At the Headquarter

Image by Jaime Gisbert, from Public Domain Pictures

I

A tired husband just saw off his woman at the headquarter
Thence he had to take his daily trip to some working fields
His energy unit is always measured in insulin syringes, 
The woman here, to suck in the town’s morality
Living up to the lust of the people of this land of jewel
The town’s morality is measured from her poppy-blooming body
As the value directly corresponds to the lying filth around
The pigs’ smells, the unattended garbage, the roadside stench,

And elsewhere the believers talk about virtues
As old pushers with wrinkled skins wink at the visitors.
And the cops were looking for one shot of clearing,
Earning, robbing from diacetylmorphine-laden corpse-like bodies
They did--they always do with keen eyes
And wary addicts looked for one shot of paradisal potion,
The ghetto headquarter is no promised land
Yet sex and drugs change all the equation.

II

The wrath of the familiar people from home and around
The overcare of the love ones who share the books of life
The herpes-breeding solvents from the Imphal river and Naga drain
The fragmented knowledge that schools fed us
The nightmare of spending time at the lockup
The contradiction of existence
The tragedy of self-destruction
The frustration
Everything evaporates at the vendor’s quarter
The dingy, crowded room is richer than the palace.
All it takes is a single shot that takes us to Shangri-la

III

Die.