MY MURDERER AND I
The murderer loses no morality
Never risk a thought
Pitched on the terrain of war
Thoughts are ammunition
We can discuss if the murder happened
But never doubt the morality of my murderer
He gently caressed my body
And cradled it, like a rose
In the trembling hand of a lover!
Unsure of the new bud’sbloom
He thought, death would be a gift
When he judged my draped body
Based on its capital value!
And if I were dead before he killed me
I would have received his gift
With an equal and reciprocal gratitude
But, I saw him running a sharp edged sword
Over frail blades of thought
And I saw him decorate my shroud
With paisleys of wisdom
Andthen place posies of justification
At the edge of my grave
He had plenty people at the carouse
Who he summoned to report on his grandeur
And my body
Of black, brown, white and wet mud
Was lowered
Into the earth
I would have left without a sigh!
But he evoked me
In his passionate urge to efface the dignity
Of my death
He evoked and erased me at will
As if a theatre for posterity
My story was now a lesson
In the children’s story book
My face mimicked that of defeat and disgrace
He would have had obedience
And order that he craved for
It would have been just his word
His genius, His state, His god
Had I not hollowed him from within
Had I not leaped out from his insides
And clung to my dignified death
He would not have to fight his own self
I wish I had told him
There is no way to fight
Voices made of our own skin and bone
In this war of a man against his reflection
World is taken hostage
But my murderer won’t outlive me
With me he too must have died
And reflections die in darkness
Without his reflection
He will know he is not alive!
OLD WOUND
Old wound is like stargazing
You don’t blink your eyes
When you look at it
Tears roll down
As a reminder of impossible pain
And when distance becomes light years
Stars fall dead one after another
You are suddenly wide awake
In the deep velvet night
Thinking once more—of loss
As time passes, names become specks
Of stardust
People become dream emblems
And you recede into a glass world
Birthed from the shards the
Broken one
You breathe in your own embrace
But the wound is still raw
And you are adamant to cut deep
Into its frail tissue
With scalpels of reason
Old wound is like a promise
You made a thousand times
That you broke and felt nothing
but when it was broken
Your world was set asunder
And when day in and day out
Promises are made and broken
And you shudder and coil
At the very thought—of promise
As habitually hope
Is stabbed
People die
You don’t even arrange a funeral
to say your goodbyes
they remain
In the coffins we leave in the attics
And we bring them undone of their shrouds
Only to mourn and wail
A CHANCE
As the newly planted Chinars
On the sidewalks of busy Tehranian streets
Are fed to the brim with hope
From their branches, hang countless
Desires of blissful youth
The laugh of a tearful eye,
Drops and spreads across
The sheets made of stolen light,
The sun’s desolation
Is a red blanket
Engulfing the Dal Lake
Is there a chance for the rowing boats?
To shudder ashore
Can the blaze, set in the yard,
By springs to the charcoal of our hearts
Bring warmth?
Even though it rains
Here in Tehran
Is there a chance we will survive?
And be unmoved by our pain
Steady like Zabarwan
And hang this façade
Of warmongers
Arriving in peaceful attire
Life demands of us
Passion!
Go on, take the broken telephone lines
To whisper
A goodbye to depots
In a purple velvet voice
The check posts that have scattered
In lure of the crimson
Of our evenings
And that attempt to steal the lustre
Of our milky mornings
Stand on the fallen bridges
I see nothing
But fatigued soldiers
And as against the mad lovers
They will only have to disperse
In the thick fog
Of our painful winter
Our hearts, wrapped in the skin
Of a mother’s womb
Beats amidst the tumultuous
Serenade of kingfishers
We sleep in our graves
Made on a fumarole
What would have happened?
Wasn’t it inevitable?
Yet, I wonder
How the chinars in Tehran
Are so young?
Is there a chance Chinars will stand
tall on the road to Varmul
And fire is not set to dry leaves
No more
But to enforced belonging
And warmth remains
Intact of what we offer visitors
In a Kangir on dewy mornings
Is there a chance we will survive?
And my poem will finish
Between the moment
You pour me a cup of nun chai
And the grand mom’s radio
Announces Freedom
ROHINGYA
We have written you letters
From the loose end of this world,
Where inhabitants are made of colossal smoke
Emanating from the fire set to our dreams
We live here
Your eyes see in us no value
Except if we make for
Hands made of torn life
Offering to clean
Dirt gathered in the midst
Of your unclenched rosy palms
While you take our land
And drive us out
You may build cities of splendour
While our souls will still cling
To the bases of these buildings
We may leave behind
Some of us
The timid one
The short-sighted ones
So they find value
In their relationship
With you!
Our tired eyes and broken backs
Bruised bodies and hurting wombs
Make our flight of value
We are not nameless faces
Or faceless numbers
We reject your portraiture
Of our indiscreet lives
We don’t live in your books
Or libraries
We have written you letters
But you can’t read them
Our ink isn’t made of a discernible colour
It may have vaporized like our hope
Perhaps, there is no kindle version available
On amazon
To read in graphic detail
Our fanged race to death
Initiated by your urge
To ride in the glittering metro trains
We write our stories in words that make us human
As we melt into hugs
In each other’s embrace become tears
As one of us dies
A brutal death
Our words make us bear this pain of extermination
As we continue to exist as a colossal smoke
Emanating from the fire set to our dreams
But fire is uncivilized,
It spreads,
It discriminates against no dreams
From this loose end of the world
We are still connected to you
As a mirror,
A reflection of this uncivilized desire
To civilize us!
LIVE IN ME
I never expected
You will live in me
When I oversaw
A stillbirth of romance
Soon after
You took lines
Hanging in the air I breathe
And perched them
Under the claws of insistence
I tossed and turned
Becoming fatal rhymes
Made of madness
I don’t blame you
But your insistent eyes
Those are still
Engraved into my skin
As I drape my history
For a cloak
And run to hide
And confess
My shame to God
But what shame?
To witness the night
From which I barely emerged
Bloodied bodies
Splattered limbs
And children cried profusely
Only to burst into laughter
As their fathers, held at gun-points
Were paraded naked
My shame imitates that laughter
And bursts into pangs
Of sighs
Nothing is hidden from God
Hell is not for us
But should we demand paradise?
It is what we were bestowed
And that is what we have lost
And I cradle you
Away from my burning
Hearth
To console you
That I shall be here
But there is no one
For me at all
Is it that you will live in me?
Only as a consolation
