Creation

Tender little tides of creation
Often forgotten tides of composition,
No ownership, no one’s possession,
but whosoever, it is final touch of the image,
Shape and reshape out of clay,
Renovating the assembled system today,
For the eventual recovery tomorrow-day.

Tiny tides in the gasp of life,
Impelled by our lived-experiences,
Cross the threshold,
Stuff the hand-made earthen corpse,
To mystifying energetic performance,
Communicating to the living matter.
Cultivate as the maker’s own masterpiece,

Artistically metabolising the sword of human survival,
Drawing and withdrawing the blade of militarisation,
Refuting the monster of the ruler’s muscle-
Careless, kiss and kill ideology,
Shameful Brotherhood, Love and Peace propaganda,
Slaving tides of varied range and audacity,
Gently thrilling expression of pain and suffering.


Soothingly arousing a trivial melodramatic insurgency
Demystifying the authentic blade of materialism-
bicycling greediness and covetousness-
Journeying from rancour to succour life
with the abyss of non-existentiality,
Communicating to the living matter,
Cultivate the tides of aesthetic pleasure.

Usham Rojio
14-03-2010

Stop Peace Hunting!

Flaunt no more your guns,
like an insincere advert
offering customers its stain.
In them, my choosy eyes take no delight
nor do I scare to pen my verse.
They are shiny roses amid deadly thorns.
Moan not if futility results from your frantic shoots.

I’m not blind, am much aware of sound mind
I’m not deaf; my ears grasp the hopeless strike.
Disparity, you say you extremely dislike.
What about your insincerity?
What about your insecurity?
Rome, they say wasn’t built in a day
As listless seconds altered to wearied minutes
Lonely Minutes to frustrated hours
Unwieldy Hours to mundane-ridden days
Peace-hunting days to peace-hopeful weeks
Harmony-buffeted Weeks to convalescing months
On the road to recovery Months to bitter years.
Streams to flow in deep red.
I’ve nothing to share.
Flaunt no more your guns,
Before it strikes you back.

Usham Rojio
18th April 2011

The pain of Disparity

Where are those days
indifferent and proactive?
The circled flight of birds-
unified, natural and free...
All had gone astray...
Parched land of disparity,
where like the dog
Humanity is tied in the veranda
by chains of eternal anarchy.

Myself uneasy and concerned these days,
The circled flight of birds-
rebellious restrained and caged...
blurred with time,
The entire 10 years struggle was just a puppet show...
But a three days drama made a BIG sense
For the simple reason that
Anna Hazare was not Irom Tomba
The sun is stern, and the moon weeps.

See the fractures
There is a boundless range
Feel the heartaches
there is an endless pain.
And I can’t tell,
if the cats are any higher
Than mountains.
I can’t stay in this country
Brother Anna
You stepped all over us…
your paths are like tectonic valleys
millions of lines
discriminating and racial lines
What for
I have to sing
Jana Gana Mana…?

Usham Rojio
17th April 2011.

I had lost my memory

Strolling down the memory lane,
Counting down micro-seconds of my life,
Tracing down the fragments of existence,
It is far too late, too late.
And these words will echo for years.
My body rusting in the rain,
in the rain of bullets.
Some will cry foul over it,
Some will blissfully appreciate it,
For I had lost my memory.
Something scuffling inside my brain,
Something horrible, murky and moldy.
For, I had lost my memory.
I had lost my memory
incessantly, insidiously,
scary rhythm of the pendulum
of the memory lane.
When………………...?
Sanamacha was picked-up from home?
Bijoy lost his way home?
State terror in Langjing, April 1980?
Heiranggoi Thong massacre, March 1984?
Oinam village’s massacre, July 1987?
Kachai, whole village tortured, April 1991?
Tera keithel, August 1993?
Ukhrul bazaar, Makui village, Nungkao,
RMC, Bashikhong, Tabokpi Khong,
Nungleiban, Kwakeithel, Churachandpur,
Tonsen lamkhai, Malom…
Bishnupur, the day Chitaranjan burnt…
I really don’t remember,
When did I lost my memory?
Ask me no question,
I will tell no lie.
But I had lost it.
Did I cook with ngari?
Or had I fried with potato?
Or had I forgotten in my classroom?
Or had I lost in the argument with my professors?
When…? When…?
Strolling down the memory lane,
where I and the light fade.
Sing the hi-fi song,
up the volume,
the memory swallows the pain.
Somewhere, somehow
I had lost my memory.
Is it when I got shocked
when nine Imas stripped off their clothes?
Is it on the day I read news of
a mother being raped by Indian Army
in front of her five years old son?
Or is it when it swept with flooding,
When the rain is running,
With the tears of blood crying.
Or had I lost it just today,
In the tight Delhi Blue line bus
Bus no. 534,
May be,
Pickpocket might have stolen it?

Rojio Usham
16-07-2010

On the fire

On the fire, I walk.
Beneath the rain, I cry.
Under the hailstones, I survive.
In the thunder, I howl.
Throughout the storm, I fly.
Below the star, we hide.
In the dark, I search my way.
All through the frozen winter, I swim.
Encircled by testosterone soldiers,
We encircle thabal chongba[1].
Under the moon, they rape.
Under the sun, they kill.

Rojio Usham

29th August 2009

---

[1] Manipuri moonlit dance in circle.

Right to Education

I'm the jailbird of my body,
the term of sentence is indefinite
Exclamation is the boat of my life
No way to escape, I must howl
To die, to sleep is atone
But my ‘right to life' is out of tune.
Rightly remarked, I read somewhere,
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian"
Search for such life, we'll prove fine,
Dreams wrapped with grief and disgruntled
Silently standing under the fall, such is our kind.
Thanks to the black suit lawyers,
whose hearts are full of black markers,
They make laws for Lawmakers;
See, how merciful they are;
They send us a package of declaration,
A package of RIGHT to EDUCATION,
With their gun pointing on our brains.
Nor the beginning, nor the end drains.

Usham Rojio
28th Febuary 2010

Our Nights

My home far away,
My sweet little niece,
No cheat for a bed,
She doss down as usual,
Lay aside her pretty head;
A sleep on the hay.
The cattle are lowing.
Birds are chirping.
The stars in the bright sky
look down where we lay.

Sound of gunshots,
All of a sudden,
Echoes in the mountain;
Hear footsteps
rumbling down the corridor.
My angel awakes,
With her bright eyes open,
But no crying she makes;
I love you, my sweetheart.
She clings to me
and stays by my cradle,
till morning is bright.
The stars in the bright sky
look down how we stay.

Usham Rojio
6th January 2010

Peace Price

Carry out to the sea,
where your
drifting thoughts flow free.
Because this Sardar[1] land
is crafted with blood…
Guide us to a far distant land,
that only the heart can see.
There we shall paint a great portrait,
of what this world should be.
A place without senseless wars,
and human poverty.
Life without Justice
Is a low estate,--
Cowards shrinking
To an Iron Fate!
You journeyed…
Not for being an Iron Lady!
But for Peace through Justice is supreme;
We'll pay the price of war
to make it real.
A single word can
brighten the face
of many who knows
the value of words.
Ripened in silence,
silence, an immobile mobility
acquires a great energy for war.
But they will speak many,
beating around the bush
for such a lawless law
for the reason that
it is a “disguise war,”
a “violence to institute order”[2].

War is cut short by a word,
and a word heals the wounds,
and there's a word that changes
poison into butter and honey.
Follow the Way.
Don't be fooled
by what you already know.
Be watchful.
Mirror before you speak.
A foolish mouth can brand your soul.


Usham Rojio
19th November 2010



[1] Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
[2] A. Bimol Akoijam argues that AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) is a “disguise war” or a “violence to institute order” to the people who doesn’t belong to the Indian state

Politics and Friendship

I'm the worst person
Stuck with in a traffic jam.
No benefits without scratches.
Take the world as it is,
Not as it ought to be?
Husbands are like fires.
They go out when unattended.
Proper names are poetry in the raw.
Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
One of the surest signs of the Politicians-
Their reverence for the superior tastes.
They are as much for Mars, as for Mercury
As well, qualified for war, as for business.
He who rejects change is the architect of decay.
The only human institution which
Rejects progress is the cemetery-
It has already been rejected.
It seems intrinsic and vital,
In relationships and all tasks,
That we concentrate only on
What is most significant and important?
Too many lives needed to make just one.
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.
To build on a sure foundation in friendship,
Love friends for their sake rather than for our own.