1

You who dreamt of democracy
jumped off the roof and died
Was it a poetic gesture?
that mourns the death of rhyme?

Boris bleeds Fukushima
and Fukushima bleeds Domiasiat.
There is free uranium for India
dead bodies at the Domiasiat.

You who dreamt of rebellion
jumped off the roof and died
Was it a poetic gesture?
or, did you just resign?

2

Abbott and Modi were made for each other
to make love through the anti-immigrant laws
and hatred they exert towards illegality.
Just like my Khasi and the Assamese friends
or for that matter, the Bengali Hindu middle-class Brahmins I grew up with
if not the SCs, who used government quotas to ape Brahmins
but then, became stalwarts of the anti-subsidy campaign.

The economy is growing like a beast
We are all expanding—like that right-wing asshole who fucks Econometrics every chance he gets.
Out there, a poet screams,
“under the gutter!” But we have to keep growing.

We are vegetables,
genetically modified.

Now again, an insane, anti-Modi burp
leaves no room for rational criticism
only cleavages will pass, if not the wine.

Sometimes, I want to be an illegal migrant and fall in love with a Khasi village girl from Sohra
Will I be punished by my friends again?
Will I be cut into pieces too,
at the borders that they define?

3

I walk along an automated walkway, as the world around opens up like a jaw.

Nights lapse into days
The sky mock many colours
Summer wears Winter.

Like smoke, like liquids,
like the disgust that leaks through my veins, I move across my days, spitting love,
romancing filth with an absurd ecstasy of a fast approaching asteroid that can
destroy all reason.

Shall we who sit under the tables hiding our faces from them, from them, from light like an owl,
relieve ourselves off this gravity?

or, shall we float between these shades of reason, and faces they make
at us inside cold, ragged asylums?

Dissent, too, is a lip gloss.
This numbness now apes a dead sea,
rages underwater, stifled dreams for
reality to strip and come in terms with itself.

But, can we?

4

They talk of issues I believe in
But in a language I cannot comprehend.
I remain an outsider.
Is it my diction or my attire?

5

Protests, seminars, film screenings and live concerts at a pub.
They all seem the same to me now.
The same crowd, the same faces
The angle at which the wine glasses are held
remains the same.
We listen, we drink
We watch them speak

Then, we pout selfies with hashtags.

6

The libido for publication is high.
The academic ones are more miserable
in the sense, they hardly make any sense.

They are just looking for some free wine
and food on their plates.
So legends they call themselves,
as we applaud in awe.