Reading from Southbank Centre's Poetry Parnassus festival, 2012.

Translated from the Burmese by Ko Ko Thett:
 
Slide Show
 
Life is back to normal
 
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In the West it’s a different story
 
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Shall we also discuss the issue of the privileged
 
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Impossible, I have said it many times
 
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Maria Seow, Channel News Asia, Beijing
 
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Since I have decided to wear only trousers
Not a single paso has entered my head for ten years
Similarly            a poem or Maung Ba
 
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By using traditional technology we continue to
Produce successful shrimp pastes
 
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The body parts of the hostages have to be
Matched with their identity cards
 
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Shibboleths in lieu of heartbeats
Your call cannot be reached at the moment
What if no one comes when the Great War is staged some day
 
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Since thirteen and a half I have made love to ten thousand women
I just wanted to connect with at least one of them
 
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Loathing+fear+fear and loathing
 
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The laughter I have learned masks those I have suppressed
 
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What’s life
It’s a sexually transmittable disease
Let’s share it
 
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The lives that have been barely alive and gone
 
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Idiocy, air, air, idiocy
No... No...
Life has to be entered from the other door
 
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The light that has left saying ‘Just a moment.’
 
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‘We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine’
 
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To fly through this invisible fence
 
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The issue is as simple as that, I reckon. Those who have existed, spoken and written before me were awe-inspiring and respectable. They were real scholars and genuinely learned men. I assume that you gentlemen are listening to me, standing and speaking in front of you in a similarly courteous way you would to a madman speaking. Thank you so very much for putting up with, forgiving, watching and looking at the shadow of a life that has been trying to come to terms with life in its own way, that has been struggling.