The Dreamer's Death

 

Death has been calling me up

as the height of insomnia is higher than ITO building

I even refuse poetry this time.

Earlier, like a gluttonous dog

I waited for poems while cooking

while shitting ,while making love

while protesting, while swallowing taste of love

Then poetry refused me.

Now I refuse them

Like i no longer believe in them

or in expressing my feelings

like my own fucked up generation.

I have told this little world

i have seen that

“i can be good like anyone else

I can build a castle like nation with my own sweats

Just let me breathe at my own will”

but they left me calling me a dreamer,

protester, loser, etc.

Here Im again

death raping me from back

thinking of how another night

i shall bear with nameless poems

that i would eventually trash away

like cigarrete butts inside the empty tea cup

Here Im again thinking of nothing

but death that they call suicide

Blurry scene came up while rolling and tossing

under my dusty blanket:

my late drunken neighbor stabbing his daughters

one after another

sometime it was me stabbed

and shivering in naked wth steamy opened body

upon a table with fables bleeding away

from my opened heart...

and the scissors slowly cut away the brightness

from my sight.

I was wrong to think

unnatural death comes only with bullets

but it comes too with insomnia

as cheap as my own poems

To cry for other is easy

(i have done it many times)

but to cry for yourself

you need blood to stream away from your wrist

you don't need tears

you need to rope your neck

and hang yourself like

the Rajasthani puppets hanging on my wall.

that would be a great piece of art.

Yes! my death should be an art piece to look at for others

my body shall decompose till tumites

And ants get inside the bones and suck away the bone marrows.

News of my death shall fly or run wild like brimming rivers

“Such a coward he was, how could he do that?”

my fellow poets must write odes to my death

my parents shall recieve my body in pine-wood coffin

with a live music band that can play “Vodoo Child”

my guitar must play blues on its own

my neighbor shall miss me while he makes tea

The book seller at New Friends Colony must wonder why i disappear suddenly

my land must mourn for me as i have mourned enough for it

my lover must cry like lovers in my song “North East Express”

my friends must be sleepless at least for a night

my homosexual friends must know i was not homophobic

my ghost must camp in Paris, like a hippy who lost his way, just to fulfill my dreams

my ghost must visit Ginsberg's grave and recite “Ginsberg, Akhu has given you all”

my ghost must find peace travelling in Japan,

writing real haiku cheering every glass of wine in the name of Basho

in snowy winters wearing kimonu

My ghost must rob the banks and spray money in the streets

my Ghost must wear my wrist watch and tell them

my songs must be sung by my friends Abung, Nila and Hero

whenever they drink in my remembrance...

“we don't need rules or laws or acts to live in peace”

“you don't need money to live your life, (call me a dreamer once again)”

“you got to be stubborn to be a dreamer”

“You don't need to be loved to know what is love”

In one of many sleepless nights

I needed lips to kiss

so i kiss Sylvia's tulip

that has been lying next to my bed for weeks

and her death find its way to me

So here Im

Fantasizing death.

Born to die: Boooooooo!

We were born to die

but why in the streets

why with the bullets

boo the armies

boo the bullets

boo the bombs

we were born to die

baby let me love you

before they take me away

boo away the hatred

boo away my drunkeness

boo away your sadness

we were born to die

but i dont wanna die under their boots

you were born to die

you wanna live till your skin withers

till your ears are deaf enuf

to miss your lover's whisper

like a flag after a storm

we were born to die

whether rich or poor

dont think twice

you can't be young forever

you can't write a song twice

but you can sing it hundred times

so while living such a life

protest hundred times

against the marching boots

Snatch freedom from the flying flags in air

make a human chain against the barbed wire

they said "dont dream anymore

You have lived long enough with your dream"

If this is dream

I better not cry for all the things i love

I better cry for the silent mountains

why should i waste my sweat

in my own dreams of waste

fuck your reality!

Im gonna pluck poetry from the sky

Im gonna sing my cries

like a lullaby to this world of yours

You sleep Baby sleep

sleep with your reality

let me dream with my arms wide opem

let me dream with my eyes wide open

days and nights

Let me dream with the smell of gunpowder

Carry On

Carry on

wrong winter

This time winter goes so wrong

like my own song

There are no warm hands

inside my pockets

Only the lifeless christmas stars

twinkling desperately to catch

the eyes, whose eyes i dont know.

But not mine for sure.

lousingba

Pic: with Lousingba's Ema

Lousingba
I have never remembered you
like i remember you at this dawn
It has been almost a year
that you passed away
leaving us alone at this age of violence and injustice,

now you are right here in front of me
telling me those stories of our lives
i thought
how irrelavant those sweet childhood memories
were in my life of protest?
I even said often to my friends Life is too short for simple things
but now when i look back for home
it is you and your presence at my home
in those sunny morning of imphal
that i can feel.
Lousingba
i realise now in our land
all that we can share is love
and those sweet memories
I will give your parents the warmest hug i ever can
I will never forget you as long i live.

december eight /3.55 am

December comes
and i know u feel colder than any one
come my love drink my blood
it is luke warm.
all my blood for you

the girl, i gave my blood to,
has got married and settled in America
now it is all for you
fill your veins with it
Let me replace it with wine and your love
Let me walk the empty night roads of delhi
Let me write of wine and love only
like Ghalib

Once i sat next to Ghalib's statue in a summer evening
and the lovers, they read out his poetry
and you came to leave me alone

since the day i hate to see the rickshaw puller
and you popped up on the very plate of shawarma
and i gave up loving you

but tonite Im sleepless
as it is gettng colder and colder
hope you are lying in some one's arms to keep you warm
hope you are not sleepless like me

Thank You for all these sweet memories
I will cherish them till this body withers
and fall into the coffin
Thank you tomba!

Oh Sister! (to Irom Sharmila)

Oh Sister!
They dump you in Jawaharlal Nehru hospital
Because when Nehru discovered India
you were not born
and today you give a new meaning of this country
protesting calmly on the hospital bed,
Nose feeding back them 'how democratic India can be'

Oh Sister!
your silence is the marching song
against the marching soldiers

Oh Sister
They will crumble one day like rubbles
into your feet.
They will cry for peace someday before they die.
Let this world drown in your tears
Of ten years.

A Night's sketch with my Kaboklei

We started it all with whispers
at midnight under the blanket
like a mosquito singing Jana Gana Mana
we got louder and louder
like the whistling local trains at dawn.

Like a black and white movie in flashback
like Tarantino's Pulp Fiction
we jumped to shots
which we loved to talk about
Forexample, you said i brushed your breast with my arm
and i said you brushed your breast on my arms
but my cuban second hand jacket sealed away
the softness and mildness of that evening wind

“Is this love?
Or
Is this “Like”?”-
My torn mosquito net sings everynight
I just nod to its rhythm

we walked away to the foothills
(hand in hand )
that joins with the paddy field
and sat on the divider
and you covered your head from the sun
with your shinny disco jacket
while i peeled the sweetest Nobap in Manipur

we shed our clothes and looked at ourselves
like no other animals have looked at themselves
and we convinced ourselves
we are as nature as a grain of paddy.
And we pollinate
You down, I up, as you wish
the wind stops, the world shuts up, as we wish

we wrote fables of our nipples
no history of blood
no hate from past
as if i have flushed them down to dirty yamuna river
and you whispered
“I wish you could do that ”

you, like a child in sleep,
like a blind witch,
murmur away our love
composing lines after lines
like an overdosed poet
quoting my silly behaviours
reminding how stupid i can be
when i m no longer a poet
When i have goonighted to the poet in Akhu
when i goodnight to you every night
with my dirty fingers over my poor naked cellphone

O Kaboklei!
The crab has find its part in Basho's haiku
The khudei has got its starch and wrinkle of our love
The ducks, Dylan has made them drunk in his songs
The fields have had our eggs and cream
Last night i saw you in the film robin hood
Galloping towards me with all your armour of love
I just missed to kiss you

O Kaboklei!
Where are our twelve children?
The Sun is gonna sink amidst the cloud of your wavy black hair
We shall 'goodnight' our children
before we send away them to all the districts as saints of love
we shall greet them “Happy Birthday”
As we give birth to love every day and night
Happy Birthday!

sweet rage

thoiba, stand in queue

get a litre a petrol

I already have got one litre of petrol

after standing four hours in queue

once you get it

you burn from Ukhrul

I will burn from Imphal

lets make ashes out of this land

keep the good ones on right side

keep the bad ones on left side

and burn the bad ones

burn the divide

burn the assembly hall once again

burn their play cards

burn burn burn

i need a new land where i can walk free

where i can ride my bike without driving licence

Ode to My Kaboklei

She wants to be a poet
to write me love sonnets
as she knows all i have is poetry
to offer to this world of misery

she held my hand took me to the lane
of the angry poet who searched for the sun
in a pool of blood that stream down
from the chest of his dead son

I held her wrist like she is mine
like a gentle man holding a glass of fine wine
and walked under that noisy evening sky
while the wind whispered “ this is not a goodbye”

Wake up! wake up!
She shakes my body
and makes me laugh away my nightmares
my borken heart, she stitches sharing the thread
she has on her left chest

Yet sometimes we pretend like strangers
and tell each other “we are going no where”
and next moment we say “It was a joke”
and we smile in bytes showing our face like frogs

we fall in love knowing we can't fall in love with each other
manytimes i feel we can be two helpless protagonists of one of GC Tongbra's plays
we live like dancers, we dance so much when we dance

Chewing Pan she roamed in the streets of Shillong
carrying her stitched heart as heavy as jackfruit
when I called her, she said “you taste like kangsoi”
and she giggled and my heart as wet as Cherrapunji

^&#$%^&

Shall i die tonite
for all the things I love?
It seems they have waved goodbye to me
this evening.
The paddy fields, they have harvested.
The song for her, I could not sing
The poetry I love, they hate

This night wind is singing out of tune
Like an air cooler of Indian Summer
I see no more soldiers in streets but dogs and wolves
I wanna go blind and deaf
I wish i can write this poetry better
I wish i can make you love all like i love you all

On the Death of Poet A. Ayyappan

In this country of pigheads
You have taught me how to die, Ayyappan!
O poets of my times
Listen to Ayyappan's death
This is your destiny if you believe in speaking
The unspoken words of this fucked up world
This is my own death with my last poem in my torn pocket
which has never cupped a ruppee from the hands of any pigheads

Ayyappan, what were the words of your last poem?
Were they as depressing as Yesenin's last words?
Who smudged the words,
Was that this corrupt wind of this Indian Autumn
Which carries the smell of death from the valley of Kashmir?

Ayyappan, I will never die for this country.
Ayyappan, Were you another Pacha Meitei?



..............................

Note: A Ayyappan was a noted Malayam modernit poet. He was found in an unconscious state on 25th Oct, evening in front of a theatre in THIRUVANANTHAPURAM with a poem in his pocket. He died later in hospital

Unhappy

How insane is that to say

I am going to commit suicide

just because I read the last poem of Maya?

and Im no longer nervous

like lovers inside the bus

And i have never sold myself to a god or church

I'm alone and busy finding myself alone



O Poets of my times!

Who told you

These mountains dont sing

They sing in pebbles, my kind of fables

of being loved and used and thrown

Clear you ears, Poets!

they are filled with voices of fearness.



Let me mourn for a while

The cat has stopped drinking my milk

The dog has gone mad and never gonna bark at me

Let me mourn till the morning comes

and welcome me to my bed



Long ago a mosquito kissed at my eyes

whispering “im taking away your sleep from your eyes”

since then i have been awake and hungry

and every where i look around

I see unhappy people

some are aiming through a broken lens of telescope

some are listening to humanity through the broken stethoscopes

Unhappy people, they make me unhappy

Unhappy Artists, they make me grow my moustache

Unhappy singers, they make me sick

Unhappy lovers, They make me see filling forms



Little Angel

The dawn breaks with the music of Pena
and the voice follows haunting the valley
"an ode to our rich culture and tradition"
and the corrupt sky cries its tears upon my tin roof
but who can stop the sun rising

And I wonder
what that little angel must be doing
she must be sleeping?
Has she chaged her torn clothes?
did they give her dinner?
Do they love her enough
not to make me love her?
I don't know

But let this rain be the tears
that she will shed in future

Come Back Haikhohat Samte

The bamboo shoots were sprouting
Oh! But the July moon died
In the cloud of gun smoke
The rifles getting readied to bang more
To tear the innocence apart
And there you came alone
Passing through different colors of their flags
Passing from Burma border into India
To find the remnants of your home
Where once you collected firewood

Now there you are collecting memories
To remember you had a home
With cattle and poultry
To listen to your evening songs
Now you breathe gun powder
And fumes from the ashes of your burnt house
Now a bullet hit your spine
Leaving you paralyzed on the hospital bed.

Oh! The day I heard about you, Haikhohat Samte
They told me you died three years back
But I’m not a newspaper to forget you and your story
Let me remember you whole of my life
Let me smell the stink till I see
Their bullets melting in your father’s tears.
And let this poem be a bullet to rip this rotten land apart.

Come back! Haikhohat Samte
Where is the plastic pipe that fitted to your urinary tract
Let’s fit it to this land
Stream them away like larva from a volcano
Where is the blanket that covers you
And the foul smell of your half dead body?
Let’s cover this land with the blanket
And upon it we will grow a new land for you

Ode to Moreh candle

my poetry shines at night through your flame
inside the mosquito net
you dont even care what color it wears
like you are being there as a prostitute.

when the crimson sky fades
with revolution in black market
you emerge out of bamboo shoots and Ngafak
from every small keithels scented with Uhmorock

Mother cooks in your light
Father search for his alcohol scented sons
in your light
from the thatch roof of small huts in hill
you shine on against the darkness of sky

I am gonna burn another you
to see how long this dark night is
is it longer than my poetry of petrol blues?
is it shorter than my song of dream?

Shine on! teach them to burn their weakness
like you burn your wicks showing the light in you

Home Coming

When no seeds
answer to the drought
I will be the cloud
above Nongmaiching
from my foot steps
paddy fields will rise
the rodents will drown
in my sweat of dance.

Im coming home
to be the monsoon
Open your thirsty mouth
Let the scars of hunger
in your skin be washed
Let the hills cup me
around the holes of dying pine trees
Let the sky thunder
to quieten your selfish desire
Let the rainbow emerge
to fold the colour of the past, forever


I'm coming home
get the empty vessels and fields cleaned
Im coming home to spread myself
at Tidim road watching the green pastures
that pave from the hills that kiss the sky

excuse me!
Im coming home
leave my way unblocked

let me roll like the way i want
I was born yesterday
i don't give a fuck about day before yesterday
all i care is about rain
and my friends
that are starving

let me hold your hands
there is not a handful of sand
in my hand to show you fear
all i have is an empty wide open arms

Play the Music Loud

Play the music loud
who cares whether they are loading guns
or filling their sacks with golds
roll your smoking paper my freinds
and light it with flames and smokes
there is fire everywhere
dont worry for matchsticks in the land of torch

Play the music loud
No one wants to hear ur scream of cold turkey
Let;s put a curtain here and make it invisible
No one wants to see you banging the doors
No one wants to help you put the ladder on your bed

Play the music loud
Your story is complicated and they hate it
they have no solution for your future
there is no such thing as being a good son

All you have is your generation
squatting by the roadside
fixing their eyes in the lost air of innocence
searching for something to replace their anger

All u have is your generation
smacking their own madness
suffocating in their own vomit

Play the music loud
and look at the windshields of the army trucks

and Hallucinate what you deserve
Once a while you need to be served

Hallucinate what you are not
Once a while you need to be someone else

Hallucinate to be the flag in air
Once a while you need to feel the freedom

Hallucinate to be the names on the tombstones
once a while you need to be a hero

Play the music loud
Scream against this society

Spit at the holes of their guns
throw your fist in the air
Clean yourselves with their memorandums
blow off your nose against their propagandas

Play the music loud
Worry not for those actors and liars and killers.
For all the things they have done
they will be gone
Leaving their homes soak in their own blood
They will be flown like rain
leaving their homes wet

Play the music Loud
Dance inside your canvas shoes
leave the leather shoes for the ones who sing fake blues
You dont need their injection
to look handsome

You don't need their guns
just to say you are lonesome
You dont want to be a good son
for they will demand a ransom
You belong to this generation
to not make a bow at the dead sons
but to cry out loud your existence
from your heart with bloodfull of veins

Play the music loud
don't bother by the clowns in the circus
the stuntmen in suits are jumping
from chair to chair

Play your music loud
The music from the speakers of Television is a lie
the music in the big theater is a fraud
the music in the music stores are for them
who don't have a mouth
The music they call classical will never speak for you
Your mouth is the best speaker for you
Sing with your tongue
don't just hum!
Lick the society's cunt
taste it! face it! chase it!

Play the music Loud
there is no charm in such silence
in such confused face like yours
dont bother by the fights
They are fighting for lands
when they need a space of one square feet to stand
and a seven feet to become ashes
Let them grow the walls of brick
Now stupidity and insanity is part of humanity
Play the music loud
Play the music loud

such night

Unnoticed Lives in sweat
curled up and falling
on the push carts
under the moonlight
like cucumbers in daytime
on the same push carts,

me and my love saw them
after the dead poet departed us
at the crossroad
leaving the taste of dead fish
in our tongue

and the gate of home
refused us
but i opened it
with a plastic rope
while she like a kid
was riding the scooter
looking at the side glass
for the nose she pierced
and we rode down
together on the highway to love

and the ladies were singing to the goddess
and so we sang together the beauty
and love of such night

economic blockade

A football was crushed by a highway truck
Economic Blockade!
A mosquito collides with the windshield wiper
Economic Blockade!
A bullock cart bang on an old Banyan tree
Economic Blockade!

O Manipur!
don't think of going back to school,
as you lack good education,
because the schools are closed
O Manipur!
if you have stones in your gall bladder
don't go for surgery
there is no oxygen
and ICU too have been closed

The crest is for him, the trough is for them
but they don't know they are in the same wave
Economic Blockade!
The church greets them, and The tulsi leaves greet him
"Good Morning"
Economic Blockade!

O Manipur!
dont think you can go off to see your lover
dont think you can ride the bike down the road
to get away from this 'You or Me'
because the petrol price hikes to 150rs per litre

Don't think you can cook bamboo shoots
to remind them they have something common
because one LPG cylinder costs 1500rs

O Manipur!
dont think you can get away
Your name is not in Schindler's List
dont think you can get away
riding that brand new Hero bicycle
There are Bicycle Theives too
and don't think you can read the story
of your stolen bicycle in newspaper
because there are no papers left to print your news paper.

India has cut you off
Feel the freedom that you wanted, demanded.
Economic Blockade!

I can't name it

Dying in the streets
and leaking out lives through blood
under the boots
or in the great fucking clatters of firing bullets
is part of being a Manipuri

I never learn this in my text books
I never see this in movies
I witnessed them with my own my eyes
crawling under the barricades at Sanjenthong
while the AK rifles were singing their songs
spraying death in air I breathed

Now you feel it on the very highway
which you think is your kingdom
where the history of head huntings had been written
But the truth is now you and me are brothers
Now you are embraced by the Police bullets
Now i see you block the road
not only by digging the road
or chopping down the faithful trees
but using the faneks of your ladies
Where do you learn it from?

Now the rumour spreads
like tumour in the sick brain
but the humour is
it is just another Indian summer story

we are left alone
to be the beasts of the highway
to make you hunt my head
to make me chop your head

And the wind of history sings;
Rwanda is coming your way
Bosnia and Herzegovina, they say

But the truth, You and I must face
that this land is not made out of clay
but only blood
And if you want to break it
there will be blood in the Hills and Valley
and I don't want it
and your Jesus don't want it too

death is the only winner

You had June 18th 2001
with the blood of eighteen splattered
in the streets of Imphal

now they have May 6th 2010
with Mao Gate erupting,
with flags
with blood
with children parading the highway

but
who wins the hills?
who wins the valley?
who wins your soul?
Death only death

Death to the fences of barb wires between Naga and Meitei
Death to the cunning balls that roll between ethnicities

the highway is for god

whatever u hear now
is the story of God
whether you like it or not
if god wants to come
he has to come
but he will not walk upon the land
So they burn the buses to create flames
as flames are friends of gods

The Highway is for his
As you know so he block it from sky
by making a glance

The runaway kid has come back
being god;
so the houses are burning incense sticks
so they open the gate
closing the other

the folk singer is singing
"Oh Chingkhom Philave
Her bosoms like mangoes"
It is the return of a hero
but you never had a hero
Let them celebrate the hero's return
Let them drink down now what they couldn't digest
as past seemed to favor you

The highway is for his, the god,
so the one who prays can block
you are a turtle in dry well
you are as brittle as cheap bangles
learn to get broken once
the fragments will eventually dance
left n right up n down

Every god wants you to fight
Every god wants to grow his clan
Every God wants a flag too
Every God wants to slap you
Every god wants to erase the history
that gave him no space

the radio is playing Leonard Cohen;
"Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon water"
But no one knew he was sailor
but The god is playing his game
and on history you blame

wasting around

who will see the light in me
when they are blinded by their own little selves
the night is roaring and waking me up
but they slumber for the dreams i call waste
Call me a man in thirties
but Im young to waste around in my style
Im gonna walk the road Wild
beware if we meet again I may shoot at you

A Poem

gimme a liter of kerosene

Give me a Litre of Kerosene
I will burn down this university
for all the things it taught me
for all the years i have spent
like a beggar walking from table to table

c me beautiful

See me beautiful
Im no longer a fool
Im no more a fat girl
See me beautiful in ur dream
if you wanna see me fast
sleep soon
Im already in my sleep
and my toes are digging the sand
of your love river
my throat is thirsty of your love spring water
my eyes want to be blinded
by your unwashed dirty long hair
tell me the story of Seoul
tell me how it aches when your love left you
tell me how you deny the morning
when you find no one next to you
tell me I m the only beautiful soul
promise me you will see me beautiful
in my wet hair in my wet clothes
in my pink slippers in my lips with songs of you

See me beautiful hey Nupa
I m your nupi
lets meet on the bed of yellow daffodils
lets wet this land with tears of laughter
hold my hand hey nupa
stop thinking of Naropa university

Please publish my poetry

Please publish my poetry
they are about trees and bees
How can my poetry be of my home?
My home is now a tomb stone

Please Please
They are about Indian Classical Dance and music
They are not even about Harijans or Hijarahs
They are not at all about India throwing Hussain out of the country
They are as soothing and emotional as the national anthem
They are about Tagore murmuring love in April's evenings

Please publish my poetry
They are about flowering mango trees
They are about the boots dancing tango
There is nothing about me and my home

Please publish my poetry
they are readable at Leaning Tower of Pisa
while you eat a slice of Pizza
They are as universal as sexual instinct

Dear editor please consider my poetry
How on earth will i write of blood?
my brothers and sisters have bled it all
there is nothing left for such minimal poets like me

Dear editor
my Poetry don't haunt
my Poetry don't scare
my Poetry don't kill

above these
Mine is about lovers and dopers
who defy the truth of living among firing bullets.
such courage where on earth will you find?

Story of a Slice of Uhmorock

Necha cut a slice of Uhmorock
listening to the Sicilian
boasting of his Italian roots
As he talks he put the thin slice of uhmorock
in his spoonful of rice
after a moment he drinks a glass of water

and said "what was that?
It whispered in my ears,"Dont fuck with me""

one day in March

One day in march
I marched these streets
tearing every page of my notepad
splattering my poetry
like blood in battlefield
but none looked at me
my words were foreign
my steps were foreign sound

One day in march
i marched these streets
slinging my old blue
Signature Guitar
i sang my song of Seaons
but none heard me
my words died in the sound of their motorcycles
my strings were too old
to make an audible sound

One day in march
I roped my own neck
and jumped down from a lamp post
unlike shri tomba
then the city was frozen
beneath my toes
No chaos No noise
they all looked up
at my feet

O loktak when will u stop being a myth

O Loktak
When will you stop being a myth?
every myth around you has become real;
Lord Thanjing committed suicide
seeing Thoibee bleeding by the roadside
of Kwakta as the armies patrols
zipping their camouflage

O Loktak
The poetry i studied too was a myth;
It is not the gentle breeze of Kwakta
that push back thoibee's hair
it was their hands
I have seen it in the play "Draupadi" too

O Loktak
when will stop being a myth?
but the thorns of your heikak made me bleed
but the lives of the fishermen and women
in your fumdi are as hard as anything.
should i see it as stories of your mythology?

O Loktak
Now another myth
of dissolving Rs 224 crores
in your name into their dirty pockets.
what connections do you have with Russia?
Have you ever read Mayakovsky
denying Thangjam Ibopishak's poetry about you?
Do you want to be a Black Sea
when you are already so red with blood
and sour with sweat?
Why Russian?
Do you also love foreign sound?
Do you need to be cleaned or
are their blood stain from the Operation Summer Storm?
but i believe the sharks you have been housing
have to be killed first and share their flesh
among the deprived ones
O Loktak
How can i save you from being a whore house?

watch ur head

Watch your head
there are heavy thoughts in the sky
thoughts to suicide, thoughts to revolution
thoughts to steal, thoughts to kill

"Your eyes are in your face
how will you watch your head
will the government watch it for you
for the ballot papers you have stamped on"

and she never came back

and she never came back
and they say i am fucking going mad
as i lick the tea bag
but they don't know
i can talk to cigarette buds
and i can rebuke humane
looking at the chopped woods
I can mop these clean floor again
i can wait whole night for a three line poem
i can fuck my hand like i am in french whorehouse
i can cook the korean pumpkins in my own style
I can heal my own pain whenever i want
i can lie to my love any time

Call me Drunk
Call me faggot
Call me Loser
Call me lover

but the night is mine
the bed is yours
so i unfold the night sky
and give away the stars
to the burried soldier
Mother earth is pregnant
with dead men and women
and she never came back
and they say i am fucking going mad
as i want to kiss all the cracked sad lips
of all girls in the world
but they don't know
i am the first flower that blooms
in Zinko tree in March
they dont know
I am beginning to convince them
with my kisses that they refused
on their way to their pointless point
where poets painters singers
revolutionaries, bureaucrats meet
greeting each other like they are the best kind
and i am never there
and they are beginning to fear
and she never came back

happy cheiraoba

Happy Cheiraoba"
The Government greets us
The extortionists also greet us
but the body is there
chest, half opened
to stuff their lies
"Happy Cheiraoba"
they pray to their ancestors
for they were fools
"Happy Cheiraoba"
But the cries are lingering in air
and the father is still waiting

wat am i to do now?

i spilled cooking oil on my jacket
and my other woollen clothes have been soaked
what should i wear now?
the road is calling me out
the whole city is expecting snow
what am i to do now?
my finger tips are deprived of music
my life is a sad song of a tired man
what am i to do no

A Windy Day in March

plastic bags are dancing
but not in my songs for sure
but may be in Ani Difranco's
Untouchable Face's fuck you.
the wind snatches away
the smoke from my mouth
and i don't regret it for sure
the chirping birds are flirting
so the trees are watching
I got a crush on the clouds
so it pisses on me
and the sun shines bright
so are their lips and hips.
like physician's prescription
i write one poem a day
but today the wind has written
my share and i become
a line that stops with a comma
i become the one dancing
with the plastic bags
so i light a long fag
and wear black hat
and jump over "Use me"
crashing their camera

elope wid spring

Me and the Spring
sit together at the bench
of Cheongnyani bus stand
as i wait for the bus to home
while Spring waits for the rain to go away
Spring says to me
"can you please get some leaves
or paint the tree bit greener?
It will make my job easier or faster"
"No, I am sorry, i don't know how to paint"
"can you please stop the rain?"
"No i cant, if i could i would have walked
away long ago"

"My bus has arrived
Will you come with me to my home?"
"Do you think the trees will mind?"
"No i don't think so"

And the Spring and i sit in the bus singing
"Seoul, how are your trees gonna flower again
I'm stealing away your flowers
I am eloping with your spring
I am wearing all your flowers in my hair"

"O home my home
spread the fields wide
Wash the trees please
here comes your spring

Hello Seoul

Hi Seoul!
I have come to you
after standing fifteen days in queue
at Passport Office, at Visa counter
after i almost felt in love with the lady in Visa counter
after i said "I love Korea"
after Cathay Pacific left me stranded at the airport

Hello Seoul!
I have come to you to gather your love
and take home and fill the pockets of my country men

Where is the love you showed to me in your movies?
Your Classic was excellent
Your Full House was always sweet
even when my home was starving
Your actors suffer from Alzheimer
Me too nothing I remember
about my past all i know is about my lover.

look at me i am as sweet as your girls
my undergarments are torn
now they look like your expensive thongs
my shoes are colorful too,
they match your roads of yellow oranges
my hair is long, and i don't feel that cold.
the cold of death
i have felt every summer in my hometown
the teenage boys and girls in my town
they are as beautiful as yours

I sleep in Korean time
but wake up at Indian time
with Imphal chewing my brain.
Give me something new Seoul,
I too, have been the soul of my town
like you call yourself the soul of Asia
I represent the poetry of the hopeless
I represent the poets of my generation
who are selfish and proud
who are gluttonous and patriotic.
what are you gonna do with me, Seoul
I am right here writing poetry in your soil
inflicting the dirt of my land in your air.

Hello Seoul!
Snow upon me cool me down
i am a burning charchoal in poor man's fireplace
yet i get cold in the rain of imphal
Dye me white
i will leave red for the poets
and to the tomatoes in the market

Hello Seoul
Let me carry you on my back
when you are drunk with soju
I wont let you fall here and there
like your girls in the subways on the bridge
in the bars in the streets.

My land the poets have carried away
and sold it off to a thing called Literature..
since then my back has been emptied
O Come on Seoul
it is 4 am..you are drunk enough to be on my back
Come on
a lullaby i will hum for you
i will sing to the moon as i walk along
i will dance as i walk along
Come on
Let me kiss your lips till you know i don't cheat
Let us share the Utongchak
i haven't shared anything with anyone
i was once a bull on parade
I am one of the names that the bullets
promise to kiss in lips
Hi Seoul !
Say “Sarange”
“Ei yam ware”

Ode to Snow

O Snow
Come fall in my valley
and flower in the bare trees shorn of leaves
Come cover the fields of dead bodies
Come cover the lines between Nagas and Meiteis

O snow
Come flow in the river of red
Come freeze the fingers that triggers
Come freeze the Loktak Lake
Come cover the chapter of Meiteis
who live in the past of great culture
Come color everyone's hair grey
to remind them they all will die
without their fights to kill too

O snow
They don't know
Time beats everything
O snow
Come flow in my vein of warm blood

korean night

Sitting calmly like the Korean moon
above the curtain of clouds I spoon
what i had in my mind on such a night
of wails and laughter of drunken girls
with faces underneath the powdery
layers of cosmetics and lipsticks,
Find nothing but a naked image of myself
in the mirrors of their colorful lives

Ode to Yaoshang

Look at them
they were the ones
who march the streets
with tearful eyes
look at them
in joy with laughter
like a spring tree in evening wind
they are burning the sungs
in every leikai
they are walking house to house
stepping from doors to doors
"Nakatheng, Nakatheng"
breaking their usual path
from Morgue to cemetery

Look!
the night is celebrated with drums,
tube-lights, with local liquor
pouring into their justice thirsty mouth
like a peasant in field
in the first seasonal rain
If the whiteness of boiled eggs mean peace,
this night is a feast of peace
cooked in the kitchen of the poorest of the poors
with flames from the burning pine trees from the hills

Look at them
They have moved on
departing my poetry of blood and anger
Everything changes now.
look at them shining in the light
encircling them in such times of darkness.
have they given away their past
to the evil spirits on Lamta Thangja?

How well dressed they are
they were ones the naked children
of the naked mothers.
they have blocked the roads with ropes
with their sweet smiles
so there, the cars, the bikes, the buses spray the money
in their Joypur;
So unlike the highway blockades
and daily robbery at gun points.

Look at them
they are as colourful as the forgotten flag
of the seven colours.
the fragility of the land has been replaced by Pafor
politicians can be seen in the fancy dress show
and you can laugh at them
revolutionaries are falling in love in Shumang leela
converting their demand letters into love letters

Look at them
I must stop my poem now
before it bleeds

Dated 28th March 2010

missa you

Missa You
my winter dew
on my grass of happy blues.
this night i am gonna chew
the lock of hair you threw
in my cup of coffee bru
as i know no way
to bear such pain of being away
from You

Untitled

Towering chimneys of big factories
raping the sky under the Delhi moon
with mothers fathers sons and daughters
in the pavement
whispering away the death of night
shivering under the wind blanket

there she is under the subway
with the weight of love inside her belly
writing on the wall a poetry:
“I lost my virginity to this world
now I see this polluted world
through my hymen”

Me and My Friend Across this Nation

Me and my friends
we gonna travel across this nation
through its railway tracks
that lead to Godhra, to kashmir,
to Kanya Kumari,
to all the temples of gods.
we gonna go in beat way
sipping rum and smoking grass
with sweat and blood fighting for seats
with rucksacks full of untold stories.

If they ask what are we seeking for
"we are seeking the paper where the Indian Constitution exists
to write our parts as they have missed out us
we are seeking a community which doesn't want to stay free
we are seeking the poetry of travelling
and the mystery of one India
we are seeking the costliest death in the country."

we gonna walk across this nation
to see the children of this nation
sing national anthem.
we sang the anthem till class five
till then our mouths were shut by red flags and stars
now our mouths are again locked by AFSPA
that is why poetry is our soul.
what else we can dream of when our voices died
in the murmurs of corrupt leaders under their tables
what else we can cry for
when crying becomes breathing

we will sing in every Indian universities
we will stay ugly and dirty in every city
we will exchange arrows of love and hatred
between cities and our poetry.
In the streets
we gonna sing with the beggars;
“I am a widow
my child is sick
I am a widow
my husband is sick
Saheb! My sister is in pain
give us a lift
or give me auto fare to hospital
Saheb! I am very hungry
Sir! I am very hungry
feed me some food
give me something
kuch to de-de Saheb!”

we will run across the fields of Kerala with the farmers
chasing the dragonflies and singing ;
"aadhi ellallo andham ellallo
ula kaalam poy aa yugathil
theyya rayyam theyya rayyam taka
theyyaram theyyaram theyya rayyam "

we will meet my Mallu friend who lost his virginity
while sliding down from a tall and slim coconut tree
Oh we must name the coconut tree 'Virginometer';
a machine that checks male virginity.
We will climb one by one to check our status
we will call out the priests, the monks too.

We will sit in coffee house of Kolkotta
listening to Ranbindra Sangeet,
Smoking bidi like the Hungryalist Poets
but never we will write like Malay Roy Choudhary.
we dont want to be jailed for poetry
all we want is to meet India
in the west in the east
in the north in the south.

We gonna jump naked into Triveni Sangum
with Naga Sadhus stoned with lord Shiva's Grass.
we gonna love India till it slaps again
and throw us back into Imphal River

we gonna walk into the houses of the 10,000 villagers
who fled after Salwa Judum.
we gonna see “Can poverty survive in the houses of emptiness?
Or are there poetry budding out of the haunting huts?”

With the immigrant fish sellers from Bangladesh
we gonna live in slums where evening scenes often look like
colourful picture in moral science books
with children and stray dogs playing,
with folks squatting by the hand pumps,
with women in blouse washing the dirty of this nation
at Dhobi Ghats.

We are going to carve our poetry with blood
on the frozen surface of Dal Lake
So when the first ray of summer sun arrives
it evaporates the phrase like "Operation Blue Bird" in air
like a bird breaking free out of cage
and flying around the world
to shit upon the statue of Liberty

u luk mine that way

U look mine that way
tearing the strap of your slipper
on the bridge yesterday evening

U look mine
when you kicked at me
in front of the embassy
where i sold myself like the rest
to be on a plane
to break the chain

U look mine that way
when you left me
when you walked away
like an alcoholic husband
who left his wife crying helplessly
so you wife me
so i pluck my hair
seeing you fading
among the foreign bodies

U look mine that way
when you play with me
walking slowly behind me
to prove i am not concerned
about you

U look mine that way
when you say stop playing music
when you cry for small things
when you left me alone stranded
in the middle of nowhere
with twenty rupees in my pocket

U look mine in every way

Jobless Poem

Here, no one gets job
no one gets to hope for hope.
From the universities they become MA and BA
and come here to serve like a farmer on May day
but here no one is a farmer
everyone wants to be a snake charmer

bureaucrats, they put the taxes in their asshole
and the old men in tea hotels, they scold.
some become high with LSD
some sell lands to become inspectors doped with SP
and the youngsters in bike and BMX doing stunts
in youtube and their mothers working in the sun

some burn their degree certifcates to light their joints
some snatched mobile phones and wallets at gun point
they call themselves police who take oaths under the flag
at nights they even snatch phaneks
some become lucky if they are pleased by MLAs
like the criminals in America pleased by CIA
(Criminals In America)

some become the masked rickshaw pullers
some become the masked killers
hired by the government, hired by the hiding men
some become plain man
who face punch from all directions
at home they beat up wives out of frustration

some open alcohol vendors
with PhD degree in literature
there is nothing wrong in it
but the fact is he doesn't want it
here no one gets job
every thing becomes flop

an example of trying to be self sustainable??
O My whole wide world! look at them, read their fables!
they are self sufficient, they need no technologies, electricity.
that's why the aluminium wires are being stolen unlike in cities
that's why the police takes tax for the candles from Moreh
that's why there were people who hid away in Sylhet
to learn the art of guerilla warfare
but their blood, this country and that country shared

some run NGOs for GUN and HIV victims
some run rehabs to get the Junkies clean
some write poetry inspired by Tagore
some paint scenaries making art whore
some live in utopia when they are dying with Malaria
some talk to change the world after they see America
Some call bandh because a football was crushed by a truck on highway 39
Some do theatres to please the bosses as if their homes are fine
Some teach in hill schools by hiring someone to hold the chalks
as they are allergic to hills since the time of their olf folks
some live in jail running some gangs thru cellphone
some kill to heal their past wounds and to cut the bones

Some are jobless
Some are homeless
Some are hopeless
Some are countryless

Dancing in the streets

(Inspired By Ojha Amubi)

This night is a good day to begin
O My Generation
Come out in the streets
Lets dance with the dreaming trees
Autumn is over even in poetry
It is a night to bring a dawn of spring

If death arrives again, so what
we have had it enough
we will make fire out of it
for the dark souls
who know only how to complaint and cry

O My generation
Come out in the streets
Lets dance with the dreaming trees
the movement of your body must be like wave.
the softness of a feather
you must carry in your movement
Haven't you heard of wave that shake Mother earth?
Haven't you heard of softness that melt bullet into cotton?
Haven't you heard of movements that bring down big nations?

What have you not done in these streets?
You have burnt yourselves,
you have been hit by tear gas shells,
you have been beaten with butts of gun
you have been naked when this world is a lie and masked
All you have not done is to dance
Come on my generation
Lets dance in the streets
listen to the croaking frogs
they are calling you out not the rain
look at the rocks in the rivers
they have made their postures

And remember,
"A great dancer is a great fighter
in this land"

death of a winter

last night
winter committed suicide
with a fork that was dipped in pork fat
as it had no solution
to stop the arrival of summer
so it left my wooolen sweater
hanging cold on the nail

Summer on its way
the dumb sky raining with its roar
who can stop it who can stop it
not you not me
but Winter will come again
without you and me

the fire we desire

It came as i was plucking mint in kitchen

with my hands bearing the hotness of red chilli

with an empty cup of tea singing loneliness

with the grinder grinding coffee

with my mind saying to me 

it is different from Neruda's

"I am not copying him

I am not imitating him

it is as true as the sun to my heart"

Poetry they came naked

it is you making them wear fanek

it is you coloring them red or black

Revolutionary, they salute to the evening sky

when their chief read out poetry

but they call it manifesto

Teachers, they teach poetry in classroom

at back home poetry like a broom

with it they sweep the room

or fan away their sweat after sex

Some sees poetry as meat loaf

that serves in silver plate with silver spoon

like it is for the best mankind on earth

Some see it as movements of past

that froze along with blood in streets

under the boots of human insanity

Some see it like rain

that is seasonal like mensturation

Poetry to someone is just a word

that fights the world in white pages

but in reality he she can never fight

dont we call it a lie?

Poetry they came naked

knocking at the doors of your heart

some fake it tapping their feets

following the rhythm of gunshots and bombings

but in a land like mine

it came as a spade to till the fields

nakedness of poetry died long ago

as it came with our desire to defy

with our desire to survive

with our desire for another renaissance

we can't wait for poetry to knock our doors

we must sow poetry in the ashes

of our death brothers and sisters

whom to blame?

when the barrels of the guns
you can not block or shut
when revolution becomes a way of earning
when freedom is a great joke
when you are as helpless as flowers
with what all you see and smell
the bastards they rape a mother
 and a daughter
and there corpses like winter dew
in the yellow mustard field.

Another young girl
strangled to death in the field
the field that is still wet with blood
that drips from phrase like 'counter insurgency'
that hand was a lover's hand
who was also a father's hand
without her knowledge.

And here comes a hero
who trade children from the land of corruption
who are abandoned from education
and he offered them molestation
sending twenty of them away in chennai

whom to blame for such shame, Heroes, you bastard?

Third class citizen

I don't need to prove
I am a third class citizen
of this country
with no self respect
So i close my eyes
and fill the passport form
which says:
"I have not lost, surrendered
or been deprived of citizenship of India"

no country will accept me
without the tag "Third Class Citizen"
As if this planet belongs to their father
Mr. John
Your Imgination died with you
except in the billboard chart 
I must stop singing my songs
I must remain quiet like many others
following the leaders
who throw lies at me
who teach me i am as small as an ant

I am a third class citizen of this great country

Tribal Art

It was a rainy day
five of them stood at the foothill
waving their hands at us.
they wanted to see our huts in the hills
but couldn't climb the hills
so we carried them on our backs
their bodies were as soft as broiler chicken
unlike ours which were seasoned
like woods underneath the water
in the shallow river

They called us adivasis
they clicked our photographs.
For the first time my mother smiled
after the dead of my old man
who died of fever, they called it malaria.
they asked us to imitate like hunters
in our costumes
so we did with spears and swords
wearing skulls

we served them pork
one of them refused to eat
Others insisted him
saying "it is a pork chop"
so he ate like a dog (laugh)
They left the hill with measles.
such week souls they were
with their eyes glittering
with everything we did

"their eyes so big
ours so slanted
Our noses so flat
theirs so pointed"

Once we came to Delhi
To submit our memorandum
that took us several years
to prepare as we were not aware
of anything that can benefit us from Delhi
but never we gained anything.

Mr. Prime Minister was too kind
Instead he hired a bus for us
and the driver thought
we will be interested in seeing certain thing
in the crowded city
so he took us to some shops
which advertised phrase like "Tribal Art"
with paintings, pictures, costumes,etc

the pictures were shining like gold;
well polished and well framed with hands of god
but they were about us
who they called Adivasi
they were the pictures
clicked by those men who refused to eat the pork
cooked in our mud pot.
the paintings reflected every movement
of our lives with the brush strokes

Oh! Art is a wonderful thing
We had never seen or heard of Lotus Temple
but our folklores and stories have existed,
echoed through out the big big cities
Oh Art is a wonderful thing

I wanted to buy one of the paintings
but could not communicate with the seller
(With my movements i could not communicate)
even if i bought one
it would have broken into pieces
on my way back home
as you see roads are still not there
still it is the same fields  and hills
that my old man shooed away the jackals
but i must tell you
Art is a wonderful thing
it doesn't know any language
it doesn't care where it belongs
it sells unlike our worries of life

What have we not done?

What have we not done?
we had switched off our phones
I had banged my head on walls
I had cut my hands
You had not returned home for days
You had relations with others
i had too with my heart flying across
south India to east India

What have we not done in love?
wearing shorts in winter night
we smoked cigarettes in terrace
we walked into the bars, already drunken,
they rejected me for dirty toes and slippers
so we walked into the pebble streets
I wrote poems after poems
breaking the boundaries
between the politics and you

What have we not done?
I have never bought you a bouquet
You have bought me 'life of pi'
i plucked flowers for you from western ghats
I sent you a black n white xerox picture of Woody Guthrie
with his guitar with his famous line
"this machine kills fascist".
Waiting for your calls
i wrote many poems for street sweepers
looking out of window
that face Khirkee railway station

What have we not done?
we have protested against the system
You have read your papers many times
across this nation talking about resistance
I have read mine too twice or thrice
acting like a physicist
who cares for the growth of science
when humanity is declining.

What have we not done?
Yes! i forget, we have to make babies
Yes! we have to humiliate ourselves
in the streets of imphal in the name of marriage.
that's another protest rally
but for them against our desire
and we will be the effigies in feijom and potloi
ahhh I wish we had not thought of it

on such a day

On such a day like 26th January
she carries the country in her basket
wrapped adoringly with the tricolor cloth
and walks in the deserted street
On such a holiday some organisations call bandh
this time it was 15 outfits
the vegetables lay silent
the trees are dead to bored
the rickshaws are recharging in winter sun
She stops in the middle of the road
and whisper "i am letting you free"
she sobs and says "i have nothing to feed you anymore
you were left at my courtyard when the India Armies
 came to pick up my husband
as armies have a habit of leaving their foot marks
in the soil they have walked
and taking lives that belong to the soil.
So i named you India
and I need this basket now
 to decorate flowers for my dead husband"
And Slowly the puppy, India, comes out of her basket
and runs free on the street with its sloppy ears
but don't know how long India will run
On such a day, On such holiday
On such bandh, folks love to eat meat
folks love to eat dog meat.
Run! India! Run!

All India Radio: Jazz

Zzzzzzzz! Ssst! Zzzzzz!
1, 2 ,3, 4

This is all India Radio
Akhu Chingangbam here!

America is saving the world in Movies
while i love America only for the hippies
not for the atomic bombs
not for playboy magazine
not for Marilyn Monroe or James Dean
“I heard America singing”
but i heard America gang banging
It was the wail of Hendrix's guitar not Nixon's speech

“look at me this is my father's eyes
this is my mother's nose
this is the blood of my forefathers
that has spilled in every chapters of the books
my heart as red as tomato
has a place as vast as ocean for you,
my sweet love
let me love you like i love looking myself
in mirror”

my country my country
how long you gonna trade the bodies of your sons
for a piece of cloth
that can't save you from winter
that can't even be a diaper for the beggar's infant
mother! Is that me they are calling out?
The sirens are disturbing
I am not that deaf, i am not that dumb

"I sleep with Mother earth every night
Would you call me 'Oedipus'?"

I am homeless and i call myself
an internationalist,,
does it solve my problem?
Does it make me forget Manipur
can i now write a poem of Eiffel Tower
that i have never seen
other than shattering in movies America made?

They play B flat
in their nice flats
while i masturbate with poverty

And India fells on Safdar's Chair Chair Chair
from Himalaya
diverting from the route of holy Ganga
Yet Mandakini sang “Ram Teri Ganga Meli”

Nila said “We don't drink to become revolutionary”
we drink because such life is a good season to drink
we drink when we want to sing life with alcoholic tear

A Song to the Goddess of Ngari

Tonite the goddess of ngari pay a visit to me
as i have been deprived of her.
i thought it was my love with her long black hair in winter air
with the fragrance of her pillow we shared

so i sing to her;

O Ngari!
i write to you these words like a drunken mate
i will die if you leave me in this strange city
O ngari
I will fight for you with everyone in the world
I won't let any poet rhyme you with saree

O ngari
I can smell you miles away
"Miles to go before i eat"
O ngari
you work fine at places
where this country is the origin of maximum poetry.
O ngari
they say your smell is like that of dead ones in morgue
is it true? tell me it is not
Or is that why my fellow poets talk only of death?
O ngari
despite of our daily meeting at day and night
i never wrote you a song
don't abandon me
My love, she get pissed
as i keep on talking about you
when nights crawl into my stomach

My mother is arranging you for me
and you will come to me by morning Indigo flight
hope this human technology don't scare you
they scare me too more than bullet does

O ngari
come! be my beloved to night
the season's first bunch of yongchak has arrived
but without you they are all waste
this country has fed me
injustice and racial discrimination.
Now let me eat what i want

O ngari
O goddess of Ngari come to me
i am very hungry

come to me with no wings
the birds with their wings they bring nothing to me
freedom is theirs in the sky
above the ground it is my land crying
and the sky rains tear

O ngari
Looking back at my origin
I found you in Ootong
Now i dont know where do you belong
I just know your taste and the feelings of home
and the comfort you gave to my silly stomach

I was about to ask you
who are all these fake patriots
and lovers of this shithole
now i doubt you are one of them.
why are you acting so pricey
is that the traders?
or is that the highway blockades?
you know
we have nothing left in this valley
our culture has been sold out in big stages
our ideologies has been leaked away through the barrels   
our folk tales are not evolving anymore


tell me you are not one of them
tell me you bloom out of an ootong
from the bamboo groove in my backyard
don't lie to me
it is not a poetry
it is about all those years we have shared,
and the year you have shared with our forefathers.
Or are there any imprint left on you for the history you have witnessed
or you are like human who dies for no reason who left nothing on earth
except stories of genocide to make their descendant even worse

O Goddess of Ngari
I am singing you a song of our roots
not a song of a delicious cunt

Miss Orange

here comes miss orange
she does not blame
the government
every one lives to kill
when they say heal the hills
she lives in hut
dies in hug
she never gets from the land of riot
there she walks
revealing the truth of hypocrites
defying the motherly tits
for the stitches she wants for her town
when boys sing western song "down town train"
when no train or drain
 runs towards their land

"what changes you would make for a better world"
 they asked in the finest suit
that they borrowed from priests in the church

Innocent Wail

That dawn
that wail of that bullock cart was different
but mother said
 it was going to the field to harvest

As usual
In evening i waited for him
to have a ride on his cart
practising the peasants' slogan like yell "ar ti ti"
and remembering the lesson he taught me
"whip the left one if you want to turn left
 whip the right one if you want to turn right"

but he never returned
some said the bulls got away from the hook
and he lost his way back home
but no one lost their way back in their own hometown
Some said he ran away with the feudal lord's daughter

All sort of stories cooked up
when his family could trace only the lantern
with its wick all burnt.

But one day after many months
I met him on Ukhrul Road
He hold my hand and said smilingly
"Ar Ti Ti ! Turn back
 Go back home
I have few things to harvest
we are planning an Ambush"

and the next day
His body arrived in a truck
with hundreds of pamphlets
and in the evening
every thongal burnt a torch
and no one talked of him anymore
and never i heard the same wail from any bullock cart
it was the innocent wail of a soul
for wanting to die or live for something he valued

Imphal

Imphal!
you flip each days lamenting
the hangovers of drunken politicians.

Imphal!
how is your womb tonite?
does the new year bring a sweet prick
inside you?

Imphal!
how is the sky above you with all the stars?
are the stars twinkling in such foggy nights?

Imphal!
Why are they combing you?
Are they looking for another Sanjit and Rabina?

Imphal!
Why are there no walls to keep you safe?
Why are there walls only for Armies and MLAs?

Imphal!
Still I am in love with you
Still I smell hope in your bloody streets
Still I feel the innocence of Imphal river
Still I don't sleep at nights thinking about you

O Midnight Writer by the Lake Shore

O midnight writer by the lake shore
flicker your cigarette write me a poem
the lovers are gone running like rabbits
becoming old losing the stupidity of youthful days

here is my word "rejection"
it may be yours too
as i see you sitting by the lake shore
selling poems with tearful eyes
to the silent nights before sunrise

O midnight writer by the lake shore
how much you earn a night
how many cigarettes you smoke
before it lights the sky
how cold is the wind
that comes from the city you reject?

(PS: This poem is to the Character (the Poet) in the movie "Before Sunrise")

Lets Make a Film

Lets make a film
bring a tripod
and spread its legs
to make it as firm
as mountains
it is all dark, right?
So wide the aperture
you need more light
you need to roll the tape
hey you! be in shape!
And you get ready
the second shot is yours

Ok!
Action!
"Bang Bang Bang"
No one lives
they all die
Only a child left
crying by a bank of river

Cut! Cut!
You Fucking Cunt!
Do you know
how much i have wasted
I want the child to be shot
after the last drop of tear
from his eyes..
Ok you Pig head!
You got it right??
this must be the 2010th takes

Ok, Action!
"Bang bang Bang"

Yes! that's it
it is gonna be great movie
I need an editor now

A dawn with Ibopishak

4am in the morning
He felt off from my dirty old book shelf
he stood up dusting off his bald head
and looked at me
like i was one of his half written poem
and said "don't follow me
searching for the silver oak tree
i have chopped it down
wearing my wife's gown
calling myself Shrimati Tomcha Babu
i hid myself from police babus
but never i could hide myself from poetry
the Chilean poet claimed poetry came after him
but i am poetry since 1969
soaking my legs in Kongba river
hanging under the bridge for my beloved
i was the one who plucked mangoes from a branch named "China"
and ate them at a branch named "Africa"

don't follow me
walk ahead
I have to meet George Bush at Lilong
don't even follow my poetry
they hardly reach Shillong
I ride a Humber Bicycle
but never learnt to slow down
to talk to the man in bullock cart
or never to talk to a peasant
when my wife demands me a new blouse
in my house of poetry
in the beginning of poetry full of month
and you know?
I stitch a blouse for her with my poetry

don't follow me
they have translated my poems already
but no one can translate me
who can translate me?
not you not any of you in this valley
how will you translate
the wail of a hungry market dog
how the fuck will you interpret
a dog urinating on my bald head
how? how on earth?

don't follow me my boy
I was the "hayingkhongyambi"
that questioned the beliefs of our drunken Vaishnavites
i was that mouthful of rice in Lukhak-Kom
that called himself a king of this land

i was the one who sold kids
in the carnival of death and corpses
with parrots eating the flesh of  young boys

don't follow me
look at them learn to live a poetryless life
go find a good wife
poetry can't challenge your enemy
look at me dying here
look at my books lying there
but i have no fear for this land
but only the one with fear survives here
with their pockets full of lies

lovers in winter

lovers in winter
like left over plate of rice
to a poor family
from a rich family
eating up the flesh
like a fresh rose
in the morning sun
frying themselves in bed
rolling and tossing
creating a moist universe
fills with cries in verse

lovers in winter
they dont feel cold
they don't hold to their age
they are newly born
stoned with lust
just as stupid as clown in circus
they whisper in silent night
they cry watching Popeye
they serve dinner with waist down naked
they just smile and say thousand words

Lovers in winter
they are the singers
they polish their fingers
for the dark night
their legs kick in air
they pant in stair
with silent giggles
in the rhythm Christmas jingles

Contessa

Driving the Contessa
i peeled the dusty road
with my sister tired and bored
looking for a peg of life
in the foreign evening
of Christmas stars
we thought it was a dry day
but with sweat and blood
 the street was all wet
and a sad man
with blood dripping from his nose
looked away blindly
as Santa Claus got stuck
in traffic jam for the beggar boys
so the socks they filled with coins
with thumbs up
and they sang
"Such a life
of such day
how do you find my friend
how does it feel to be in the street?" 

stupidity

where is me
tell me
you want to play
hide and seek.
am i in your city
or in my valley
Reading Shelly
i give up poetry
Reading pound
i lose a pound
do i sound
like a stupid queen in crown
or a proud fowl
which escapes a soup of bowl
Oh i am stupid
as cupid
dont think it is a poem
i will hit your loin

A post card to my father

I am your travelling-son, father,
Since you left me
In the crowded railway station of Guwahati
i started my journey by Brahmaputra Mail
with a physicist who loves Graham Greene
who taught me life is short to do everything
and i learnt the hardest part is to be a traveller like me
and the easiest thing is to write poetry
using names like Neruda, Guevara and Mayakovsky

Father, in my journey
I have missed home
but i believed there is so much in love
and the city i travelled
Now i wish to recycle this city in my desktop
as it threw me out on 15th December, 2009
leaving me stranded in a crossroad
with 1000kilograms of luggage
that i gathered in my ten years of travelling.
where shall i go now with all these
with no friends and notepads
where i can fit them as poetry
like stars studded in a pixel of sky
Must i end here?
Shall i burn myself out at home?
Don't tell me father "Go tell it on the mountain"?

I imagine you selling transistors to old men
It is Christmas time, you must be selling stereo tape too
to the brothers from hills who wear leather pants and hats
like some Texas cowboy in old Hollywood movies
But the smile was gone from your face
the grey beard replaced it
as you die fighting with them for every demand letter
they brought to your table.
I curse myself for loving home sometime
as i know they too prove that they love the land
with names like Kangleipak, Republic front and borrowing
all the good phrase of great history of revolutions.

I apologise father
I am your travelling son
who seeks nothing in life
other than living a day with a rucksak 
filled few lousy algebraic calculations
and few poems
dying to be on some white page of a capitalist

Father,
I am sending you this post card
as Christmas arrives everywhere with snow,
 i know you don't care of Christmas
but you will smell it in the rice and potatoes you eat
as it passed through highway 39
or you listen to the bell "Nagaland for christ"
Give my kisses to mother.

Hip Hop Poem

i was inside the store
listening to a black song
about the world going wrong
smoking pot through a bong
they call it submarine
it reached my spleen
I break danced with my head in spin
while the radio sang I am the king
yet in this world where do i fit in
I dont know i don' know

Mama cries watching soap opera
the poets die for words of Neruda
Flamboyant chick, she wants America
The newspapers, all for Telangana
while the radio sang I am the king
yet in this world where do i fit in
I dont know i don' know

If you were born Indian
drowning in Sambar or frying with benggan
Ten days of fast fucked the nation
But nine years of fast in the hill
dies away like effect of a crocine pill
so I say fuck the nation
they have no solution
while the radio sang I am the king
yet in this world where do i fit in
I dont know i don' know

To Peace

Peace blooms good in books
Peace looks good when it means White dove

But I have also seen a friend (Kanano Khangbro)
who flushed it down in some western commode
may be too impatient
like the toothbrush which couldn't wait
to see the teeth shining for a cheap ad
and the toothbrush too was with peace.

Yoko and Lennon left the bed
leaving peace as wrinkles on the bedsheet
with pillow stained with lennon's imagination
O Peace!
Stop teasing me
i don't long for you

Call me a Hero

If i die while writing a poem
dont call me a poetry maniac
call me a Hero :)
as i search for home in words
like bomb and tomb

Mangjijao Hoten-2

Lately Ta Mangijao discovered that his only son
Danny Jao is also very good  in organising events
He organised a birthday event at Kilokri Subji Mandi
in which the birthday boy cut a cabbage as the night was dark
and lost the cake in midnight traffic jam of delhi
he can't bear any kind of viruses
he exterminate viruses and name them after people he know
like "Ringo, Raju, Sumitra"

Proud Ta Mangijao posted his sons pictures on the walls of his hoten
in different pose including Krishna Pose
which often looks like something heavy is inside him.

After a heavy meal of Hangam chamthong and hawaijar metpa
Ringo day dreamt, sitting at the bench of Hoten
smoking a Mantu Bidi with a tooth peak in his mouth
he finds his love in Loktak, clad in phanek with a long in her hand
and singing Pamuba laone, Software na kanaroi
lamdamse hardware olle India gi

her visits to Mangjjao hoten made Sumitra quite an Intellect
so she teaches "Romeo's recipe of Oak Chagempomba"
instead of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
And the young radical Muslim students are liking it
as she never used word "Swor"

Wondering the "non linear dynamics" of Ta Mangijao hoten
Umeshkanta came like winter crab near Imphal Turel
with his crazy leg he learnt from John Travolta of Pulp Fiction
with Uma Thurman who was a wfie of a Black Gangster
who got sodomised by a Gay Police.

And While the hoten was enjoying the news of Ringo jao being eloped
leaving his Yamaha peirced an old Banyan Tree
Sonyboy complained of the stinking toilet as he followed Romeo Jao
after they had "Wathi Chagempomba"
with the good old club secretary who wished Ene Purnimashi while she was sitting
near a khongban :)

So tamo Basanta Jao left a western commode for Sonyboy
saying
"My boy! Dont make yourself heavy
But make mother earth heavy
there are aliens around to take off mother earth like a space ship"

da Balan jao came late at night
with a Mayep on his shoulder playing a song called "Fireflies"
to forget the blues of his eloped daughters

Ta Vimol came like gansgter of 80's bollywood with bald head
asking Da Balan Jao "who took away the girl?"

They belived Akhu took the girl away..but no
the truth is Akhu came his pant rolled down and shirt rolled up
looking for a dog to lick away his yongchak flavour ass
as Tamo Basanta Jao advised in his uchina like ears

And Da ringo Jao came "Bingo" again
and screened his movie "Into the wild"
like the filmaker in Mr. Bean's Holiday
all the critics agreed the movie was good
but the film lacked romance,love and tender
and too much of Bidi and drinks

Ta Basanta Jao distributed Sand clock to Pakhang macha
reminding them that they belong to Kangleipak  to
marry young, who knows a bullet is on your way?

But the mesage leaked way
thru zipped Pakora in Gmail 
and reached ta Duran Jao
So suddenly he dressed up himself as Groom
and posed in mirror and the mirror shattered into pieces
and the whole mumbai woke up thinking of another 26/11
but he said to the world
"Now i am going to be married soon
Dwipen! come! Hold the Chaisen!
Ringojao, Kadai eigi Satin!
Ta Balan Jao! Spare me from E-RANG
Now i myself need some e-rang"

While TaDuran Jao was playing drum in his own Marriage
Supriya popped up here and there like a feet in the rhythm of thabal drum
sometime in Dubai during Ramdan
sometime in Banglore wearing the biggest chapal on earth
sometime in delhi to sing "Let it be"
while Umeshkanta Jao is trying to snatch away the MIC for his Lan Pamde

When Ringo ended being a tired Motor Cycle Dairy Hero
DA KK jao came with a yellow Lambetta
and they both rode off for the BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

and single Dwipen jao started looking around for his right mate
but he found no one except the same old Chafu of Uti of Ta Mangijoao

And suddenly everyone in Mangijao Hoten heard the news
"Someone eloped, someone eloped, Nupi chelle Nupi cHelle"
Ta Mangijao spread his mat(fak)
and everyone sits with a glass of black tea in their hands
and start the usual the discussion on everything under the sun
But Ta Duran Jao is missing ....
and suddenly TaMangijao's radio bursts:
"Leikai gi echal apamba yam yaowee
Mityeng nayeng yamna chumdaba yaowee"

Maisnam Mangijao Hoten

there was a confusion between Maisnam and Denzongpa
untill Da Danny opened Mangijao Hoten
standing inside the lee shoes of his daddy Mangijao
And so a Broken hearted Da Ringo came down
from the hills of Ukhrul with a cigerrete in his hand
like a hungry useless meitei lion singing Zionism by his black shirt

Tamo Basanta brought Morning to Mangijoa hoten
with his nursery rhyme "Taibi Taibi Yes Praja"
while the hills were singing "Hallelujah"
Sometimes he came with Toningkok
wearing neck tie and sold it to Tamo Vimol and Ta Duran

Ta Duran arrived in evening sitting on a banana leaf
like he was having a magic carpet ride with his eyes
gazing at Ta Mangijao's Bora thru his thick glasses
he pleased the girls in the hoten singing "Love me two times baby"

And Da KK popped out of an old Krishna calender of Hero Cycle
which was posted since class of 1999 next to Ta Mangijao's Funga
when the torn krishna smelled the chicken iromba of Romeo, the moreh hero
Romeo not only was a great cook
he even sold away pumpkins from thong nambonbi
saying they are all from Moreh
He wears a garland of sunflowers and serve KFC to Mangijao hoten

And Raju the overdosed poet with haiku
sits next to Mangijao's Meiphu
smoking bidi, blowing meikhu
waiting for the freid Waikhu

And earlier the girls were too shy to smoke
eventually they became Nisha Bandh
with their mouth stink with Vodka and Rum
while supriya sold away Hawaijar in dates
while Babina became a poet who lost her gender
between Jao and Thourani

And Dwipen left everyone for his spiritual life
that he longs for since he became single
and breakfasted with Old Monk in Pune
But he came home wearing Da Ringo's face "Yumai"
Yes his face has become spiritual
and as soon as he came back he jumped into a chafu of TaMangijao's Uti
he wishes to grow his tummy like Himalaya
"it is eternity"

Winter Time

it is winter time
with market full of peas
it is winter time
with days full of sleep

give me peace
no the scars from drunken night
November left me
with my forehead swollen
December arrived
with my weak punch bleeding

i am living
with my hair falling like autumn leaves

Mama it is winter time
dont call me from home
i dont want to hear the news
dont wake me up mama
i only want to wake up clean
leaving my scars on my Moreh blanket

it is winter time
and i dont want to hear a chime
of the church bell
that rob the sincerity of many lives in hills

it is winter time
i dont want to write a poem of hate
it is winter time
love falls from the sky
i pick it
and get lost in translation
and i say "Sarang Ngiyo"
as she asks me to pay back
the six years of love and fight
with my stupidity,

the six years in which
she adoringly said
quoting Ondatjee
"Seeing you
i want no other life"
when it is winter and we die
ourselves for pork with bamboo shoot


it is winter time
again a weekend arrives
flavoured with smoke and scent of rum
and we burn out like fireflies in dawn

the great cook

The great cook has arrived in town
with a recipe book wearing a white gown

So no animals walk the streets
no cows, no buffaloes, no humans
He has brought the biggest tandoor from Punjab
and the spices from south India
he will prepare chapati, red gulab jamun
and all sort of qormas and human tandoori

hey people, hide!

ode to toothbrush

Oh my toothbrush

you are all torn

looking like a bramble bush

but u never protest a morning

this mouth is as sinful as they are

as it is the weapon for poor

you dont know

what have i eaten at night

what have these teeth chewed in the dawn

even they hit me

this mouth never bleeds

but today it is bleeding

i know what would the doctors say

they would say my 'gum is weak

use a softer costlier brush'

oh if i throw you away

the ragpcikers will pick you

and the cobblers will use you

to polish the leather boots

I shall never throw you away

I shall love you

even if my lover departs in such cruel winter

I shall love you

we have survived together

this poverty, this history and this poetry

Momo poem inside INA Subway

suddenly i missed home
and my tongue missed the taste
so i walked down the subway
and had a plate of momos,
eight pieces of momo,
dipped well in the chilli paste
it gave me a certain feeling of home
but not the full one
that i felt the moment i stepped down from Bluehills
So i walked further
and saw on the wall
"Give me blood
I will give you freedom"
and i was satisfied
when i changed the word freedom into blood
and it said
"Give me freedom
I will give you blood, your blood"

Poem for Romeo Loitongbam

A winter night in delhi
swallowed two small gold flake cigarettes
while it brought no solution
for our lives in the middle of a crossroad.
We were caught by the night
with the philosophy of death and life.
many walked away siding us
many lived too worrying about routine insanity of life
about marriage, jobs and future
And here we were making stories
of walking all over the country
leaving foot prints in every nation with peace
Yes we are mad and they are sad to know it
but we will live our life the way we want
even with out a proper lab where you can study
Zinc Oxide or Romeo and Juliets :)

Losing You

I am losing u in the streets
where i found poetry 
covered by autumn leaves
under the sky of crazy November,
the month i died with you
in my poetry