking
Under the old banyan tree
Praying to the rain

fruitful day

It was before dawn
I heard the buffaloes’ bell;
Season to harvest

Glittering Sand

The warmth of the sand,
As we crossed Imphal River,
We could sense in nude.

ride by the mountains

Sometimes in autumn
We rode our bicycle down
To highway for rose

December Morning

Bamboos are blooming
Birds are hovering around
Can it bring menace?

Across the field

In one cold winter
We, equipped with catapults
Scared the crows in field

leave the blues

We danced in moonlight
Forgetting the hardship days
With spring guarding us

shocked

After its daydream
The frog jumps out of the well
And it sees a hell

Superstition

The lovers elope
Astrologers suggest spring
But she is with child

A fight

One whole April night
My starvation wrote haiku
While they were eating

Haiku is Nature

Nature is haiku
And has become a danger
Why not write of it?

dream about highway #39

On highway #39
I met Mr. Hemingway
he just got down from the Great hills of Africa
and he was tired and wanted a ride in my car
so we gunned the car through the darkness
he lit a cigarette and and pulled out a bottle of whiskey
like a cowboy in those western movies
we had shots, he kept talking 'bout Africa
and I asked about his poem on America
he asked me "Hey! what's happening now in America?
who is that Obama?
In Africa they played Caribbean music
and danced all night in front of his huge pictures
Is he an African god of poverty or blackness?
my nights were disturbed
by the sounds of bongos they played.
I woke up one night and climbed their mountains
and waited for the sun to rise.
I know only one afro-American
have you heard of James Baldwin?"

I told him it doesn't matter
whether i know Baldwin or Obama.
I asked him how come he popped up
on this highway of Ghost
i warned him about the things that may lay ahead of us
he said it doesn't matter too
he said, "if they have gun i have a soul to die facing their bullet
if they have a question i have experience of a life time to answer it
and yes i am here for the booze that i heard my grave diggers talking about."

bobby the farmer

bobby was a poet
bobby was a writer
bobby was a man
who could sing whole night
sitting by my side
talking farmer blues

one day i lost him
while i was imitating
and singing his songs
never i had heard of him again
never again from his love
so i forgot him

we had dreams for the farmer
we had dreams to plough the land
but in the same land
i found the body of bobby
shattered and pierced
by bullets

the ballad of Machang Lalung

after fifty-four years in Prison
with one Indian rupee as token bond
he left the prison
for his village
to find no one
to recognize him..
They look at him
and just pass away
leaving him suffocated
to breath ..
he remembers not a face
he remembers not a place
he walks back to the city jail
and talks to the Jailer
he says "Keep me back,
keep me back
in the Prison
lock me up
lock me up
in the jail
i got no one to cry
when i die
i got no place
in that village
i know a thing or two only
i just can talk to the walls of your prison
dont take me away from walls
i feel safer
I am not used to of this empty spaces
i love darkness
i have learnt to love the dirty smells."


This piece is inspired by life of Machang Lalung from Assam. Lalung had been arrested at his home village of Silsang in 1951 under section 326 of the Indian Penal Code for “causing grievous harm.” He was released in 2005.

Just hang aroound on some streets corner

Just hang around on some streets corner
wearing your daddy's old slipper
hanging bag around your shoulder
if you have beard, it would be greater
talk little of Revolution
sing a song of Bob Dylan
Then you are an intellect
a communist intellect
in kolkotta
but dont talk of Nandigram
dont talk of the Animal Farm

Castro Cafe Blues

The place smells of Black Coffee
The loud speakers play a music, they call it Sufi.
Somewhere in the corner
A lady in veil is sitting.
The professor she whispers
and says that lady in black, smokes.
They smoked together so often
that she doesn't see here veil now
And she sees her as a Symbol
of a rebel behind the veil.

And there lies the book
“We the Sinful Women”
on the table of the Lady Writer

The boys they talk
of the Gunned down youths
They murmur it was fake
as they light up another fag
They believe it was a fake encounter
and now they are no longer dreamers
Now they cry to talk truth
Now they bleed too
to show their blood is red
but on them nobody has faith
The media, they tell another tale
The boys, they cry they are trapped

And somewhere at the end of the Cafe
A young boy playing a Blues note
in his Guitar
and singing
“This is the Castro Cafe Blues
Which happens so close to me
So close to me”
And he goes on ....



PS:Castro Cafe is a cafe in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. It is dedicated to the great Cuban Leader Comandante Fidel Castro.

The Blast in Imphal

This October
Is for the terror mongers
And I will remember only them
When Autumn breaks and fades in Pain
They cut people's salary
They fill the cemetery
With the corpses
Sometime too they blew buses
Where have all their dreams gone
Now their dreams are the ghosts
Who hides behind the torch
If there is a song I have to sing
I will sing
About feeding them
their Guns and Bombs
If there are mothers who don't cry
For their dead son
Than you know how many sons
Have been killed
Where is your fight
that will lead us to the light?
Are they any guns of yours
Which don't point at me?
In China the Chairman said
they have the spirit
to fight the enemy
to the last drop of their blood.
But here you are fighting
with people's blood.
And I hardly know now
Who is your enemy.
Are we your enemy
For saving our integrity,
For seeing Her fasting till today,
For not practising
what you have shown to us?
Are we your foes
for not singing Irabot's songs?
Who are you to kill us
Just like you want?
Come out and play fair
We will lay the stair
for you to come out of your dirty way.

Ode to Loktak

you are beautiful
yet your surrounding is ugly
and I am silly too
to wonder about you
helplessly
when to die drowning
into your crystal clear water
I love you
and I want to feel you
I know no swimming
I know no sailing
and that's all you need
to be yours
I could read the newspapers
I could dance like them
Now I am in love with you
and don't want to waste my time
don't want to hear them chime
don't want to write another song
for my mother
for my hungry stomach
Neither I now worry
nor am I sad
I just want to be with you
I want to reach the soil
Underneath you
I hate to see
the edge above you
drawn by the smokes
of guns and bomb
I hate to hear
the crying voices
echoing
across your beautiful surface.
I hate too the fighters
who fights for you to shine
They spit at you
They eat your breeds
why don't you ever listen
to my far away cries
I'm missing you
and dont you long for me
like the farmers for rain
like I longed for my daddy
in those chilled winter nights
I am enough to be yours
and walk upon you
to recite your beauty
I will filter those ugly stuff
when I tell your tale
Oh my love
embrace me tight
before the sky falls on my head
Your mountains
have become lifeless too
since the soldiers
have walked upon you...
and the man
who had loved you
has been killed
I am sure
that must have made you cry
in silent...
But now I am all yours
ready to leave everything behind
I will see you soon
keep the grasses clean
dont worry about the humming birds
you can sing them your lullaby
you can let them fly
the sky too is not that scary
it doesn't have its vivid look
it can never swallow you again.
altogether we can start a life
fishing and singing

Kafir

I am just a Kafir
Who drinks Whiskey
Every weekend..
Neither I believe in Communism
Nor in Orwell's criticism
Neither I admired Howard Roark
Nor I find him stubborn
I am just a Kafir
Who plays guitar
Sitting on the stairway
To my terrace..
I don't believe in night
As I remain awake
Wondering of Caligula
And sometimes of something else
which I cant tell you
'Cos i will be rated as 'A'
And I am a Kafir ...
I listen to Cohen's preaching
or Dylan's words
But I count not them
I look up to my girl friend
When i am broke
And feel like prostituting myself
Not only in terms of Money
She is also the best cook
(Please cook me Pork with Bamboo shoots)

I am just a Kafir
who admires Naked body
I suggest the world
to walk naked
to sleep naked
to eat naked
to cry naked
to fuck naked
to die naked
and we will be a better world
I cant give you reason
but I can name new season
according to my poems...
April is for Eliot and Idiots
who dreams of Spring
November is for Pork lover
October is for Russian
December is for Christ
and the whole season is for me
Cos I am just a Kafir

Allen Ginsberg's letter to Kangleipak

I know you are not deaf
you are not blind
you do not shine
or cry any more
You are silent,
so much of violence
even after you have tolerated.
Why did you burn your library
are you that sick of your own past stories?
why did you let Chitaranjan burn himself to death?
Yes i have seen and heard of such thing
only in a movie called "Nostalgia"
Made by Tarkovsky..
But real things happen upon your lap.
Why do you let Sharmila fasts?
Are you hoping something on New Delhi?
No! No! you are wrong if you do so
Delhi has been blasted
Cant you hear
The encounters
and the fake encounters?
When Delhi itself is burning
Cops busy framing young Muslims
Again the Bajrang Dal has started something in Orissa
Please look at last week's Tehelka Magazine
Jesus was chopped down
Yes may be for all those perfumes he wears
inside the church..
They have forced the Christian out of their homes
killing people
even raped a nun, you know?
So dont expect anything from New Delhi
It is burning with Red flames..
So you better look at yourself
or cry or laugh for everything
that happens

Why dont you let your stoned Sons
see the Marijuana growing wild and out of control
on the banks of Kongba River?
Why do they still take the pills and Heroine?
Why dont you let the lovers have sex on parks
in Restaurants or river banks?
Why dont you want them making love?
and why do you want them making wars?
why do you want them so high?
do you want to impose your impotency
to the Children of Kangleipak?
Are you jealous of young tits and dicks?
Why did you burn the Assembly Hall
if you are still allowing the politicians
to corrupt?
Every second man in your lap
wants tax for every second man's breathe.
Why do you seem to hate the immigrants?
they are doing good for your lazy sons around
nothing lesser than bastards
do you like the bombs that kills you
do you find them as surprise gifts?
I know you are not receiving anything
from anywhere...
But don't you think there is a better way
to be silent?

Look at your Great Hills
the children are burning books
they believe the history went all wrong
they want to look towards Kohima
No to the valleys
where People sings carol in Christmas
where the folks go to Govindajee Temple
thinking the best race is hidden in their blood
Yes your Great hills are burning
But no one knows how to cease the fire
except how it all started...

And thousands of stories for the Highway #39
hundreds of rape incidents,
one millions of curse for the Highway land slide.
Oh Kangleipak
you have everything parked
the history, the poetry

FBI/CBI

You know what is FBI
so here it is CBI
they remove the F for FUCK
and Substitute it by C for CUNT
Yes here they fuck only CUNT
not any asshole
it is considered unnatural
and against INDIAN LAW
And CUNTBI convince people
that it is a JUSTICE
whatever their result is....

Imphal Talkies and Ngakpa

Come my boy
Let me light your cigarette
Come come
Lets dance to the sound of bullets
Lets burn the History with the cigarette
Forget your pills
You don't know they steal
Steal you from yourself
And You can't help
Admiring the Photograph on the shelf
Of your lost faith
Society treats you
Like a crow drowning in Milk..

Yes! once we walk near the walls
You will hear the communist talking
Of going to Bars and Pubs...
They will say 150 bucks is a good bargain
For a bottle of Kingfisher Beer..
And how pathetic their choice of good music
The slower the tempo of the music
The better the bars are as they say
They are impossibly drunk with their slippers
They wear no underwear

The philosopher are growing beard
Not understanding why their mothers
Ran away with another man
Leaving their old drunken romantic father
Who cry for every spring season
They have lost struggling to raise a family.
Or they wonder about Oedipus complex...

Come my boy
Before you become another Sisyphus
Lets take a walk on the road
Lets skip the pebbles
Lets worry about a new fable
Lets turn upside down the table...
Before the Cigarette burns your finger

To Her From Me for the Love

Oh Yes this time
a Gift is sure to hit your face
i know i been such an ass
Now i have seen the light
in the Love of our fights..
Marriage may be delayed
but i will never be delayed
to say "I love you'
Like those dews
at Back Home
Whether it's winter
Or Summer...
The Dawn always cooks the dew
but there is few
to notice it
But i am not one of them
and I love you
not as few
But as Huge as Blue
Of the Sky...
How much do you love me?
i know the answer
It's greater than Universe
It's as Obvious as the beggars'
Cry out of Hunger....
Dont you Love me, Honey, My Sugar?

For the Hero I have lost....

Delhi,
It was the beginning of 2008
End of February
We were preparing a story
Recollecting our History
to tell on the stage.
It was the story of the Torches
We didn't know the Torches were your soul
Never we thought the stage was your body
Never we learn the words were your last cries

Later in Kangleipak
the spring popped up from your grave
the mountains salutes your death.
the peasants parade to the fields to harvest.

But my clock sand has stopped
As so many faces of yours in my walls popped out
As I see you always inside the room
Upon the Mountains, Into the rivers
As I hear you in my own cries...

How am I supposed to learn
Not to remember the words of the story?
How should i find another beginning
Leaving all that behind?

We often mourn together
Remembering the Man who burnt himself to death
we often sigh together
reading the news from Homeland.

O my Hero! O my Brother!
Where have you kept the story
Of the Old man who tried to smoke
Without a light?

Did you ever tell me the end of the story?
What had happened to the songs
which called out the peasants
To the battlefield?

I suppose the old man at last smokes
without a light and stop the running river
I suppose the story ends
With the Rainbow color flag waving in the sky.
I suppose the peasants wash the rust
Of their sickles with blood.

I suppose to see you in Autumn again
And let's laugh forever

indian sky

Under this Indian Sky
How high you can fly?

They say your home is far
And you don’t have car
To drive that far

I know you are not lost
But here you can never be the host

I know you are bit stranded
And your life has been branded

Take a deep breath and chew the rice
And listen to your conscience
You will hear the soil calling for your sweat
Better be a son of the land
than with no roof above the head

fuck you! intellects

You sound like semi Hindustani classical music
Why we need a history when we worry about future
The singers have sung poems of love
Once a while they sang of phoenix out of the flame
But they soon lost and caught up with love songs

blue bird

Have you heard of “Operation Blue Bird?
Fourteen lives were lost
They were all shot
The killers claimed
They tried to escape
Post mortem said the bullets
Were fired at the back of their heads
And have you heard of a football player?
His words “Please do not shoot me,
I am a football player” were the last ones
After the bullets were fired .
And how many lives have lost
How many husbands didn’t return home
After the brown took them away?
The wives are still waiting
At least the bodies.

that's me

If you find a drunkard
In the mist of winter morning
With sleepy eyes walking
Towards nowhere land
that is me

If you hear another poet reciting
Poetry in the middle of the market
Criticizing how full is your pocket
Laughing at your dirty teeth
That’s not another Ginsberg
That’s me

If you listen a rickshaw puller crying
In a mid-summer day
With his torn hat of hays
Sitting on the smelly wet leather saddle
That’s not a cry or a new fable
That’s me singing
Imitating the Fascists’ Killer

If you see a beggar walking
With bare toes on summer’s heated road
With no coins inside his pot
That’s me feeling my love of the land
That’s me letting the world go ahead
That’s me getting rid from the bullets

If you find a tree
With no leaves in spring
With no birds on its branches
That’s me
Being cursed for all the poems
I have written for the truth

2007, Summer Imphal Sketch

The smoke breaking free from fire
Scattering in the sky
The lamppost across fields leaning on air
Naked wire entangling on it
The shallow water reflecting the hunger
Of the fishing ladies and the farmers.
Water droplets on the leaves
Teasing the eyes of many fools
The long and tall bamboos bending
Bearing the weight of black crows
The ashes been blown to the eyes of the people
The ashes of the death
They go blind, they see no routes
Moonlit nights open the eyes of blind
Oh! The leaves move in the wind
The droplets strike the ground
Before I can let go my thirstiness
The birds been disturbed at nights too
The young men dozing under the old banyan tree
Upon their wet towel after a bath in the Imphal river
The old men sitting and day dreaming
In the courtyards
Watching their daughter-in-laws
Mopping the floors
Weaving and knitting
their incomplete dream like warm cloths.
The one and only mother market
fills with noise and commotion
The prostitutes in their slangs communicating
Looking for young rich men
Who will listen to their mournful screams
The ladies from hills bargaining the price of the day
The protestors sitting in every corner
Cursing the armies and their laughter
And every tea hotel has the newspaper
With the picture of the fasting lady
Every solid angle I look at
I can see the tired soldiers patrolling
Pretending tough and cruel
If I smell gunpowder
I know what tomorrow might bring to the roads

i am crying (protesting against the Heirok Incident of 22nd march)

I am crying,
lying on this ground of blood.
the roads were stinked with blood
of the Paorabi bomb blast Incident
Now again, they apologize
for another three lives
what should i be saying or crying
i am left with nothing more to lose
they claimed it is a fight
against the government
Oh! those nights were the government
those lives were the politicians
whom your men depends
to hide from the soldiers

i am crying with blood
i am dying
without a heart beat left in my body
Please give up the guns
pack your bags
and jump underneath the soil
i would love to see a cactus
growing out of you
but don't spoil Loktak
it has already lost
the story of Khamba-Thoibi
we have brought nothing home
what you brought is tear
and you, a hypocrite
in the name of revolution
in the name of the son of this land...
Go kill yourself
let me not hear a gunshot anymore
just die suffocate yourself
with the phanek of the girls...
i am crying, i am bleeding
I have become Manipur

sons of the bitch(condemning the killings of non-manipuri)

like nomads
they came to this land of cheap bullets
when the sons were lazying like cats

when home meant shelters and food.
when children cried with empty stomach
and no more tears to roll down on the cheeks
they left the railway tracks to the beggars

they found a song to sing
and the sons of this land
listen to the nomads
hammering the mountains
for a couple of meals

the soil of the land has tasted their sweats
they had laugh at the jokes of the people
they had learn to breathe with the fish

the sons of the bitch came that day
the sons of the witches woke up from the wombs
they left the field painted in red
they left the ladies in white

Here is one left breathing
half killed with his scissors
half death with the half mended shoes of yours.
are you sparing him to narrate your heroic act?

You! sons of the bitch,
who do not know how to stitch,
who is going to be your patron
when will you ever learn to see
what do human value and home mean?

Our love song

One winter night in this fucking capital city of India
Somewhere in south, somewhere in our cloud
We sat face to face talking like everybody else
But we talked tear, we talked silence of cold winter nights
We caught each other with same blood under our veins
How you wanted to tell a story which never were told
How I wanted to write a poetry which never were written
We felt we will sail across the sea against the storm
Sung by this capital and the traitors among our colors

We indeed sail everyday with every cup of tea we share
With every puff of smoke we smoke
Despite the silence we see at each others’ eyes
A salute to the death man
A song to his grave and for his men
We will have someday
When the sound of enemies’ drum is fading
Let’s wait for the tear from their laughing mouth and the eyes
They will die with tears of joy in people’s eye
But we know what a drop of tear means when we die

The past often brings us a moment without so many faces
But a face which you regret for not wiping the tear
Yes the story of your friend who never tucked in his shirt
And how the laughter made your anger burst out
I could see in the eyes I saw
I could hear at the words you uttered

My brother my song
We are the numbers in the dark
With which you can unlock any capitalistic bank
With which any untold story can be told
We are indeed dark
We are indeed the another side of their lives
A flag is waving for you and me
To welcome against them
Against the bullets of their gun
Yes! We will have great fucking fun

singing poet

i never mean to write a song
i never mean to feel so upset about the things
i never asked them to pay me
but i still dont give up to fight
my fight is weird my battle is a joke
but still my breathe is not to survive
my cry is not to release my pain
my songs are made not to be listened
If you listen you wont blink a eye
you wont breath a moment
'cos i have loved you enough
to be your friend to be your voice
all dreams at a time coming
to be seen by the eyes
to be heard by the ears....
what would you feel if the bamboo blooms
in your own eyes
will you cry for the menace people talked about
or would you enjoy the moment
trying to smell it trying to pluck it
it is happening to me
it is occurring in my only time of 27 years
So i would smell it i would bleed for it
i would die for it i would cry for it
i would laugh for it i would kill for it
to sing the songs for you
for you for you for you
i spend the nights sleeplessly
i cry with the pillows not to be seen by you
i fight with my stomach not to be ordered by them
it was happening to me it was real
now i have seen the rainbow
with its color and dispersion
no one can stop me from singing and being a poet

Tears from the mountains

You dug an ocean of belief within our drunken souls and eyes
Where we were convinced to see the salty water as blood of our men,
The salty sweat of farmers who were once called out on the fields
Against the great fucking clatter of gunfire by our unsung father Irabot.
Now when we open our eyes when we stage the play of your untold fable
Which you never sang in front of us, which you never asked us to listen to
You are gone but we know you have won, you have won inside us
You have won the tear of silence, the tear of the mountains
You have won the bullet through your chest, through your head
And you will never fade because you were never a fake
Thousands of roads may come to drag us
To make us crawl against the ground
Which they painted with the scar of their boots
But we will smell your blood on the ground
We will raise our head against the barrel against the rifles
You may lay silent underneath this earth
You may burn to ashes and wash away by the wind
But the tears from the mountains
Can neither be blown away by the wind
Nor can it be washed by the smoking guns
And we will swim in it to reach you to follow you
A thousand poems in your name
A thousand songs for your thoughts
A thousand of us for the land you loved will be living
To cry the spirit of a new crimson sky

the tailor (just another poem)

Here comes not the Sun.
there comes not a Bollywood Item Girl.
here comes another poetry
it springs up from the shits
Of slum dwellers and the dogs.
the left out old man
with the thick glasses
sitting in the corner,
stitching a trouser,
worries not for global warming
not for another winter
but for something,
you and I do not know.
Without him
My Honorable Chief Minster 'O! Ibobi'
would be naked...
he will be giving speeches
in Naked.
Preaching the Revolutionaries,
how to construct Fly-Overs
leaving his ten percent.
Or he may be too small to notice
in this world.
Think about George Bush!
He would be Naked too
with his squeezing scrotum
and every time he screams
'Fight terrorism! ! '
the balls will enlarge
Oh! that would be like another
great flick of this century
where people talk
only of Globalisation...
Oh! pray the tailors
if your balls do not want to be crushed
on the streets you walk.
Please notice the old tailor!

In This Land

The bullock carts, the rice and mices
The newspapers, the bombing and gunning
The prostitutes, the market and wicked
The June 18th, Chitaranjan and Sharmila
All splatter upon a table or mat
With different answers
With different meanings.
The left out issues pop up like bubble
And leave meaningless in those smoky rooms
Where they sit or squat.
The views differ from table to table
From mat to mat, after every peg

In this land
The sons are being judged
With a little help of alcohol
Ones that wear the smell
Would be forced to walk
With garlands of empty bottles
That clank like bulls on the paddy field.
O! the bottles!
They clank sweet and soothing.
This sweetness was something else
Before they were emptied
The ladies in sarong,
After the sons, they follow
Until the sons walk a straight line
Like a tamed dumb soldier.

They wait for evening
To recite the poems
To imitate the actress
To throw the empty plates in air
To read out the oiled newspaper
They gather not in church
Not in temple,
Not by the bank of Imphal river
But in this evening school of ethanol
As they name it as their code

They are the slices of cucumber
In the sandwich of corrupt politicians
One side buttered with gun powder
Other side marinated with uselessness
All they make sense is in this “Evening School”

drifting

Does anybody want
To drift along with me?
Does anybody love
Their motherland in this land?
O! I am drifting;
I am drifting into the river of blood.
Blood of those fighters
In the East Pakistan,
Blood of those who
Popped up in China
Through Lhasa.
I am drifting to become
Blood or flowers
Nobody knows
But unlikely I will be blood
Smile! 
Can you answer me?
Can’t you?
But my friend,
You please keep quiet!
Like a kid in cradle.
Let me play the game
With the Chinese toys.
My friend, you please keep quiet.
Don’t read me
Nehru’s “Discovery of India”
My friend you,
For Manorama’s sake, be quiet!
Your question has no answer
It is as old as our futile revolution
I will tell you
Or didn’t you see in the sun
In your back yard
How the hens’ raised their chickens
That too only with two legs
They didn’t even have hands
They didn’t even have brains
As sharp as yours,
(But yours contributes nothingness)
But you ask the silliest
Don’t ask me your question?
It is like how I will sustain my life
After my parents die
O! I am not stranded to sit hungry
Whole of my life
Watching the new red sun rising
O! Have you forgotten
A lady has been fasting for 6 years.
Why can’t I fast a year?
Why can’t you?
Just give me a year
I can remain hungry
And the coming year
I will be able to feed you too
Not only myself
And my wife and kids.
I have tried enough
To be Indian.
I play sitar.
I sing even Ghazal.
I love Kaifi Azmi’s poetry
I like parantha
On my breakfast table
The smell of railway teas, I still love
I even paid every beggar I met
From Bihar
To Chandni Chowk.
But they don’t own me
My Imphal sounds
Like Nepal to the ears.

They don’t realize yet
My face kind of people
Almost manufactured
The car they drive
The mobile phone they use
The world is half dominated by my face
You are like a pigeon
Boasting around
In your own courtyard.
O! I can’t be Indian I can’t be
I eat pork that makes me
Out of Muslim community
I eat beef that kicks me out
Of the Temples
Neither I can leave pork
Nor beef, such is my life, dear!

We better farm on our own land
Rather than being teased and pissed at
We better cry hungry
Rather than being slapped and raped

We have fields
We had a good history
Before the rice got exported
By the whites of the land
Where the sun had never set
In their Empire.
And now we have actors
To play the angry young men
O! All I need is to teach them how to dance
The dance within the blades
Of swords.
All I need is to teach them
How to deliver dialogues
The dialogues of silence
To face hundreds of Spartans
By a single actor
We don’t need to be from Argentina or Cuba
We can repeat the history
We can be as small as Cuba
But all alone with Shiroi lily blooming
In the end of spring till summer
All alone with brimming Loktak lake
And Sangai dancing in the song
Of Moirang Parva.

how i wish not to be you!

You act strong
Like you never long
For being a perfectionist
Your deeds are optimistic
You often laugh at people
About their love lives and fables

Deep down, your heart is desperate
To beat it for an exaggerated
Love story from Korea.
A little did I know about the phobia,
That you would be fallen
On your knees upon this soft cotton
Field of love
As white as dove
You know now that’s the safest field
To play upon, and you found pills
To love, and the land, you don’t have to till

Get married, earn and earn
With your sons, You will have fun.
Keep mum and sleep every night
An organized way of life
You will live like thousands of men
You will be a fan
For some Hollywood stars
Say Robert de Niro or Leonardo
You will read Gorky’s “Mother”
And you will smile upon yourself
For not being that drunken father.
Oh how I wish not to be you!
How I wish not to wash my hand
On the same pool you wash!

Can you make sense out of my poems?
Can you see the differences in the two faces of a same coin?
Your ignorance is acute
Your baby girl is also cute
But this earth is not cube
There are no edges for pain
So it goes on in an organized way
I wish we could have a talk
Over a cup of coffee.