To a Scarlet Amaryllis

In one gloomy corner of this room,
You are standing like the wild
but tamed elephant at Shamumakhong,
With your soul shackled in an unsung plant bosom,
Your tall legs tied forever
to the confining tiny land—tell me,
Do not you envy the white ibises
their flight of freedom.
Your wildness is in crimson, unblushing bloom
in your holier-than-thou countenance,
in the red rage, as if you have been mindful
of the mindless bloodshed of my tribesmen;
Be cheerful, Amaryllis,
Be your yellow siblings tho’ in this nook
You will see them never,
Imagine how they are delightful
Even in the deepest winter
They can dream of an impending spring;
Leastways, be a tinge of yellow;
In this alteration and your new self only
will people write of you,
Putting aside the gods and guns and goons,
But appreciating you
Your unspoken joy and your cherry eyes:
What life is made of, but wild celebration.

Biri Blues

Drag
Drag on
Drag me out
But you are only dragging me down to the drain

to hide yourself from the scorn of society.
When all I have longed was some taste in you.
When you would not even buy me, my boy;
Why, tell me why, my boy?

The rabble rule.
Don't be so cruel.
You are acting
like a military, like a fake democracy;

Live inside your building of indifference,
while you build a statue of liberalism at your gate.
How can I let you know the truth?
How would you know it?

Blinking and winking merrily,
I would stay rubbing myself
against the cracked lips and crooked teeth
of my dear, dirty, poor folks, who chain-smoke to reach their gods.

But I'm just the butt, filter-less
of a biri, in my bareness,
Here, used and forgotten, near the drain
with a bloody, faded, red thread dangling on my head.

On Solitude

On this promising day,
as the sun bathes
the reluctant sky
before the cold airs of the season arrive
their wintry little hands
extending unto us unwished,
delightful it is, we are gathered here—but
I have been yearning,
with all this glaring emptiness,
to know what exists between us,
to see what really exists.

No longer do I care,
in this land of the strangers,
how the sun is sought after these days,
greedily on the verandas and balconies,
and how the winter will be missed so much afterwards.
Waiting all along, all around.

But when you talk of love,
I’m occupied
with how I should not hate you;
When you talk of peace,
there is always a clarion call for war;
When you talk of justice,
is there an seething frustration
to break all the division;
To love is not to not hate.
To be peaceful is not to be not violent.
To live in a just world is not
to be not unfair in living.
When you talk of freedom,
I’m tied up in a chain of boredom.

Between me and you, there is
a world that flirts around with us,
with our cockeyed tease that it gets tickled.
And to my cold comfort,
I know that I know nothing at all.
Life’s been just a repast
that reeks of an otherwise delicious dish
that has turned simply sour, sans the salt.
And your company, out here, is purely redundant.

Andro, Manipur

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

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it 

in the slow movement of the hands of a clock” 

― Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell

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

Lansdowne, Uttarakhand

Today’s Morning News

Seven people killed, only three places bombed today;
In four places, sit-in-protest against the killing and bombing today;
The policemen blamed the patriots
The patriots are absconding, and a lot, the patriots are earning
The patriots blame the India—and of the land its vendible junta;
The India is sending a rocket to the moon in 2012;
6,000 acres of poppy fields are burned down, now deeper the raisers delve;
The genital doctor, he is my neighbour, has got a 1-crore demand letter
Search operation were conducted, luckily for the locality, only one suspect arrested
(According to some unreliable official sources)
The India is sending more mainland couches
For the beautiful wives and their riflemen and the army men;
I read the news, early morning, as I wait for the final poop
As I dream about fucking my motherland.