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……

burning me

things got burnt on the roads
and every lanes
that we have walked.
the fumes from the corpses
that had been torn
apart by the bullets
of smoking Guns
you think it is chaotic
and messy to see such bloody bodies
being displayed on the streets
but deep inisde a silence is haunting me
remembering the brighter lights
walking thru the tunnel of death
wish i could be a mother too
to guide the children
with the burning torches

Evening gossip in May 2007, Imphal

Evening came with all the stories
That one had seen on the day
Seven or eight of us were sitting
At the gate of one corrupt executive engineer
It seemed every one was a story teller
And soon we ran out of stories
It showed no one had stepped their foot
Out of their safe house or was it a bandh?
One was dreaming to go to Mumbai
One was saying to open a second hand cloths shop
Those cloths, you know,
The one you often know by its smell
One newly married guy started
How he listened to "Tambourine man"
When he did not have his pills
And asked his wife to sleep on a separate bed
It started drizzling suddenly
Everyone stood up
And ran under the little pan shop by the road
Which leads to Ukhrul
A married man chewing pan with his lips
Turned red like a woman pimp
In the bollywood movies
Welcomed us with his stories
He said he once was working as a bus conductor
And claimed there is no difference
Between being a conductor
And airhostess
The difference was how we smell
And the mini skirt chicks smell
He started with how Old Monk
Made him awake the whole nights
And playing cards inside the Howling Night super bus.
In between his different stories
He also kept mentioning about some ongoing Soccer league
He said his wife had never to cook with fire woods
Even when the blockade was going on
Oh! The stories went on

Soon there came another guy
In a drenched sleeveless shirt
Saying he just returned from a field
Where a guy was killed and left
By Manipuri Commandoes
Commandoes claimed he was an insurgent
But he said the body was his friend's
Who was married for five months…
And have a three months old baby
He just looked at the rain and sigh:
"Fuck these Commandoes
They put a revolver in his hand
And said he was so and so
And see tomorrow in the newspaper
How the media narrates this incident
Oh we are not safe to walk on this land"

Suddenly a two drenched girls passed by the road
In the famous vehicle of the town called "Activa"
Every one seemed to forget what we were listening to
We just felt happy seeing the two girls
Some passed some comments
Some said she must be great in cooking
Some really seemed to see their curves

They went on like a rolling stone
Some mobile phones kept on beeping
And the receiver kept on showing it to others
Who does not own one...
Soon everyone has departed
To sign their evening signature
To the local liquor shop
Alcohol is banned by many outfits or idiots
But by nights everyone smells good
Like the Jasmine I smelt once
Inside the Pune University campus

Darkness all around the town
Every lane is filled with drunk and doped sons
Every one has got a gun
It is cheaper than the pumpkin from Moreh
The authorities make it cheap
Whether you look down from a mountain
Or drown inside a pool of your own urine
Or you dream to make love
Inside the war cemetery with your love
All you see is the gun
Because you are the son
Of this land

I Am Naked

I had painted myself in blue
When I swam across the ocean
They saw my skin
I was naked

I had painted myself in yellow
When I walked through the field of daffodils
They saw my skin
I was naked again

I had coloured myself in black
When I slept deep in the darkness of night
But they saw me
I was strangled in the dark
I bled and puked my life out

Once I met a man
He was everyone
he could possibly be
A lover, a friend, a feminist
A loser, a man, a communist
A liar, a bastard, a capitalist

He spoke like the man
Upon the steepest mountain
Who could taste blood
When he stood under the fountain
But he saw my skin
As I had shed my clothes
For a bath in a pool
Of the dreams that he showed to me
I was a naked girl again
Then a spear pierced me
I drowned in tears of my crying

The travelers are deaf and blind
If the road runs against weakness and helplessness.

"All men are equal"
Why men not women?
Or is it like this:
"All women are slaves
and born to give birth to men"

Now I have nothing to speak of
Except the silence of intolerance
Yes, I am naked
Look at me,
Look at my skin
Feel the curves
Get on my nerves
If I am not wrong
You enjoy your mother.

A Silent Night's Sketch Of Summer

silent night silent memories
gradually grab the darkness
and leads me to a highway
Of rainy days
On the beach of an Ocean
where pink is the slippers
where blue is the water
where yellow is the sky
where flowers bloom in her hair
I forget I am colorblind
indeed I am not
indeed I see the colors
of things that i have not seen
earlier when i was crazier!!
my windows opening
against the darkness
the yellow curtains
that i washed once
on the new year eve
waving in the air
making me realize
i am nowhere on a highway
but inside my room
Silent cries
of the babies in their sleep
the roaring air cooler
the woman sleeping in the balcony
opposite to mine
not caring of her wayward blouse
as the sun still reminds
how hot the day will be
and the night is followed
by the husband's rebukes.
summer here is different
night here is not silent and still
might sound to you like a lie
but the flowers would have withered
by now if you were here
without an umbrella
One more thing
i want to tell you
mornings are incomplete
without the silent alarm
of your touch to wake me up
by your hands with the black mole
you know i am not colorblind
because i blindly look at the colors
and chose the one i had once
here April is ending
but it is where T S Elliot
starts his Wasteland
Oh! i just dragged him in
to make it poetic
because i have a habit
of making things sound poetic
even i will leave this world poetic
even i will drown poetic
Even i cry poetic
i see things like i am reciting a poem
the crowded markets the roadside romeos
the beggars the winters the autumn
all things are poetic to me
even the dirtiest politics
of the men in the chair are poetic to me

they say i am crazy
she said i use my poems to attract
the girls in pink
to follow me and fall together
into the category of stupidity
but i know who loves my poem
and who does not
Once i was told
"i am like this"
yes I am like this
i have been living for seven years
in a place called Sunlight Colony
where the Sun never bothers to shine
but the heat waves strike
in every summer
not a summer i missed
not a drop of sweat i left untasted
not a song of Bob Dylan
not a word of his protest
i missed
whether it is summer or winter
everything is poetic to me
even the Russian language
sounds to be rhymed
even if i don't know
when it does not snow in Moscow
Oh! Summer nights are poetic
Oh i can keep on writing
without an end
like the vastness of your blue sky
like the never ending dreams
of the dying old man
Like an orphan
i can narrate you the darker side
of the father daughter relation
like a river
i can keep streaming my ink
forget to tell you
about the children in summer
Oh! they are lovely
but dirty and stink
they love to have sugarcane juice
the juice of the poor
they love to play cricket
every kid here is Sehwag
when power goes off
the streets are filled with balls and bats
bigger and longer than the kids
they sweat they sweat
till they faint till the power comes
for another Bollywood calling.
yesterday a small girl in her panty
bearing the heat with her running nose
asked me, "Are you a Sardar?"
i said, "no."
then she asked, "why do you tie your hair
why do you have long hair and pony tail"
I just smiled with my small slanted eyes
made even smaller than ever in a childish way
my Hindi ran out before I could reply
even if i would have known proper Hindi
i would have been blank
still i have no answers..
where was I
where Am I now
i just do not know.
But Everything is poetic
but i know thats why i survive

Tapan's Flutes which i brought from Pune..

What shall i do with your flutes?
Should i give it to those communists
Whose voices have not been heard anywhere?
Or should i make a whistle blower out of it
For the silent Indian trains
which carry the outlaws, the rapist, the theives?
Or should I take it home to Imphal
Where the Green men rule and make us crawl
Under the Unkind Sun?
Or should I give it to Dr. M Sami
As the last gift from your side
For showing you those Mughal styled Biryani
With flies all over it
In the crowded market of Okhla?
Or should i leave it too a bengali sweet shop
to collect it by a Bong who pretends to love art
And who talks of rabindra sangeet and revolution.
Or should I come to Howrah or Coffe House
To play my distorted tune
Of Pather Panchali (song of the little road)
Tell me before its too late
or you are on the way to take it back
I am leaving this capital soon
This city is dirty and shitty
I hate being dirt
And had too much of flirts
With these north Indian girls
Who have round eyes and pointed nose
Home is calling me
Neither I can wait for the another dawn
Nor i can come to Howrah
Nor i will play anything
I am just going Home!!