A free verse and some smell from last night

I was searching for some poems last night
and found them in my flat, in the toilet;
the last place I would go to,
if not for the first morning rush after
a cup of coffee and a fag;
But then so smelly they were,
lying listlessly as if
this is the month of yongchak;
so I left them alone, and
I felt like a poemless person.


An agonising boredom had the emptiness created
that I smoked several cigarettes
that my ventilator became a chimney
With the swirling smoke,
came the hundreds of smells.

I started smelling a rat
Of neglected freedom that has found meanings
in music and books and great stories only;
When the only liberty I want is to
sleep and eat and drink when I want.

If, even after all these eons of existence,
there was an end -- the happy end to begin with,
we would have come up smelling like roses
long before Naothingkhong ruled for a hundred years
long before the other kings started drinking cow urines.

Now, rose by any other name would smell as sweet
and did the Zedong guy say revolution is not a dinner party
but we have made it a business party
Smell so fishy, and it stinks to high heaven
all we care for is the fight for survival
the fight for satisfying extreme greed,
ever smelling blood. Ah well!
People have went to the moon.
Well. Well. Well.

Call me a revolutionary
I will build a mansion
Call me a politician
I will build two
Call me a worker of the society
And I will smell the biggest asses,
that's how things are
The world is so contradictory
as in me feeling so conscious in going to bed
and so unconscious in getting up.

But call me a common man
I'll only smell the poetry,
the sweet fragrance of beautiful ladies and
the aroma of kangsoi in its simplicity
and sniff everything under the sun, though,
there is not an end to begin with;
Perhaps life's a continuous, comprehensive evaluation.

So taking these farce and things and stuffs
as same as the shits that get flushed,
in thousands of tonnes
every morning, every afternoon, every night
So early morning I woke up and smelled the coffee
And drank it with a fag on the other hand
And I had to rush;
Habit, a bit is always there. I got to rush.

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POSTSCRIPT

yongchak
A Manipuri name for Parkia roxburghii, the tree bean or the stinking bean which is commonly available in the cold season. So tasty yet so obnoxious. A winter without yongchak for us will be a sound without voice. But we have been living in collective yongchakless years. Nevermind that.

Naothingkhong
A ruler in the 7th century AD

kangsoi
A kind of vegetable stew, which is usually served with the best local flavours

Works/pieces/and this and that related, in one way or the other, with smell:

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (movie/novel) - Tom Tykwer / Patrick Süskind
Smells like teen spirit - Nirvana
Sula (novel) - Toni Morisson
That Smell - Lynyrd Skynyrd
With an exception: Imphal Amasung Maagi Ising Nungsitki Fibam (novel) - Pacha Meitei

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