Poems
The Discarded Prisoner
AINON N. The burning eyesOf ferocious history
The old face inquired
What wrong do I represent?
What form am I?
His inquisition
Gripped massacre by its throat
Pressed sums of living
Into the quicksand of riot
War the determinist
Is of injustice or justice?
Answers for him I had none
The scale of fairness
Weighs a question mark They took him
Casualty of war
Not of death
But living enclosed
The why lingers
Nine score months
A little moment
In hugeness of seventy some years
Yet wisdom and principles
Left to cold decay
Home lost to him
The burdened humanity Burning rage
From his silence
To my speech
The commandment
For one, war of right
For other, war of wrong
For all, annihilation
The musings of soothsayers
Blessed are the warriors
Such proclamation
Counterfeit reality
Scorned by truth
What vile, what audacity!
In the passing
Incidental became his right Free will rise from ashes again
My neighbour
Rubana Huq (A verse in protest of the border killings) A big fat man with a beer belly and unflinching eyeballsSits across my porch, with a gun half his size
Kills and stuffs the dead up in his cellar along with his wine
While, from my window, I keep a count of his kill...
Even a sparrow flying by his skies
Prompts a bullet in an apparently defensive reflex
My neighbor,
A passionately obsessive, obese hunter
Lacks lashes, never blinks
Perennially positioned and cloned
In all four sides of his wires
Trigger happy, he collects the fallen
Trophies for his vintage greed…
While I drench my ground with grief
Burning shrines down with shame
Defying faith and honor.
Fatigue clouds
Shokhore Antony Rozario Today it is not the thunder that makes me shiver,The sigh of dark fatigue clouds chasing the wind
Trigger a hostile sense to my loneliness.
Heavy, tired but forsaken clouds randomly collide,
For she needs to rain, she needs to relieve the pain;
For ages she carried the mist that once evaporated;
Evolved life to saturated asylum;
Yet, is she destined to burst as a few droplets?
Or has her desire toughened to rain my thirsty lips? The walk of the vagabond, nourish on the carcass Sahara,
Whilst my fatigue clouds pour upon the mirage in alluvial paradise;
Thunder down as Nile onto the streaming flow.
Blessed are the inhabitants, who not recall the last weep of the pharaoh,
Raise thy chin- The King will live! The Nile will sing!
For years she had darkened the conurbation;
Evolved populace to worship the gods;
Yet, is she destined to hose the earth,
Or would she charm her munificent interest? Oh! I hear her roar, I hear in her tremor the memories,
I'd rather not speak, for my words are defiant, to embody her essay.
As I stand in my loggia, to relax in the taste of coffee,
A mystic feeling to get drenched in this blessed shower, my fantasy.
I have longed to dance at her Joyce and rinse in her vigour;
But pardon my extravagance, must I refrain from all leisure?
Evolved in this agony, today I pensively drench in her rain;
Yet, is my fatigue cloud a rumble on my misery sail?
Or is she a seraph, waiting to embrace me in heaven?
Soothsayer
Seema Nusrat Amin 'They believe laughter, laughter is the seventh layer…' Soothsayer,give me visions of the feast... A blue-eyed horse,
spinning within five columns, such that
his waves become friction
for the eyes playing
circular stone and air hide and seek,
burgundy scabs light the night discoloration of the skin
A backless orange form, skipping through the wider circumference
is pulled back in, halfway 'round. there are blindfolds, and the End-Times
are as light-footed as night watchmen sheds imagined, or dogging cars, or tigers, in cemeteries by cathedrals, where monks burn a slow fire, orange-flamed blood-leaf
And
I prefer to watch your back,
tied to me by a blindfold loosely done,
in a whim we'd conspired to
stretch, like one of those lunges
over some pole, bench, obstacle,
horse that you are,
and the seventh layer of the soul
drops in temperature, to the green-black
sweet-heat similitude in coolness,
and I let the goose bump scarf down,
Your face a gray flame-the body is in danger of undergoing a change of state, going gas, going water,
I tickle from the leaking pulse
of the loins, to the dry throat
inside the hobo's sex-sun straddle,
that knows penetration is an illusion.
I race you to the street.
I end in an infamy thrice removed from, but like, peace.
The spring in me
Rubab Abdullah Shukla So much luminositySo much bubbling laughter in nature this spring
Wherever the air goes nutty and tosses up and down
Whilst the trees doll themselves up in new leaves
Everywhere wild birds are in noisy singing, tweeting
Or baying at dawn and at twilight
And flowers I witness bouncy in perfumery natural and free
Hence it's incredible; isn't it usual for me to fume?
Should you be surprised
When the fragrance of nature tempts me?
Would you cast a silhouette on my love?
Let us not scorn all our know-how
I overlook the attention you shower on others
I am thankful to the Spring
For edifying the choice, of love in me.
Child of None
SANGITA AHMED Child, you dream of FairylandThe unrelenting ground is
Your mother's bony bosom
Mantled in blissful oblivion
You dream
Of fairies and white horses
Of clouds to ride
Of rainbows to slide
Of golden wings and summery skies
Of sweet scent of marigold
Of soft felt of blue
Of warmth and fullness
Of joy and celebration
My child of a thousand dreams
You will wake in perplexity
Your limbs aching and numb
Your guts growling in anger
Your heart sinking in wonder
The bosom you lie on
Is cold as a corpse
Un-rising un-falling, un- giving , un loving
The brick you hug for comfort
Is my placenta
The pavement , my womb
Your sweet baby breath
Your soft dirty cheeks
Reach out to me silently
As I look away and walk by
I see nothing, I hear nothing , I do nothing
My child of the streets
I have failed you
Back in my warm bed
The mother in me shuns
Sweet slumber
Shrieks in shame
Dies a thousand deaths
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