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Best Poems Written by Ibohal Kshetrimayum

Below are the all-time best Ibohal Kshetrimayum poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Don'T Ask Me About My Education

From time to time, people ask me
About my education.
Only then, I remember
I have no degrees or diplomas.
I attended no university either.
I hated textbooks and exams.
I still do.
That's bad education, they say.

But they don't know
I was taught by a book
No school could afford to teach from.
There was a street
Connecting south and north of my town.
It divided the market into two halves.
One half on the east and
The other on the west.
Another street bisected it
At the centre of the bazaar,
Below a flyover.
And, the crossroads was the battleground
Of the southern and northern gangs.
I belonged to the southerners.
The southern stretch of the street,
From the humped bridge to the edge of the crossroads,
Was my book containing all lessons.
I needed no falling apples
To understand gravity.
But from metallic sounds of falling coins
On the tin-bowl of a blind beggar,
Who sat in the shade of a fig tree,
The only tree left in the township,
Singing love songs 
Plucking rusted strings of his old guitar;
I learned about hearts with different gravities.
I was tutored by the street
About the equator, latitudes and longitudes,
When the gangs crossed borders and 
Engaged in fierce battles, fought with
Knives, chains, iron-rods, baseball bats and catapults.
I gathered ways of politics and diplomacy
While debating with the rich and famous
Who bought luxurious goods from big shops,
Without raising an eyebrow,
But bargained over price of five oranges
With an old woman selling fruits on the sidewalk.
I felt the brunt of economics from its ultimate core
When a pickpocket who was beaten black and blue,
By a mob, handed out to me a list of medicines
He promised his ailing mother,
When he left home with holes in his pockets.
You can ask me anything about
History and literature.
I won't run away before sharing some knowledge,
For I've seen the wars, the nazis, the concentration camps,
The French Revolution, Pearl Harbour, 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the communists and socialists,
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara; and also Macbeth, Othello,
Romeo and Juliet, Robin Hood, King Lear, King Arthur,
And other kings and their queens;
In the two bioscope halls of the street.
Well, candidly speaking, I even sat in one of the theatres
Holding rose scented hands of my (own) flower girl,
Watching Breakfast at Tiffany's,
On a forgotten Sunday.

So, don't ask me about my education.

Details | Ibohal Kshetrimayum Poem

There will be war, in fact, there have always been wars,
and will continue.
Wars satisfy us.
Our nasty muscles move in festive workouts,
when there is war; in hearts, minds and on tongues.
We suffer from cerebral indigestion, when deprived of
wars.
The other day, the day after his son's birthday celebrations,
with exploding music and drunken noise, which lasted
till wee hours of the night, my neighbor, somehow,
managed to transfer his frustrations upon me by littering
my backyard lawn with empty beer cans; probably
thrown over the barbed wire fence, by reveling guests
of his punk-offspring.
My dog, Snow, barked at the strange garbage with unsual
agitation.
It sensed an arrogant invasion on its fond green grass.
I too was gravely provoked and felt the need to wage
a war.
Thus, I skipped breakfast and waited for his emergence,
pacing on my courtyard in furious strides while my eyes remained glued to his front door, all throughout that sunny winter morning.
What followed next, I choose not to reproduce.
It was a war, of words, we prefer not to engage in
front of the children.
Ants crossed borders, everyday, in their tiny lifetimes.
But wage no war with termites, earthworms and roots.
They simply tolerate each other's organic aspirations.
Why do we have this genetic longings of counting corpses,
fallen chariots and diffused bombs.
Even as the good books cry for love and peace, while their
revered middlemen conspire with rulers and falsify faiths,
we are eternally charged for wars, until
nothingness will prevail in memories of ruins and ashes,
where poetry will lament with silent screams.

Details | Ibohal Kshetrimayum Poem

Someone Isn'T Giving Up

You said -
Give and I'll be given back
And I gave
And I became empty
And deserted
I promised
Not to feel for your world
Never again

The other day
I attended the funeral of the wife
Of an old friend
I saw my friend sitting by the coffin
Standing behind
I heard him whispring
Honey
Tomorrow
In the morning
You open this box
And come back to me
It didn't take a moment
For my eyes to become
Warm and wet
I broke my promise

Yesterday
I bought a turkey
For tomorrow is Christmas Eve
And I was cheated
For the bird was a pound less
Than the weight I had paid for
I again promised
To make myself more bitter

Today on my way back
From work
I saw a young woman in rags
Blind and skeletal
Struggling to cross the road
With a begging bowl in her hand
I ran between two speeding cars
Helped her to the sidewalk
Across the rushing traffic
I looked at her face
And felt a jolt inside my rib cage
Took out a grand from the wallet and
Squeezed it in her fist 
Blessed her in the lord's name
And returned home
I broke my promise again

Why are you
So stubbornly persistent
I heard myself murmuring

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Rain Dance

My mother puts on her royal attire
To do the rain dance of a princess,
But her feet are barren,
For it no longer rains like before.

Years ago, I watched mother dance,
Her fingers plucking moon petals,
And dropping them on my sleepy eyelids
While I laughed in pleasure
On iridescent nights in a land of dreams.

We could hear father reciting faraway verses
In his bedroom; his words stepped out
To the porch and joined mother
In her dance with the moon.

Today, I stopped mother in her attempt to dance
Under a dark sky of gunpowder smoke
And in the company of drunk shadows
Of dry mango trees wafting in wild winds,
And she gives up quietly.

An explosion shatters the silence,
And mother wriggles her feet,
Her heels grinding the burning earth.

She looks at me with wet eyes and says,
'Son, it thunders, let me dance', and
I see only the raindrops in her eyes.

But it no longer rains like before 
In the land where mother lives.

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Probably Haiku

On the snow
A piece of sky
A blue umbrella

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Touch Me Not

Cascading clouds
Walking ahead swaying
Black waterfall

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Hidden

Into halves
Knife cuts pumpkin
Damp flames

Best Poems Written by Ibohal Kshetrimayum

Don'T Ask Me About My Education

When I Try To Cry

Indifference

About You

Post Revelation Discerning

Someone Isn'T Giving Up

Rain Dance

Probably Haiku

Touch Me Not

Hidden