Geisha in Kimono

Like a geisha in kimono

My steps were short along the dark tunnel

Reluctantly.

Feet shackled,

Eerie silence punctured by the guards

Barking order.

The foul stench dug into my nostrils while

The damp walls chilled my bones and

Tortures broke my skin.

The iron doors creaked when

they dragged out

My brother’s skeletal body barely

Moved,

And I haven’t seen him ever since.

 

Copyright@ndhargyal2016

WE CAN AND WE MUST By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa

I have vanquished evil with good
And conquered cancer with prayers
I have found how an Apple changed the world
And experienced momentous changes in my life
I have read David killed Goliath
And sighted little ants subdue hornets
I have observed diminutive termites destroy houses
And watched tiny seeds bloom into gorgeous flowers
I have witnessed people power topple dreadful dictators
And noticed that everything is impermanent in this world
I have established that dreams can be realized if put into action
And heard a voice in the wilderness overcome racial discrimination
I have seen non-violent movements achieve independence for countries
And viewed a commando shoot down the world's most feared terrorist
I have observed the moon reflect the sun's rays to shed light upon the earth at night
And discovered how inquisitive tinkering in a garage led to life changing achievements in technology
So can Tibetans achieve freedom from China?
Yes we can and we must!

Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa - 2011

SILVER BELLS AND BRASS KNUCKLES By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa

Displaced people and illegal occupiers
Don't go together
Silver bells and brass knuckles
Don't go together
Cordial arms and clenched fists
Don't go together
Disturbed minds and firearms
Don't go together
Blue skies and dark clouds
Don't go together
Religion and communism
Don't go together
Democracy and autocracy
Don't go together
Ammonia and bleach
Don't go together
Water and cesium
Don't go together
Peace and War
Don't go together
God and the devil
Don't go together
Tibet and China
Don't go together
What goes together are
Tibet and Tibetans
Freedom and independence

Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa - 2012

Ode to Eskdalemuir by N Dhargyal

Its intriguing
The way the river Esk flows
cascading burns for its limbs like
A giant centipede it creeps
Through the Scottish hills and valleys.
And following the landscape
It twists and turns
Yet it is old, ancient
And stands host
To the ever changing scene
On its shore;

Girdal stanes* and Loupin stanes*
May strike forlorn figures among
the meadows where soggy fleeced sheep
Roam and graze,
But like wise elders they tell
tales of the Neolithic age, when warriors cried out from
Bessie’s hill* resonating throughout
The valley of Eskdale.

Now the clash of cymbals
Echo along the shores of the Esk.
While the breeze flaps the 7 coloured flags
And living souls are serenaded by
Chants lilting from the temple like
Dakinis playing celestial music in the sky.

Blood always soaks the earth after execution (Part 1) of a short story by N. Dhargyal

The last of the traffic driven passed by, the streets wore an empty look with its electrical poles making patterns against the night sky. Stray dogs had long settled down for the night along the sides of street narrow alleyways. Then it happened without any warning, caught Lhasa off guard in the early hours. An Earthquake rocked Lhasa; the capital city of Tibet. The tremor was so powerful that the old houses with weak foundations crumbled to the ground. Clouds of dust billowed up into the sky temporarily blocking the clear view. Tall buildings swayed from the impact, lights flickered and then went out. Electric poles with their hanging spaghetti of cables crashed one after another along the street each with a loud crash.
Palden Gompo; a political prisoner was being held in solitary confinement in the notorious Drapchi prison and he was thrown off his rickety bed by the force of the earthquake. He landed on the floor between his bed and the wall of his tiny cell. He lifted his skeletal head slowly still heavy with sleep, to see his small world moving around him and his skinny body being tossed about like a ship caught in a storm. Pieces of concrete came loose from the ceiling, fell on his bed along with clouds of dust and grit. He pulled himself onto his feet when a moment of calm came, and rushed to the metal door of his cell while knocking off the mug that was lying by his bed with his feet and renascent of yellowish liquid spilt out from it onto the floor. His head was spinning; he felt as if he couldn’t’t breath the heavy dust filled air. He started banging fiercely.
“Help!”
Palden called out as loud as his throat would allow.
“Earthquake!”
But there wasn’t any immediate response. A few precious minutes passed in eerie stillness. Both his hands were raised against the solid door when another violent tremor hit. It shook the building so hard that he was thrown back onto the rubble and debris on the bed. The bare light bulb that dangled from the ceiling swung round and round before it went out and the room became completely dark.
A silence followed, all he could hear was his heart pounding and the sand pouring from the cracks in the damaged walls. Then, in the darkness, Palden heard a haunting, indistinguishable crackling noise. He couldn’t see anything in the pitch black. But, the noise was getting louder and louder. After a few moments he saw a speck of white light shooting through a tiny spot in the iron door. Somehow it became bigger and brighter, moment by moment. The spot became a crack in the door which appeared to be widening as if a wielder was cutting through the solid metal from the other side. Palden was struck with horror, yet his gaze was fixed in the direction of this ever expanding extraordinary white light. In an attempt to escape he moved his body backward until his back was firmly pressed against the wall. He was trapped within his confinement he thought. His twig-like hands were locked around the edges of his bed. There wasn’t any escape route; all he could do was wait to be consumed. He took in lungs full of dusted air and coughed.
Panicked and horrified yet his curiosity still managed to take the better of him and made him wonder “What is this amazing light?” After a while the light became overwhelming, he had to raise his thin arms over his face to shield his eyes. In this dazzling light Palden’s skeletal torso showed its true frailty; he was covered in dust from head to toe. Once he was a handsome man but his muscular body had now reduced to a skeleton. Peeping through between his fingers what Palden was to see next took his breath away and momentarily he lost sense of his whole body, as though he was suffering a stroke. His heart beats fluctuated; a strange nauseous feeling engulfed him. Drops of sweat surfaced on his dusty forehead before trickling down the sides of his face, leaving zigzag trails on his skin.
Out of the dazzling light appeared a giant silhouetted figure, gradually moving forward towards Palden. He could distinguish the outline of two horns on the giant head, and it appeared to be holding a spike studded club in its right hand as the shadow it cast lingered on the horror struck face of its potential victim. Then adding to Palden’s misery, for some moment it stood over him, staring straight into his eyes like a blood thirsty Dracula inspecting its victim. He tried to scream out of fear, his mouth opened wide but no sound came out, as if there were something knotted around his throat. His chest expanded and contracted in quick successions as he breathed in distress. Then without a warning the giant raised the club wielding hand into the air, and a shadow lingered briefly on the wall behind them. Palden raised his hands to protect himself, and tried to wriggle free before it came crashing down with lightening speed and landed on the side of his head with a force. He felt an excruciating pain shoot through his frail body; his vision blurred from the effect, and he buried his head in his hands. Soon he felt blood pouring out of the gash on his head; a warm mixture of blood, dust and sweat trickled down his hands and face, it started to drip in quick successions from the tip of his nose and chin. A moment later he felt another blow, this time on his arm; he screamed in agony and felt as if his arm had snapped into two. The giant grunted for the third time; and then his club landed on the victim’s knee with such a force that it tore Palden’s trousers and left the knee cap exposed with hanging tissues. All of sudden, beating stopped as abruptly as it started. The giant proudly began to assess the damaged.
But despite the inflicted pain, Palden was overcome with a sudden sense of déjà vu like he knew this pain so well and there was something familiar about his tormentor he thought to himself. After pondering for a while he realised that he had been attacked with an electric prod; since different weapons were often been used to torture him, either to extract confession or just for the sake of entertainment for the guards. So, he had learned to differentiate the pains from the difference weapons and tools.
When he slowly raised his bloodied face using the little strength left in him to have a closer look at the sadist silhouetted figure, like a view through an auto focus camera lens a feature gradually came alive out of the dark figure. It is a human after all he thought when he spotted the slit eyes with a flat nose bridge and a moving mouth with glimpse of rotten teeth. He recognised the face, his eyes blinked a couple of times and he slowly wiped the thick blood from his face with back of his blood red hand.
 “Zhang Han”
He thought to himself, the ruthless Han prison guard. Palden let out an audible laugh of relief. He realised that the guard was yelling rather angrily at him. But, because of the severe beating his hearing had temporally impaired, all he could hear was a very distanced and muffled sound like a tape running on near flat batteries. Then he felt Zhang’s hands on his chest, and a strong grip on the collar of his blue prison uniform and a lift into the air before he was violently shaken for few times like he was a rag doll.
“You crazy parasite”
 Zhang Han barked at his victim. A strong stench of tobacco entered his helpless victim’s nostrils.
“Why are you screaming in the middle of night? Where is the earthquake, you fool? You must be hallucinating again. Barbarian”.
With that Zhang released his grip, and the battered human carcass dropped on the bed like a chunk of dead animal.  From the corner of his eyes he saw his tormentor departing, his hunched shoulder silhouetted briefly before disappearing and the iron door slammed shut behind him with a loud bang.
The confinement was quiet once again apart from the distanced faint scream of other inmates who were suffering the same fate as him. From the iron door his gaze followed onto the concrete walls around him which were still intact and without a single crack in them. An illuminated naked bulb still dangled from the ceiling, which set him wondered what was happening to him. Was he really hallucinating? Was he going insane? With these questions playing over and over again on his mind, he rested his blooded head on the ragged pillow and drifted into a sleep.

P.S. You can also buy N. Dhargyal's poetry book by clicking on the link below
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jasmine-Revolution-other-poems-ebook/dp/B007WFHUZ4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337808003&sr=8-1

N.Dhargyal's poetry e-book available now on amazon.co.uk

Poet N. Dhargyal brings out his best in this collection of poems. He uses poetry as the tool to raise awareness about Tibet and brings a unique perspective to his work; to N. Dhargyal poetry represents both a channel for drawing support to his country’s struggle for independence and antidote for dealing with his own frustration at being a stateless.

‘The Jasmine Revolution and other poems’ also cover various subjects, from tear jerking love and comic themes, to social economic and political matters.

E-book is will be available on amazonkindle and other amazon websites from tomorrow..

The achievement

Every single word that trickled down onto the paper
is an achievement.
Every poem I wrote is an achievement.

Every book I read to my son and made
him giggle is an achievement.

Every food I cooked for my family is an
achievement.

Every phone call I made and heard my old
father laugh at the other end is an achievement
and my patience to listen to my uncle's talk is an achievement.

Every slogan I shouted in front of Chinese Embassy is
an achievement.
Every time I managed to be the pain in the arse of the CCP and
make their heart curl with hate is an achievement.

Every single tear I have shed for my mother's death
is an achievement.
Every life is an achievement
and every death is an achievement too.

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