Performance Poetry

Admiring the way this woman, Rafeef Ziadah (you will get information about her on Google and her website) made poetry so powerful. Respect. Love and motivated!

words of a diary

sometimes i exist, sometimes i don't
i look for reasons to live
i look for answers to dispose
i live under the fear and
invisible for all
i would sing of my history
and become a page of past
sometimes i think, sometimes i don't
sometimes i feel, sometimes i don't

Young Habits

My writings have been affected. Please don't read them with any expectation. This is simply an attempt to manipulate a simple moment and hence dismissing the rules of poetry which were structured from all directions. This might be near the idea of what humans are in my perspective - a chaos in search of harmony - a recurring image of irony and a long pause in a conversation between two gods!

The 26th.

A father amuses a Sir by singing a song of bank
this river of economics run through the world of modern men.
sanctioning a policy of financial loss,
they calculate the down payment
This is the mortal men's fate!
Like an unromantic warrior, the father counts all numbers
yet the music of accounts fail to resonate
Has this unfortunate hen who lay the golden eggs
dismissed the ego for the future of sterile men?

A sun who cursed the son
sublime into the hours of stars and heaven
The flash-light of a television box
connects the stationary to a mobile region
and before the eyes could blink
begins the dance of tongue and doomed heroes!
"All men are on duty" - states the sensuous journalism
A brother and a remote controller
reigns the room of television.
The cast is changing as the era is different,
these old rooms will change as per the new tenant.

Inside, sitting in the clear mist of another corner
like chanting a holy scripture, unconsciously,
a mother is  popularizing a devoid book.
Like a monk who sold his peace for a title of a mother,
she is a zen artist in the loud battle among all the wrongs.
Memories march around this family
but everyone is occupied. Blind and busy.
In the invisibly visible cubicles of self
is a gathering of separated lives.
The story does not end here.
The ironical play of words is a perpetual saga.
A white soul looks into the eyes of graying self
while a little girl crawl towards the centre of the table
to blow the candles.

mind is elsewhere

if death could excuse the little errors of life
then how come
most human heart engage in remorse
and remain trapped in condolences
to their own choices
and still breathe in agony of separation
from the sweet truth of existent
and guard the memories of happiness
in the little mortal substances
contrived by time.

lover, be awake tonight!
because the first man was born out of love.

wrapped in blue hue of seasons
and figments of innocence
devil was once a lover
before the invention of words
like crime and punishment
and each life for each star
was a story of heart
not science,
but then it occurred
a chaos created a mind
and along the heavens of simplicity
a hell was designed
change was time's only accomplice.

in memory of god and lovers
Rumi's soul marched toward Ghalib's town
Iqbal's horse of revolution and ego
was slained for crimson corruption
and Faiz was agonized by hijr

the new lover was naive and ignorant
and the old was perishable
and the cursed poet
loomed around each letter
of this incoherence
in between the pages
of writer's block.

so if you do not understand
the intention behind such speechless syllable
make no worry the gift of thought
let a better acrobat perform
for the joy of words.

to the angry mountains and sternest clouds,
possessing the charm of an ancient woman
and might of disabled gods -
"Monsieur, monsoon is not a good excuse for discipline
even an old serpent has a way of revenge
in the voids of modernity and garden of Eden."

if so, i agree that man shall learn
eventually, death is religion of life.
and then there are those
who distribute the pieces of expired progress
while i mock at them with the pamphlets of calamity
and in between the deceptive tunnel of truth
are well kept mortals, enshrined for destructive facility
and you, Mister remain aloof and green!

but when, in the fabled nature of religion
the poorest of poor come for disagreeable demands
likes of which are not polished with vocabulary
you bully them with sound and fire

and thus i shall complain to lord above
about the nature of the tip of your nose,
about the way the trees conspire with the air,
about the dance of death composed by the river,
about the evil army of endangered animals, birds and insects
about the misleading moon and the burner called Sun
about the little mistakes of man being rewarded
by the mythical daughters of Satan
as they churn the sea, the earth and whatever
in reach of their desires and thoughts

while the potion of life is else where,
somewhere in New Delhi or Gujarat
in an air conditioned room or mall
in front of television or mobile phone
in the name of Sonia Gandhi or Narendra Modi
or the national ghost of justice.

From your being to mine, we shall live most of our realities in poetry,
Why do you speculate so much about the metaphors; there isn’t any!
For you always complain about corruption and God and lizards,
And sometimes, even about the taste of time in November
when the last leaf of autumn dissolves into the memory of earthworms.
But are there enough excuses or only, the remnants of text is an option.

Can I deceive you by speaking of melodies in travelogues, stories and silence?
‘why use a poor anesthesia for a scoundrel’, an anarchic romance!

Over the porch of age and yearning, life must become a toothless fairy
And you, the soloist of melancholy, suffocated by silly debates or mute arguments
do not blame me! This world enjoys mediocrity too much.
but this discourse was to be a prose, about dreams and butterflies; simplicity,
no visuals, no text, no radio at midnight and one day, silence will become a verse.

come and travel with me

come and travel with me
while i propose the words to fly
over their back, we reach to the sky
a bit of sky in Kasheer,
a bit of river from my hamlet
composing a silent symphony.

when nights will keep the sun out
the warmth of my syllables will
play with your ink blue fingers.

often you will fall on my head
like the snow, soundless and pregnant
or like the perfect metaphor
of this age of growing
to that age of your memory
and my graying.

no, this is no dream or wish
this is a modest game between two hearts
of things more simplified and rare.

an art of invisible dancing
which always move forward
i will continue this jaunt of fantasy
between the smiles less shown
and stars we often talked about
now come and travel with me….

her desert...

it must float like a story
untold, unsorted
or like a memory of a river
rooted and blotted.

of selective theory and
matters of heart or
un-distilled emotions
of victim's soar.

entangled between the odds
a life of smiles and madness
must grow. A mute
symphony of peasants
is a sermon to the hills.
but who will welcome back
the evening, tired and torn
after a day inside the sun.

the wife or the daughter,
who gather tea and breeze
looks for a window
to scale the return of dawn
but these all are metaphors
of a protected memory
of a man from hills
and her desert.

To you, in sleep

suddenly there was a race
not between time and its memory
but between a heart and its pace
of a canceled ticket to the ghost-town
of mind and reminiscence
then i read a decorated tale of agony
where reflections were vivid.

it was a morning, still i read it like a night
like a new born child's tongue
of his disorganized links and stories
of the precious sound the creature made
yet no one understood the words he say
the ignited world, who compliments often,
is fake or am i simply jealous.
my threads were weak, so can i befriend you
again and again, o heart in siege?

these words resonated from a cave
a cave near the river of a name
a name which is like the river - silent!
with a bond less melancholic
i rowed the boat while you sang a song
this voice is stale like your jewelery box
"tell me, how do you like it?"
of smile which remained my reply.
else i sung along the river, the moonlight
or becoming of a metaphoric rower.

in that room of strangeness
like a shy bride, i entered to eat cheese
in that room of familiarity
where things were in order or invisible
i entered again, now like a tigress
but life remained questionable of
my absence, your presence
records of cigarette leaving the ash
on a soul, invisible, inside your room
that soul was a sole witness
of our words, smiles, heartbeats
i wish i could wear the color
of your smile; i wanted a horse in
that shady lane, beside those animating vendors
who knew nothing of our brave tales, emotions
and i wanted an old man too, mediating
who would from a distance smile at
my hand in yours, my footstep behind yours
who would say in his absentmindedness
that we are made in heaven
but this is not a love story... or is it?
blame to my unrequited heart or head
or is it the unrequited poetry...
maybe ours is a story of life, a pristine one
a little subtle and more comical
of simple people in dissonant juxtaposed narration
of a bond which now stands beyond words
or too simple to be named, understood or refrain.
but i now i predict a futurity, a sure tense
and of a future where i shall
pray for a safe world there
near that cave, near that river.
and god who knows one language
of all poetry but no fabrication.
of prayer as silent as my past
to keep you safe and protect the truth
and the present tense, where i hold a book
of Fanon who will teach me about
a dark night and a black struggle but
i insist on carrying your words, your poems
of alfaaz, of blunt innocence, of my pause
and their sellers, of harkening and
of snow flakes, of first love and Neruda.
of my senselessness and of your sweetness
of this day and many like this
god bless the soul i meet often in dreams.