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