I’ve written it mouthfulls and am yearning for brevity but am liking the start of the process. Hope things will improve with practice and time. The post is again courtesy the kind one I’ve mentioned in the last blog
The sky falls flat in my feet
as I pluck star after a blazing star;
I blow them cold, so they cannot char
your finger-tips.
Then I take you high,
leaving my ego with the townsfolk.
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I lose you somewhere in the ether;
your eyes, kohled with star-dust
turn blind on me.
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I’m a hermit,
living another time and space
beyond the din of the earth’s ridicule,
even the reach of your apathy.
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Yet, on certain moonless nights
a Polaris keeps me hooked to the fire;
a yearning comes to crush it kohl,
to heal a wound,
to grace a pair of eyes.
I requested Samira to help me write something with prompts. She was kind enough to respond with the titled words that I tried to build an idea upon, notwithstanding it coming out rough and very raw but I could be forgiven for one can rarely be fluent after taking such long intervals of inactivity in writing.
Life barely walked,
in the desert veins,
trudging along the travails
till it reached the sweet serendipity
of an oasis -
heart –
soaked in the monsoon
of your thoughts;
sedate, a touch shade
your eyes.
The beats played a serenade
as though to lure you back.
See, how rich is this abode,
seducing the red in veins
to mix in your lips.
If you still spit
at the Moon
you make your foul mouth
dirtier.
Ask the moon
how it split apart
in love
upon a glance
of the Beloved.
The damned no ones
of your clan
ever fail to besmirch
the countenance of Truth.
You too have tried
to sneak in wrong
into a page of history,
only to be stricken through
in time
as there is no truth to be read
between your lines.
The absence from blog was filled by sounds, the crash bang sound of a speeding car hitting my bike, dragging me a bit then shoving me to the wayside and still miraculously not killing me.
The doctors too wondered how could I not sustain fractures and all. There were abrasions, cuts and bruises that have healed leaving the scars.
But there was Eid afterwards – as if the hiatus between my last blog and now was a microcosm of life with near misses, pain and the shift of the pendulum towards blessings and joy.
The sounds filling my mind right now are that of the whispering rain, the chirping birds and a certain John Denver also singing about filling up his senses.
Islamabad is having the first prolonged downpour of the current monsoon which remained largely dry to frustrate the expectations of respite from a blistering hot summer with unprecedented electricity cut offs.
Such a late arrival of the much needed rain is bound to bring gratitude and bliss. The clouds were ripe right from the last night and one couldn’t wait for the wine to be squeezed by the divine hands. The mild tipper-tapper like the whisper of the beloved woke me early this morning and it wasn’t long before we embraced in a hug of love.
The pouring rain fills a vast chunk in the largely bereft world of my romance; it melts my heart in to a deluge of emotions. I feel as if there is no worry in the world but love. As if a beautiful guest is visiting me. I cannot recall the first sight of my love; it has been all along with me, in me. I remember how in my boyhood I’d use ride on the bicycle in the pouring rain, roaming the streets of my little town and coming back home excitedly drenched.
Today is such a day. A day to celebrate. A reminder that life is not all dull and dour. That nature is there to soothe or sorrows and give us the gift of rain.
Love doesn’t pass away.
It lingers
on the edges of conscious
waiting and seeing
the reason collapse;
till it labors
deep into the heart
building from the ruins
another abode;
only to be threatened
by a bigger thought-
construct.
Love lives on
though homeless,
destitute.
Dil usay chahay jisay aqal nahi chahti hay
khana jangi hay ajab zehn o badan may ab ke