Night

A child of the dark, I embrace the night,
Shrugging off memories, welcoming a broken smile.
A monster and God within me engage in a fight,
A smouldering cigarette, metaphorical of my own soul alight.

My headphone sings soothingly
Calling myself to confront me.
A novel forever half-read,
With misunderstood characters wailing to be set free.

Sleep is a distant dream, teasing and eluding,
The darkness, an old friend, offering yet another chance to wipe my slate clean.

Occasionally, the music flashes an image in my head,
A smile, a cry, so many past selves to be fed.
Alone, but not lonely, the mask falls off,
Come, meet me where my soul stands naked.

3 a.m. is when the world is at peace,
Some sleeping, some searching, all of them in a battle, but for now, at ease.
Come meet me in my castle and we’ll have a talk,
A poet, a fighter, a survivor, all for some company on your lonely walk.

Madhouse

A while ago I read a quote,

said the madman to the poet,

“So you’re from the madhouse on the other side of the wall.”

 

This revelation set me stunned, rooted and inexplicably appalled.

Is this gospel, or is the narcissistic rambling of hubris.

Is this enlightenment, or mere pebble pelting past proprieties extolled.

Logic dragged me low, observation dragged me lower.

 

Civilized, humanized, compromised, criticized, mechanized,

All mere farcical ways to read “institutionalized”.

 

Man proudly reared his head, thumping his intelligence,

The brutal irony slipping through his fingers dripping with arrogance.

Toll 40 years of unending, ungrateful, unloved labor,

For the chance of 5 bonus paralyzed scraps strewn in your favor.

 

Time laughed, nature sighed and the child within you cried,

Cried for a chance to walk free, for a chance to fly and flee.

It wanted attention, it demanded care,

It bawled to break the handcuffs of habit and despair.

 

But the inconvenient beast was quickly silenced,

Its voice muffled, its soul abandoned.

After all, there was progress to be made,

Research to be equated, rituals to be desecrated,

And finally, the sole survivor ‘love’, to be cremated.

The field

Travelling a thousand miles, my soul yearns to lie down,

Lie down, beneath the starry sky, with the grass rustling our ears

Lie down in Rumi’s field, far away from that mechanical town.

Beyond right or wrong, beyond bindings, we finally shed our frowns.

 

The soul is light, it gently floats here,

In this paradise beyond judgement,

Away from hate, away from plight,

away from inhibitions, away from fear.

 

Beyond the concept of money and forced roles,

The cool air will heal your souls.

Here, the lord and the peasant dine together,

United by love, freedom, grass, lakes, doves and the blessed weather.

 

Soft as Steel

Her eyes sparkle and her feet are jittery,

In the depths of her eyes hides a poignant mystery.

Dances like the wind, that smile’s a treasure

Looking at her, you couldn’t guess there’s yearning beyond measure.

 

Beneath the joy, underneath the practiced facade

You’d find something but only if you were truly looking for it.

Cause when alone, away from the drama, the curtain rises,

Exposing a timid, fearful, loveless soul, terrified to trust again.

 

So, you love her, protect her, hold her dear,

Cause she’ll protect you too, so, have no fear.

Look beyond the false stage and peek at her heart,

Join her in laughter if you can, but in sorrow you must do your part.

Hold her close when she sounds the strongest,

Cause only when people are trodden upon, do they act the toughest.

Smile

Remember when you blushed and smiled,

Remember when you brushed off your hair and turned away shy.

Of course you must, it was the day my timid heart had nervously tried,

Your dimpled cheeks, glittering eyes and those tresses, oh my o my.

 

I had stood there dazed,

Confused, blitzed, through my heart your eyes grazed.

I confess I stood awkwardly, nervously, stupidly at first,

Though my frozen frightened frame looked cursed, inside my nerves were dust.

 

Then we got together and it was heaven right here,

My love, my time and my life were all yours, my dear.

A dream to have, a dream to live,

Your heart my home, your smile my drive

And darling don’t worry, I’ll be there forever,

Build a castle together, will fight your monsters whenever.

I know some losers may have treated you bad

But now I;m here and for your angelic smile, my heart is glad.

Will fight for you, will build with you,

The only drug setting my body ablaze is you.

Incomplete

Tattered shards tied together is how I know myself;

There’s passion searching for a paper to pour out stories,

 Love yearning for a heart to join hands,

And there’s a fire raging to obliterate my contemporaries.

 

Yet there’s a gaping hole within my soul,

A piece familiar yet mysteriously lost,

Calls out to me like a reaching ghost.

Its breath is known to me yet we’ve never met,

From a palace of my dreams, impossible to forget.

 

It says to me, there’s something more,

More to you, than you’ve ever dared to live.

I feel its calling like wound which is sore,

Throbbing, paining, demanding attention.

 

I don’t know what is, but I do know this,

No rest for the weary, no place to rest.

Something beautiful, something marvelous, is amiss

And I need to keep walking on this path, where I’m just a guest.

 

Elementary

The graceful rain descends torridly

There’s grace in its fall,

Full of vigor, yet tranquilly majestic,

There’s redemption yet, for us all.

 

Quenching the scorched stone,

Dispersing the humid breath,

Once more, the dead souls moan.

The eternal war of life and death,

Here, endures another battle.

 

The phoenix rises from the ashes,

And your true self once again thrashes.

Accept the message from the man in the sky,

Yes, remember, you had always been meant to fly high.

Look into my eyes and know

Look into my eyes and know,

Know what your glance meant to me,

In that brisk momentary matching of our eyes

What magic there seemed to be.

 

Peer deep into these

And tell me, you see more

More than the frozen wonder, more than the hesitation

Tell me you see attraction beneath the mind’s closed door.

 

Cause its true, my mind is a mess

The heart, but, screams, hoping you will guess.

It’s stupid I know, there wasn’t enough time

But stupid is this heart creating a mess.

 

This heart, murmuring an incessant rhyme,

with a modest timid request to merely pause time.

Justice

“Mr. A, it has been comprehensively proven that you are without a doubt guilty of non-belief in the almighty creator of this world. You are hereby responsible of spreading blasphemy and thereby this court declares you a heretic. Your specific crimes are as follows:

On the 24th of last month, in the meet of the local community, for increasing religious teachings in schools, you publicly proclaimed that there is no need for religion to prove the ancestry of man. You even went defame the Lord by calling him sadistic, if he does exist.”

“But I was merely trying to ask how could God withstand all the misery and death in our world today!”

“Silence! You shall not speak unless asked to. Then on the 17th of this month you interrupted the wedding of Mr. B to Miss C. This you did despite fully realizing that both sets of parents had given their consent. Again you went against the written word of God.

And finally three days ago, on the 25th of this month you had the audacity to hide an infidel fleeing from the police. Despite knowing his crime of preaching of a false God, despite knowing how he insults God, how he committed sacrilege violating the written word of God. How could you even for a moment shelter this enemy of God?

Therefore by the powers vested to me by the Almighty himself, and under his direct command to fight his enemies I sentence you to death,” sentenced the judge bringing down his hammer in a resounding crash.

The tall, lanky, bespectacled man was dragged off his feet towards the gallows. For one last time his black eyes scanned the room for some compassion. They met the dark green ones of the local religious leader, which had a gleam of victory in them.

“Now no one shall oppose his reign,” thought Mr. A to himself.

Then his eyes found the cloudy dying eyes of Mr. B. He too sat there exhilarated at the judgement. His arm greedily wrapped around 15 year old teen sitting beside him. She remained stony faced as ever. Her body wrapped in a fine silky satin dress cried inwardly for the moments when a tattered old dress had been all she had.

Finally the black pair met the light brown pair standing ahead in line for the gallows. The infidel smiled at him, not because A had expressed sympathy with his religion but because he had loved humanity.

“Why does religion have to be so vindictive?” A wondered looking up at the judge.

“Why does humanity have to be so foolish?” wondered God looking down at the judge.

P.S.:I have used A, B and C instead of names in order not to tie this story with any one religion.

 

 

 

Diwali in 2016

“Save the environment, spare a thought for the mute sufferers” “Ah!So your consciousness has awaken from from its seasonal hibernation, huh? What about Bakr-e-Eid?” “B…

Source: Diwali in 2016