A Catastrophic Rune

Don’t you dare touch Maung Chaw Nwe
Don’t you dare touch Aung Cheimt
Don’t you dare touch Thukamaing Hlaing
Don’t you dare touch Maung Thee Thant
Don’t you dare touch Zeyar Lynn
Don’t you dare touch Sai Win Myint
Don’t you dare touch Saw Wai
Don’t you dare touch Manorhary
Don’t you dare touch Eaindra
I picture and miss those who’re still alive
The way they crawl in their obsessions
Between two banks, with their heads
And hands always possessed, sometimes
They float on the surface to take fresh poetic breaths
Rule in your own kingdoms, I do not crave
Your grapes, I go with the flow, I don’t know
My coordinates, I am the mother who doesn’t
Think about the day of her death – is that a mistake?
Sons, you should at least never be homeless
You can live without pampering your tongue
You can never forget your tummy, on the days
I write no poetry, my mind gets polluted
Those two younger sons have been weaned from milk
Their mother has separated from her bull elephant
To which shore, to which port her ship will land
If I have to weigh every word, I won’t be writing
Any chronicles, no deed, no creed.
I never got sacked in my whole history.
The more the vulgarity, the speedier life is.
Lines have been drawn and deleted
Objectives! What the hell are they? Where the hell do they go?
For whom the bell tolls, how plentiful is the dhamma,
The liniment blended with the self is for the self.
Now we get hesitant on greeting one another
Our derrières get heavier when forming a gang.
I am the pickled vegetable
For hoorays and hoohahs
Breast milk desiccates… menstruation desiccates
Money desiccates… poetry desiccates… life…
Whatever transpires, I will never
Bow down at the well-synchronised yanes
Whenever my sarong slips off
I will wear pants!

A CATASTROPHIC RUNE