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.

the newspaper

Look! look!
It is in the newspaper.
Honey!
the Indian team has reached Sydney.
Let's pray for them.
Hope they come back with the trophy.

Hey! Hey!
What is today?
Today is Monday
the newspaper is filled with Christmas Stars
tell the kids to stop crying
O! how wonderful Christmas is around

Daddy! Daddy!
I am hungry
i have not eaten a loaf of bread
since yesterday...
boy! My boy!
It is not written in the newspaper
so you are not hungry probably
wait till it comes in the paper

i got a gunshot!
i got a gunshot on my chest
It must be in the newspaper.
Look out folks...

Oh! sorry!
It is not in the newspaper
probably you haven't got a gunshot
or it did not bleed at all...

O Son! my Son!

Do you feel cold?
Do you feel thirsty?
It was yesterday
you rose up tall
and looked down
on the paddy field.
You went away
like morning
bright and fresh.
You came back
like evening sky
the crimson sky
so red! so red!
All wet with blood
Open your eyes
it is no time for you
to be slept on my lap
your daddy is weak
he hardly smells alive
O Son! my Son!
Do you feel cold?
Open your eyes<

the story

If i was young
and tell them my story
that my father was killed in a riot
and my mother was thrown into fire
they would have given me a hug or two

If i was old
and waiting for my time to die
and tell them my story
that i had stood against the government
and exiled to Myanmar for ten years
they would say; “my eyes already tell the story.”

with my fist raising against the sky
i am just losing myself inside my story
i will be swallowed at the end
without a trace
Many me, again, will come
to be swallowed
to be sunken
to be drunken
to be numb
to be dumb

O! a story will be left unwritten
until the human fades

A dark room ( for Ka-Dhiren)

The sun was above heads
With its light tearing the different shades
Of green of the summer trees

A dark room!

His clothes hanging behind the door,
An exit to step on the slippery floor.
He dropped himself
Upon his old companion
Bed and pillow

Piled up newspaper in a corner
An old wooden guitar humming a tune
Without a guitarist
A shelf filled with books

Among it, ones that stood out
Were James Baldwin
And poems on Lenin.

Upon the shelf
A black and white photograph
Of his 15 years old love

Who somewhere in South Korea
Sailing backward in time
In search of a signature
Of early universe

What had he in common
With the painting
Hanging on his wall?

A painting,
Something to do
With the painter's mother

Which I heard the painter lost
When the strokes of his brush
Were not so strong.

Not so dark to see his hands
Stretching out in his sleep
To find his distant love.

His spectacles needed to dust
He hardly used it to look
At the far away hushes
Of her lips that moves in silence

Once I overheard him
Saying he doesn't really agree
With the meaning of sacrifice

But a soul, which sacrifices, is his.
He often reminds me of Hemmingway
When we talk of drinks

Darker the room gets
The more it becomes vivid
Like a first dawn
Seen by the prisoners after ages

want to fly to America

Daddy!
your daughter has become a lady
neither do i want to ask you for help
nor do i have enough money
to fly to the Brave New World..
neither am i impressed with the Statue of Liberty
nor do i care to pay homage to the twin towers..
i just want to listen to the words of his
neither does he recite poems of Shakespeare
nor does he sing like the nightingales
nor does he whisper in my ears
he just paints me with happiness
he just opens me up
like he dissect the roses in his lab
Oh! i want to fly
I want to fly to America
how i wish to have breakfast in America
with his Chinese tongue
speaking American english
sitting next to me
and me, a Manipuri
who has been scattered all over in India...
How complete that would be, Daddy?

Winter, Newdelhi, 2007

I was half sunken into sleep.
the day was not so shitty
In this awful city
your call made me emerge
out of my blanket.
we talked, ,
i hardly heard you
i just talked
what i wanted to talk in my dream
we hung up...!
Soon hunger stabbed my stomach
so i tiptoed inside the kitchen like a cat
i found an egg
i found some ngari with green chili
so i whistled the rice in the cooker
like local trains of Delhi-Faridabad route
while the cooker was in charge of my rice
i read little magazine...
i read poems
i strummed guitar
i wanted to talk to you...
i was just hungry.....
still hungry my dear

these pockets are never filled
this heart is never touched by anything
without you! !
so i left my mustache unshaven
let it grow
let it sow
the seed of an artiste in my face
let there be traces of this phase
of my life, that a part is with you

.........
ngari - fermented fish eaten widely in north east part of India

I was stripped (Assam, 24th November, `07)

I was plucking tea
when the Brahmaputra river was overflowing.
nature brought justice to all.
so we suffered together.

Winter paved nature to Spring.
with my little hopes
outshining the green garden
i was singing, dancing and plucking Tea!

the city was celebrating everyday.
i could see its smoke rising.
men were spitting out beetle juice
walking with those shoes.....

the armies were ambushed.
the girls were taken away to be sold away.
my folks were singing our Adivashis' songs.
in the rhythm, i was still plucking Tea!

I walked out with my folks one day
out of my tea garden on the streets of the city
where people love the smell of my hand-plucked tea
i thought i was saved under the umbrella

But I was stripped, I was chased
I was kicked, i was dragged
I was running naked all over the city
With tears, with fear

these hands that plucked the tea covered my breast
i ran, watched by the eyes of the city...
Oh! these hands will never stretch out again for tea
Oh! these breast will not be milked but blood

Liberated zone, Gujarat and the Pig's farm

For decades and decades
Genocide and foeticide
Like usual words on the newspapers
Printing, read away unnoticed like pepper
On breakfast plates
Of men who know no sweat.

The communists are turning into pigs
The pigs of the “Animal Farm”
Look at Nandigram
The pigs just sent the cadres like swan
To the land where the people have cried
Waiting for rain,
Cursing the piggy government
For being ignored
When the pigs wore
The tag “friends of the poor.”

Out of imitation
They fantasize of industrialization
Oh! Is that a civilization?
Or a definition of globalisation?
Oh your poor men needs no such piggy act
You will remain a scar in their lives
You will be remembered
When every peasant sings the harvest song

Inside the liberated zone,
People shiver with sweat
The Maoists knocks the door
Asking their sons to join the gun battle
In return the shivered hands hand out 500rs
When the shivered hands are paid
200rs per month.
At last with tears they depart their sons
To aim the Kalashnikovs down
At their own village
The cops are being ambushed
And left with words;
“It’s a war and forget winning,
We don’t even know how to fight it.”
The Maoists, they spell a true rebel
Still a threat to the poor men.
Some fled the camp and ran to Andhra
Where they worked as daily wager
They read of their own village being burnt
In the battle.
Boys with SLRs patrolling the streets
Where they should be playing cricket
Like every boys in the rest of country

(The above stanza is based on a recent article in Hindustan Times called 'Liberated Zone'. It is all about the truth and pain that the villagers suffer because of the Maoists. Most affected district of Chhattisgarh because of the rebels is Dantewada.)

The saffron turbaned man
Walking and preaching
The streets of Gandhi
Singing a lullaby to the ones
Who are already sleeping.

Gujarat! your priest Mr. Modi
Is not so Holy.
All he knows is playing Holi
With the mask he wears,
With your blood behind your veil

Gujarat, your fathers and mothers
Are resting looking at your colourful play.
On the red stained playground
You are sleeping after the play…
Don’t you smell blood?
Don’t the screams of death wake you up?
Don’t you feel the heat of the flame
That ceases yesterdays?

Oh! wake up before the preach baptize you.
Wake up! before they saffronize your thoughts.

Inside the stories, a story is still left to tell.
Underneath the ground a rusted needle is left,
A wrong foot will be pricked soon someday.
A flame in the middle is untouched and unseen
Its killing roar silences the passers by.

butterfly

While the sun was setting,

With a little sweet song
A melancholic song without words
She was grooming herself
With a smile on her lip
With a lipstick
Like a painter
Sitting in front of a painting.

While the cattle were heading homeward
And the girls were fetching water
She was wearing flowers in her hair
With or without a care of the darkness
Ahead that evening…
The flowers became alive
As they knew it is what they are for

While the tear was brimming in my eyes
She changed
Transformed from my love of her
That I died and cried
To make her my love forever
She prided on it
Like a virgin bride

She walked away
That very evening
She sang away
That melancholic song in the crowd
Leaving me alone
With the emptiness in the mirror
In which she left her sweet little wordless song.
I found the words were I in the mirror.

While the stars were twinkling
I waited for the song again
I waited for her heels to clank the marble floor
I waited for a sound of her bangles
But all that I sensed was silence
All that gave me some warmth was my own tears

My butterfly, she flew away
Leaving me colour blind

freedom

All I want is a freedom
To walk without being stopped
Or questioned
From spring to autumn

All I want is a season
To be naked in the sun
Standing in the middle of road
Reciting my own poem of freedom

All I want is to roam free
In my own land or country
Without being asked my identity
Or about my insanity

All I want is you
To walk away packing your bags
Zipping your mouth
Unloading your guns

Go to the place
Where people have lived their lives
Where they tell a good history to innocent sons
Where they pity us for being what we are…

They have worn our skin
In television, in newspapers and in books
With our broken hearted mothers
With flames that rose from every streets of my land

All I want is my poor men
Writing their own song to sing
Farming their own land to harvest
Bringing up the kids to plough the history

All I want is a good history to start
I have heard enough of rivers crying
I have found enough of death to live again
I have tried enough to rise, let me rise

She (fades)

Nights after nights
Dreams slip away from her sleep
all that remains are black and white
silent and motionless dream
the body aches in her sleep
the shoulder cups those strange chins
tears fighting against the sweats
but defeated hundred times
it just falls on the innocent face
stained with the smell of stink breaths
she serves with tears and her body
while the priest serves with words
she is crucified on her bed
with her yellow blouse open
while Jesus is scented with flowers
and with rich men's wives inside the church

She was left alone
when the world celebrated
its globalisation
they will be her company again
when there is a storm inside them
when no hands know how to grab the dicks
when no site seeing glitters their eyes
And so she waits for a good meal
without a smile on her lips
without hunger to survive any longer
but with tears spreading her world
where rich men drown....

funeral of ronid

I went to the funeral of my friend;
the soldiers were shooting in the air
perhaps they were aiming at his soul
which broke free from being victim
still they were not leaving him
the trumpets were soaring high
the drums were banging
his daughter was confused
whether to mourn or get away
from the devil eyes
His wife in white in tears
rolling and tossing on the ground
like she had been forced
oh! there is no such pain like death
to whom you love when you die..

“not the pictures,
not the memories
just take me along as i am
Oh! my love! my man!
take me with you
take me as i am. ”

Epitaph

The wind is calm and the rain is drizzling.
The sun is half sunken into the mountains
The shallow river is black like hiding beneath a veil
Only the sound of streaming pebbles towards its flow
Water droplets dripping from the banyan leaves
Dripping on the road where you lie
With a knife, stabbed, on your back.
Every falling droplet is a ticking of time
For your losing soul.
You hear a sound of boots
Stepping on the road, ahead of you.
You lift your head with such pain that you moan.
Your hand against the pool of blood, from your heart,
Helping you to put yourself upward to see an old friend
Your eyes squeeze in surprise to see an old enemy friend
You seem to recall your words;
“To kill your enemy you have to make friends.”
Every footstep I make, you slip backward.
Your life is running out on this very road you ruled
I walk closer and closer.
You seem helpless but still spitting blood on my boots.
But this time your aim is not as good as earlier
(You used to love spitting on my face…)
You seem surprise to see my empty hands
To help you grab back your half death life…
I smile like I see a stranger on a road to a funeral.
(Yes! It is indeed a funeral)
You are silent like a lamb but fills with shame and fear
You know I carry a revolver with six bullets in it
Anyone of it is written with your name you know
But I am not triggering it anymore to blow your head
Your tears seem honest enough and your hands tremble
I take you back to life like soldiers helping another in war.
You are grateful to me
I wash you with hot water
While you tell me who stabbed you
You tell me your bones shivered
When the tip of the knife drills through it…
I too know how it feels
So you say “thank you”
But you know no words are needed to me
I have been numb for years
There are layers of hatred and pain covering my bare heart
Nothing can prick me except with blood in my own hands

We go on!

My smiles are not telling you anything about past
My bullets are no more aiming at your heart
You seem to love my hut and running on the empty fields
You are back to the friend I loved once
You cook we eat together
I dig a pool we hide from the sun together
Over a cup of tea
We argue of things we have never argued before
With a cup of tea
We browse the newspaper skipping the front page
The front page is for your disappearance
Disappearance of a young man who steals publicly
Disappearance of a friend who kill friends
Disappearance of a lover who steals human thought
Disappearance of a pretender and traitor
Disappearance of a public figure with many responsibilities
Over a cup of tea
They must be wondering for your death body
Over a cup of tea
You tell me your story why you don’t want to go back
As if I know nothing of you
I smile; you know what a smile can mean.

Days gone by,
Season changes, I change
Clouds drifting from dull sky to clearer sky
Birds flying, leaves falling,
Tears crying somewhere
I change like a potter’s pot
From sphere to cylinder
From thick cup to large and tall flower vase
But I remain clay
Earlier soft, now hard and seasoned in fire
So over a cup of tea
I shoot you down with all six bullets
The newspaper is all splattered with your blood
I cover your face not to see
The smile I brought back on your lips
I burry you in the pool
I dug where we hide from the sun together
Mother earth has swallowed you!
I put a tombstone above you
With an epitaph of my own bloody hand;

“To kill an enemy
You have to make friends.
Hope you rest in peace.
Ghost of This land, William the Preach.
Expired on 28th, October, 2007

Revelation is not expected
Brutally shot with six bullets.”

I am leaving you all alone underneath this soil
I know you are loving it
After the heated six fired bullets is inside you.
You are tamed now
Like a new born calf being held and roped.
I turn my head and turn on my radio.
White noise! …Then
Old Woody Guthrie is singing Tom Joad;
“They stood on a mountain and they looked to the west,
And it looked like the Promised Land.
That bright green valley with a river running through,
There was work for every single hand, they thought,
There was work for every single hand.”


PS : The last five lines are taken from Woody Guthrie's "Tom Joad."

Clown in their Circus

He came, down and low
like he was robbed, he looked pale
and hungry but he said he was fine
he told me he came to see me
yes! I am the clown in their circus.
he said he found a lyrics
on a dashboard in his dream
he wanted me to sing it out loud
with all my moves and breathes
Oh! I was not paid for it
still i did it 'cos
i felt it was part of my existence
he went home singing:
“revolution is all you need
just don't eat what they throw at you”

She came, laughing and singing
like a school girl being driven home
from a hard lesson by an old teacher
she lit up a cigarette
and took a puff of smoke
every time she forgot the song
she passed me the smoke
i inhaled it and soon i realized
i am the clown in their circus
she too found a bottle of Russian Vodka
from her rich world.
Soon we became high
higher than any clouds of Meghalaya
so i sang “Everybody must get stoned”
yes! She too left singing:
“Every body must get stoned”
throwing her long black hair
back in autumn's mild wind..

Oh! there came another existing soul
he or she by that time, i did not care
the soul was hungry
i stole an egg from my neighbor's fridge
i boiled it and threw some salt and pepper on it
than it was fed, soon a cup of tea followed the egg
i sang the soul “i am the clown in their circus”

my little mad child

It is for you!!
Every time I turn on the light
You run away
I can see your tails being stuck
Smell of your wet hair
Fills me and drown me
In your memories..
Tell me one reason
Why you love to run
When you say you want me
In a very Dylan way
Like I am the north country girl
Like I am the sun in Mozambique
Like I am the dune on the beach
Like I am the tambourine man
For your sleeplessness
Or you wait for the saxophone
To blow by Knopfler
Under the blue Ocean
Or you want me to ride a horse
Upon a saddle and come saying
Picking a garland
This is what you left along the road
To your poetic friends and rich world
Once we bought it, you remember!!
Oh! funny is life
Oh! sunny are the days to come
Horny are the words inside clothes
Silly are the innocent ways we were .
Where is the end to start
You just leave before we end
You just puke before i feed
I just die before we lie

American Dollar

about me
they die and lie
for me
they fight and cry
about me
they prostitute the child
for me
they suck the lives
about me
the newspaper prints
for me
they come and go
about me
they roll up the collars
for me
they are not capitalist
for me
they are costumers
i am a widower
left alone to prostitute
to substitute
whores and boars
i am the american dollar

A widower, I am

I am not heard
As I am hurt

I am so silent
Like those mountains

I am not fine
As I miss my old wine

My company was she
When I walked and slept

She tickled me
With her fingers on my hips

She flickered her cigar
Till the ashes filled the fish jar

All it was I
Who saw things between my eyes

Never knew myself
Like those books on the Wiseman shelves

It is all me
Tossing and rolling in this sleep

The widower I am

It is only I
Looking out for a better goodbye

I walk
They look around for her
But no one shows up

I talk
They wait for her name
But my tongue misses it out

I sleep
The dream comes
But all black like crow

I eat
They serve me the Lebanese rolls
I miss the taste and the cream

I drink
But I miss the fire

It is all I now
Who made her say

She is weak like a thin twig
She sobbed

I knew it was not she
It was meant to teach me

Something I had not learnt
In this life of 26 years

I said it is just a chapter
She said don't flatter

And she lost me

Akhu's Protest Blues

I have seen people burnt to death
They watched lamenting, “it is indeed sad”
I have seen gunmen snatching money
In the name of revolution, Oh! It is funny
Even some activists turning to fundamentalists
What to wear and not, Oh! Not so socialist
What to drink and not, Oh! I am so pissed
Even they want the motors to howl with the scripts
The madness of fanaticism is in its peak
I have heard of activists going to Geneva
To see the place and back with sweeter saliva
I have read writers and essayists
Who live in one-dimensional universe,
I forgive them they have lesser idea of Physics
My own drunken green men are still strayed and barking
On the very streets where their folks protested..

Before my hey days are over
I am going to load my gun
It is not fun
Anymore
Watching the whores-like
Politicians and gunmen
Robbing me and my woman

I am going to protest in my thong
Under Samu-Makhong
Whoever that comes closer with boots
I am going to shoot
I will ask my percentage
From every breath they take, they are ass!!

I protest against the politicians
Wish I could make them run naked
To see how fatty their asses are
I protest against the magician-like builders
They can not let it stand straight and tall
When a neutrino passes it is going to fall
When there is a piercing of virgin it is going to fall
I protest against the gunmen
They do not deserve a gun but a pinch of sand
Not even a yard of land in this land to stand
I protest against the cops
Wish I could turn them to corpses

Yes!
I am a burning candle
Trying to lit a volcano
I am a broken bangle
Trying to set her free
I am the jingle
That starts after the end
I am the singer
Who sings this song of protest…
Kill me before
I kill you

A New World: Maria

Now we came to a good end where we both agree to New World. Maria's coming back leads to a new world where no blood shed revolutions exist and no to poverty. We both know this is something impossible but for the sack of pleasing ourselves, who are well affected by unseen things happening around, we just come to this end unknowingly.

And this was written by my friend:

enough to create a new world,
without fear hate or deceit..
where fathers do not die,
with bullets in their head and dreams in their eyes.

A new world,
where an eternal spring,
blossoms in unending green,
where rivers flow filled with elexar
and winds bring changes of prosperity.

A new world
where my friend you and me,
sit together and share a laugh
watching rainbows which span the mountain.
The same atmosphere
same mountains
same people
brightened with gloss of brilliance,
which maria can bring

Maria is enough

My reply:

she searched her soul
found it thousand times
she hit the same atmosphere
same mountains
same people cupping their chins
with their awful hands
Maria knows no sacrifice
she is programed
and following her selfish genes
implanted on her breathe
yeah things cant be destroyed
you have to make them to ashes
and wash it away
indeed it is the way
Maria knows exactly
what is she upto
not a hand not a word
of sympathy she needs
she is enough

Maria's Melancholy

Still we are high and my friend replied back:

Maria’s melancholy,
A mysterious misfortune;
Maybe be a myriad mirage.
She searches her slain sire;
Sublimed into supernatural…
Subconsciously simulating stormy scourge.
Blood boils, brews bigotry;
Bounces brains beyond bizarre.
Leave no latitude for logic.
Lives are lost; leaving lesions.

She should sit and search her soul;
Sober out and see,
Sacrifice her sire made,
For her and her unborn children,
Who will till these forgotten fields….
Sow peace and reap a golden harvest,
And remember their grandfather…
He will live in them forever.
“Matter can neither be created nor can be destroyed.”

Maria's Swollen Eyes

Even the witches in Macbeth
Will not be able to trace a bird
That flew over Maria’s head.
Neither can they tell the fortune
Nor they are informed about hands of death
They have to seek for shelter from the storm
Maria’s swollen eyes gonna get burst in blood
It gonna paint the town in red

The real prey is now praying to the sun
Not for another night
Which took away Maria’s daddy
Where the wind blew away
Daddy’s sonnet
And fitted a bullet in his head
The sky will be torn apart
The clouds will get darkened than ever

Maria is reaching them
Marching on the same roads they used to
Maria has forgotten the friendly fields
Where she walked upon the cotton like soil
Now all that she remembers
is the soil that buried his father and her dreams

Maria's Blues

Our conversation still lasts

By my friend :

Maria had swollen eyes,
swollen with rage,shock or guilt,
I do not know..
The mist in them clouded the crystals they used to be.

The fields lie barren,
her father used to till them..
Orphaned like her on the alter of hatred.
But who will sing songs of sacrifice
her father made for me...
or her maybe.

She searches for a sunrise,
which sleeps inside her,
potent enough to change the way rainbows used to be.

and I have a deep resolve;
To spread the warmth abound.
on the fluorescence of rice saplings,
yet unsown
on those friendly fields

Maria's Daddy

Soon Maria became a medium in which we have our conversation about poverty, revolution. Yes indeed it has become a bed time story. But it does not stop haunting me.

Maria a name of my poetry came out in real and made me sleepless many nights.

Never a character in my poems so far existed in mind. Perhaps it is the first character i have and it will remain forever haunting me and hovering in my poetry land.

She was a synonym to revolution, a revolution next to impossible. Being a girl left her with no chances to fight back against the people who took her daddy’s life.

She was lost in her thoughts of getting her grip on the neck of her enemies...........

I am lost too..... Maria, just like you

Maria's daddy could be you
Who hated his empty stomach
Whose eyes were fixed to the rainbows
That never set its shadow on earth

He admired the Olive green
Just for the respect they got
They neither protected him from bullets
Nor from the sunny days and rain of summers

Maria a name of a song
You could hum on any journey
Like any newspaper wrapped sweets
It was sweet to look at and lovely to hear
But the red eyes you and i never felt
Cos it burns
We do not wanna get burnt

Her daddy got burnt
He was not confused
Yes he hated everyone
Except the blade of the plough he used
That too cut him into pieces at the end

There is no red revolution left
Everything seems wild and out of hand
Maria has gone wild too
She is longing for another dawn
To steer the day in her ways...

A man who met Maria

In my last update of this blog, I posted a poem called “Maria.” I pictured Maria as a victim of a society which is economically inefficient and politically anarchic; a synonym of such society is Manipur, my homeland. Her father, an ordinary poor man, was sick of his life and wanted to revolt against the suck system which eventually cost his life. Maria was left alone. She found no reason to live.
Her mother and siblings were not mentioned in the Poem so far.

A friend whom I came across through Orkut wrote to me a poem in reply to Maria:

I met Maria, once
By the bridge on Imphal river.
Under the open autumn sky.

She had thousand questions in her eyes
and I had answers to none...
Who perhaps killed her father?

He was a nice man,
I knew him well...
And we often used to sit together
Trying to understand each other...

I do not know how much he understood me,
But sure I was..
He was like me
a human with a heart...

He was killed,
Stuck between distrust and hatred;
Of men in olive green
And
Men with red rhetoric

But what I should tell Maria,
Was it me or her
Who bore the burden of her death…?

Me ..
I was his Faith in olive green
And she
His hope in red revolution.

Maria

It was the time
Maria was young and fine

News in the radio
Breaking silence of shadows

Maria’s daddy was shot
Nobody knew what he had shot at

Maria ran out on the streets
Streets to the death and shits

She found bullets in his head
And a sonnet in his pocket

She dug the soil of his garden
Buried him with a garland

Turned her head to the captain
Said, “Thought you been kind.”

Maria ran away with her red eyes
Looking at the setting sun and the sky

Flowers shattering into petals and stamens
Wind humming what tomorrow might bring

Maria has become a bed story
But there is yet, to come, a glory

Dawning Sky

Another dawn with another poetry
Woke up sweating with insanity
The old ceiling fan crying tirelessly
With its dust sprinkling all over the room
Sleeping bare-naked on the floor
Scratches all over my body
Turned the light on
Checked whether I was bleeding
The clock struck 4 ‘o clock
The empty bottle of coke
Rolling back and forth
In the mournful rhythm of the fan

Lit a cigarette
Opened the door to the dawning sky
I inhaled the smoke
With a deep breathe
The fire glowed like a firefly
The twinkling fading stars
Beneath Dylan’s diamond sky
The tall buildings aiming at the sky
The next-door old man with his Tiffin
Leaving to earn for his daughters’ wedding
Summer at dawn has its own beauty
Inside every room there is humidity

The cigarette burnt out soon
The fire seemed to lit the sun
Soon it rise
Clearing the sky
My dawn was over restlessly
And a beginning of poetry
I sat down with a pencil and note pad
Facing my messy kitchen
The pressure cooker often distracted me
The empty sack of rice made me worried
Soon a cat caught my attention
And she took away my poetry

Poetry to me
Is as instantaneous as bullets
I cannot follow Mayakovsky
I do not aim to make it a sonnet
How can I write about Chile?
I am not Neruda or any Poet
And not about black Americans
I am not Baldwin or Toni Morrison
I see limited things
As my space and time is too
They do not see things that I see
There are many like me who are voiceless

How I started and how I ended
It seems there is no flow
But it is a mirror
And in mirror you do not see
Any discontinuous image
Do you?
Look at my dawning sky
And look at my mirror image
You think there are broken paths?
You think I am trying hard to be a poet
No, I am not
It is just a celebration of little me..

what are you upto?

I address to you
My lost-track trekker
Our comradeship
Will not last long

You started it
With a saddle on a pony
And you left it
Wounded upon the field of paddy.

Your redness fades
Towards nonsensical usual fun
Of attracting attention
Of people to your sons.

So many boys and girls
Dying
On the same road
We died
Over a mouthful of rice

So many ladies are fish netting
Worrying with the sun’s setting
In your non-appearance

No wonder
If you come asking
The number of meals
You missed

In return
You will take away those fish
Which forget to breathe without water
Like water is to fish
Money is to your revolution.

Forget the revolution
Still you have not brought a change
Except your black boots and belts

So many men succumb
Waiting for a change in this world
Never realise there is in between a wall
Greater than “Great wall of China.”
And a comrade like you towered it
Against the clear sky of promises.

Your sons are foolish
All they know is only two things smoke
The guns and the fast cars.
They drop the horses dead on road
They left the enemies’ radio turned on
Unknowingly they sang along
From the basements they honk

How do they get out of your cage?
A cage next to freedom and liberty
As you promised.
They will soon drown
In their own blood, inside the ladies’ gown.

Thought you would show
There can be a way
Not to the gutters
Not to the mountains
But on a plain
Not upon the painted chairs
Not underneath the earth
But beneath our different faces and skin

Winter nights are warm for you
Because you sleep on the ashes
A left over heat of your tamed anger
How shall I categorize your act?
So many outfits or idiots like you
Rule my moves and heartbeats

I collect every teardrop and sweat
I shed
You take it way and say
You are wiping it
Not the tears I want you to wipe
But stand by me when I sweat

I sleep less
Since the day I smelt the burning
Thought I would be numb
But no, eventually got burnt

Wish I could scratch their eyeballs out
The ministers’.
Wish people really burnt them
On the streets
Where the Dogs are guarding them

You soon look back
Where you left the beginning
Or we will come to the end…

A Lonesome Try

Tongue cut out,
Black ribbon
Across the eyes
Not a hand to wipe
The tears off.
On the knees,
Walking towards a window
A light from a window
Beaming on the eyes
A subject of a depressed artist
It could be
But the heart beats
He cannot paint
With his brushes
He cannot make it
So red like blood
With his knives
Sorrows and painful
Memories of the days
Are darker
Than every funeral
Mourners' clothes

depressed

I did not want to exist that moment

As I felt pointless to tell the truth

And there was nothing that you would think

Is reasonable to cry out

I was broke since I became

Part of this rich cultured world

I was so torn like a bamboo basket

That had been soaked and forgotten

And still I am.

I wanted not to be me

I looked around for a change

But the mirrors reflected only me

I crashed the mirrors

And got inside it

And I ended up inside a saloon

With a barber with the longest hair

I asked him how could I change?

He thought with the scissor picking his teeth.

A smile brightened his face

He said, “That is why I exist.

I like people like you

Who comes to me with better meaning of me

Not just to cut their hair to bear the sunny days.

And I wanted to be different

That is why I have this long hair.”

So he shaved my head.

And the lady to whom I lost myself

Did not like my shaved head

Or she hated me sweating

And I was sweating

But I was calm and quiet

Like it was a winter night

“Anyway” was what her eyes meant

She held my hand took me to her stairs

Where she faces the windy side of the city

I felt for the first time I was not in the city

She was making some soup

While I was watching the children flying kite

I saw the freedom,

The kites have felt

Strolling and winging

In the never ending sky,

In their eyes

Even if they came out from a 10 square feet room

My lady offered me the soup

With a steel spoon

Which once we bought

From the famous Darya Ganj Sunday Market,

Not to be mistaken

It is not the place where western influenced people go

To look for Levi’s pair of jeans

Or anything-branded clothes,

It is the market where books are sold

In the cheapest price they could be

It is where from I bought “Cinnamon Peeler.”

As I looked deeper and deeper

In the sky facing the wind

I was again reasoning for my existence

But she stopped me

And asked me “Can you fly Kite?”

I said no and had a sip of soup

She asked, ”How come?

Hadn’t you even tried once?”

I said no

I don’t want to feel unrealistic freedom

That the kites feel at the highest altitude

That too control by a soft thread,

May that was the reason unknowingly

I had never tried it……