A Freebird Solo in Five Parts

Part I

The sky’s not the boundary
I have learnt it the hard way today
The invisible net stretches only till Langol
Twenty-five hundred feet above unknown seas
Too many heads & too many mouths
Too many tongues & too many hands
I’m unsure which head I should heed to
—Which mouth I should manage with
I’m a freebird caged in your designated lair.

Part II

“You cannot talk to the king
Remember it, I’ll not repeat it
You cannot fart aloud
I own the air till the end of the cloud
You cannot trespass
Else, get ready to fall into the crevasse
You cannot have too much fun
For your kind information I have a gun
You cannot afford not to be afraid
If you need help I have a grenade.”

Part III

When unknowingly at first I soared across
I was shot with a thousand questions of noncompliance
I was confused with the numbers of eyes too,
But I’m an animal of the soil
I have my life written all over here,
A thousand years of captivity in Antarctica
A thousand arguments will make no difference.

Part IV

The union of freebirds has declared
One hundred months of general strike
Now deal with it.

Part V

I’m a freebird in a cage
But I want to fly
Beyond the Chindwin and the Barak
With no conditions whatsoever
Yet every day, a piece of my soul perishes
No, not their orders—merely their name destroys,
The rule makers have huge obligations for principles.
Yet never in history have I found
The case of a freebird turning into a flightless emu