Tasenda

Mou’ji , sing me a lullaby tonight Too many faces made of white smoke Smother me when I close my eyes My dreams are on a leash, and Olive green monsters stalk my breaths Mou’ji , sing me a lullaby Mou’ji , burn my clothes while I sleep Too many friends have bled on the Shirt, You brought for me when Eid last came For when the demons come for me, Let them never handle threads sanctified by blood Mou’ji , burn my clothes while I sleep Mou’ji , take away and bury my school books My classroom is now a sandbag bunker My fingers will trace words in the dark now Every page full of the names of the dead One by one, till I am one of them Mou’ji , take away and bury my school books Mou’ji , don’t cry when they bring me home For even if there is no heaven, I refuse to be choked My hands are scarred from the edges of stones But iron chains are heavier still Even when gilded with fool’s gold Mou’ji , don’t cry when they bring me home

There are empty picture frames Hanging on walls of empty rooms in Kashmir, Wisps of memories haunting Desolate mothers and grieving wives, Fatherless children crying into a merciless night Blue gypsies patrolling the Desolate lanes of our memories, while we clutch on tatters of our forgotten dreams. half defeated by bayonets glistening in scarlet shadows There are fading eyes that Are fixed on wooden doors, From where - a long time ago - Hope was snatched, screaming As it was dragged into the darkness Of torture chambers that were once Palaces built by others like you There was a madness that We hid under our nails, Till you ripped them off one-by-one, smiling as you Asked us to love you, while Slowly pouring acid down our Throats

When they brought down our ancestral home in Downtown Srinagar, All was lost except  an old safe, made of the molded memories  and iron and painted light sky blue  Its keys long lost, it lay un-opened  in our garage until the time, The night refused to leave Wular and The sun could not  draw the hermit  Dawn out of its solitude. When the phantom rain rained on that  desolate night, pattering on the tin roof It fashioned a key out of my ragged soul On the shelves made of walnut-wood Hidden under a pile of stock-lies that I needed to survive, the old box creaked with sheafs of yellowing paper And the electric dreams of executioners Along with wills that prisoners wrote  With nails on the greying walls of  The palace turned torture hall Carefully stuck between moon-blood  Stained velvets, an old nose ring and  A lifetime of stuffed regrets, secrets  And forgotten loves woven into a million Unslept nights, which had melded Into the

Somewhere along the way, We fell into a pattern, Your casual cruelty Almost a habit Trapped in a burnt out Chinar, My very being singed by the Corners of paradise, All I could feel was your Cold hands around my neck There were no more shrines, Where I could tie my rags, Those little pieces of Mortgaged souls, Pawned to a unhearing God At times, your boots walked on my face, I shuffled and you shot me dead, Amputating my limbs of all shame Refusing me even the little dignity of death In the abandoned corner of earth, That I once called home Maggots ate at my flesh, Cockroaches infested my body, But even then, You sought my soul to Barter at shops of decay You built orphanages in military camps, Housing my children in houses Riddled with bullet holes, their childhood Held hostage by my bombed out desires And your indifferent smiles In between glasses of subsidised Imported rum, smartly balanced on Your razor thin grin, you poured Acid in my eyes, bli

Misery filled our lungs long before you, But then you came guns blazing and tear gas popping Shooting us, shouting   ,  we come in peace,  we come in love Fuck you and fuck your guns,  I will be ready to die  before you can even count to ten But how will you know,  who I am,  When I wash up already dead on The door of my own house, My million fragmented dreams Seeping out of my skin,  the last wisps my mortal soul escaping with only Dreams I ever had You will build tombs of your victory Over the ruins of my house, In Gaza,  in Damascus and in Srinagar I will be long dead,  but even in My grave I shall claw at the foundations Of your houses,  that you build over My playgrounds I will whisper the guilt into your ears Long after last band has gone home, Scratch my history into your very skin Right where your sins grafted into mine and my half dead will loom in your family portraits  haunting you till the very end You will find my book of love songs,  In my old rooms, 

In Kashmir Tragedy doesn't strike you,  It seeps inside you, like a malignant disease  Slowly making its way to your brain,   Disintegrating your mental faculties,  one by one.  Taking you apart one minute at a time,  making happiness  A sepia picture that grandfather  Put up on the wall of the ancestral house,   That is now just a road,  with every passing car Raising dust over your family tree,  the room where  You once crawled,  teeming with unruly pedestrians,   Grounding your memories to mere dust,  walking by  an invisible house with blue windows and tin sheeted gate. In Kashmir,  tragedy doesn't seek you,  it survives you.

Your naked gaze, leaves its mark of my body,  Every time you smile at me,  a scar is driven across my heart,   striping me down to shame, praying,  that you peel the rest away,  slowly shredding the last walls of dignity In the motel rooms of my mind,  stinking of cheap Cologne and discarded discharges,  I go from room to room like a Mad harlequin looking for dead jester,  searching for signs of you, so your memory could ravage me My pain,  you once said,  was bioluminescent,  it made my scars glow in the dark but you would never know,  even as I stood naked in front of you,  my soul was nothing but cigarette ash There is a bridge of sadness over the river of sorrow,  from whose ledges lovers jump into a fiery sun, by whose shadows you used to undress me,  marvelling at the falling men and women, a shower of dead stars I now stand alone,  stark naked,  with nothing to show but the bankruptcy of love shorn madness,  begging for you to come back,  just so your memory could ravage