Tasenda

Some colours don’t have names In languages they speak In lands whose names I cant pronounce At home, we have many names For one colour, that we see everyday Red, Wazul, Lal, Surkh, Naar Huie

While standing at the doors of Love The rare prophetess, would collect Broken gods to make earthen pots And bake them with wine still in them In the bazaars that were set among The debris of my dreams, She would sell wet walnuts that tasted Of true love, along with intricate daggers The desolate would gather around her While she wove spells to will the moon Into charms to hang in the air, while Qayamat remained a mere breath away

When rain came,  In no particular order,  It washed away the idea of me  Drenching me to skin,  Till the cotton seeped into my skin  designing into the rain  a slimy clone of me  Around me, washed away  promises  And limp memories floated away  With the rain, b urning out fires,  that I had stolen from a burnt-out Sun Leaving behind traces of m aps  That I had carved into the  Remnants  of yesterday and buried In the broken fragments of tomorrow  But when light finally broke out,  I unlearnt the rain  And unshackled the love-knots  we had tied when we last met 

In the darkness of a shamed night, When bastard diseases patrolled Kashmir  Poetry was stolen from the dead  Verses erased from gravestones  Dates reversed, Irises trampled Histories robbed  The old desolate widow houses of Jhelum - Whose rooms were plotted by the doomed architects of fate, were broken into  Their Gothic windows broken,  Their Mughal arches crooked,  Their doors empty frames bordered  only the most intricate woodwork from  Ishfan The Pacicdhars* who used to Live in attics, were all been exiled by The thunderous impotence of mad men  Who set fire to autumn skies till  everyone was a  Refugee from Forgotten memories of  An ancient nation, their identities crushed under  one-ton military trucks --- *  Pacicdhars: Mythical guardians, which were believed to live in the attics of Kashmiri houses, and used to descend in the middle of ...

One night, in between cups of misery  I held my drunken self in my arms  Reveling in the beautiful misery of it all  One night, in between madnesses I wrote long letters addressed to myself  Holding addresses hostage to my postcards  One night, in between judgements  I passed guilty sentences on myself Branding debaucheries onto my skin  One night, in between infidelities  I found Ifrit sleeping in my bed  Hiding futures stolen from stars  One night, in between dissolving dreams  I felt the night passing through my wings Weaving musky death between my fingers 

In the desolation of madness, that was his love, Majnuṅ looked for her in the desert rain  In the darkness of the night, that was his love  Majnuṅ looked for her portents in the smoke that drifted away  In the grains of sand, that was his love  Majnuṅ traced her face tracking maps of fate  In the biting cold of dry winter, that was his love  Majnuṅ fragmented stoicism, kindling mottled fires of seclusion  In the mire of ruins of ghosts, that was his love  Maṅjuṅ wove the tattered remains of faith into a  Aqad*  In the Remanants of sighs, that was his love  Maṅjuṅ would whisper only word to the ifrits** Laila *Aqad: Arabic for necklace: In this case, a love knot **Ifrits: The most powerful and dangerous Jinns that are said to inhabit deserts and ruins 

She, Who would balance the world On her fingertips, Would hide in the Darkness That lies between the flickering of flames Fiddling with the curtains, Breathing secrets in my ears Her secret kisses Would hang in the air, Frozen between sighs, Holding my breaths hostage In the palm of her tiny hands Creating little tea-rooms From her imagination for us Over cups of riotous tea, In the deserted shelters of memory We would hold hands, While lording over cake crumbs Drowning in the quicksands of eyes, Playing her personal Favourites amidst the never ending Radio commentary

One Kashmir morning, the snow Buried all the  Dervishes , devouring the Mad mendicants in white sheets, melting them down into absolute nothings leaving behind a flurry of green and white The  mehfils  of God and Opium that stood At the end of the cobbled-stoned lanes of my Phantom Childhood, dissipated - like crowds after a summer firing, leaving behind puddles of coagulated rubies in their abandoned  chappals Betrayed by the mendicants- who claimed that They wrote letters to God - lovers who had carved desperate prayers on desolate walls Lay abandoned holding onto chains That hung on the intricate Arabic of the  Astans   Now, they collect the dead and Bury them in gardens of their hearts Nourishing them with stories of long-forgotten loves, Imploring them to take seed, Promising them a Revolution

When they finally got the cadaver, No incisions were necessary Old scars – which made a tumultuous maze On his chest – had opened up on their own They found a heart as dark as Urdu Enshrined in Coagulated dreams Rusted with unanswered prayers Broken pieces of a love long given-up on The disemboweled stomach was lined with lies A lifetime diet of deceits had led to fragmented madness to float in a Bulbous pus of treachery and dishonesty Muscles atrophied by regret Gnawed by maggots of fate, Nothing held the sad frame together Except grief frozen in formaldehyde

There is a picture of me Hanging in the hallway It is not me There is a picture of me Soft brown eyes, auburn hair It is not me There is a picture of me Tucked in shirt, Unkempt beard It is not me There is a picture of me Smiling, an invisible bird on shoulder It is not me There is a picture of me Brains splattered across the frame That is me

At the auction of pain, I was the highest bidder  Begging to be flogged till My skin wore off  At the auction of pain, A box of shattered dreams  Your memories neatly packed  With shards of broken promises At the auction of pain I was the prophet of my own doom Dissolving my visions with opium smoke  and fantasies of vengeance  At the auction of pain, A thousand devastations' every day, on constant Unceasing repeat 

The stench of my decomposing heart  Permeates my being, polluting my soul with  Unwanted memories  War flashbacks from life lived in delusions  Of a grand love, the varicose veins of a long dead  heart injected with your damned lies Each breath whip-lashing  against the  hollowness that has settled in my chest  I ruffle frantically every morning Through my kitchen cabinet, looking for  A Knife with the broken handle that can cut through  my skin, its Poisonous steel entering my veins,  Draining me of blood, clogging my heart with rust Clearing out ancient betrayals – both yours and mine- weaving maps out of scars,  tracing incomprehensible words  You, who used to tear off your silk dupattas To tie them in my name, At the shrines of unknown saints  Now turn away from me  Even in my dreams, While maggots feed on my memory of you,  One kiss at a time, till nothing ...

We all go a little mad sometimes, Collecting broken things to fix hearts Scavenging our lives to live a bit We all go a little mad sometimes Tracing love to its inevitable doom Reading fortunes buried in old newspapers latching onto imagined injustices and unrequited loves We all go a little mad sometimes Gobbling tragedies on endless tables Gathering divining ifrits under a storm’s tail Deconstructing God till she is reduced to binaries We all go a little mad sometimes

When the fearless sun finally rose, The children had started playing Hide and seek among the graves of The nameless dead, Pretend guns blazing above Bullet-ridden castrated dead lying below Their fingernails peeled off, Thumbs chopped liked shawl-weavers burdened with taxes You could tell in the mellow morning, Where the dead lay, Their Clotted blood had mixed into the clay Their graves marked by blood red irises in A sea of whites, their lives turned into Weeds that lay unattended among little Tin boards proclaiming random numbers assigned By the lonely grave digger who never knew them In between widows crying over the wrong graves And mothers hugging the anonymouss mounds of earth, The mountains echo with the sacrilegious mirth of Children playing hide and seek among the nameless Dead, tempting fate, biding time till they grow-up And disappear like, others before, among the nameless dead (For Showkat Nanda) * ...

In the semi-vivid darkness of my dreams That were Half-forgotten in the drunken haze Of memory – we walked on streets littered with uncut Sapphires from the abandoned mines of Kishtawar Love, she told me as she kissed for the last time, Is like Napalm, it sticks to your skin and burns Peeling away at your existence, making you Pray for death that will never come And once the fire kisses you – No amount of plastic surgery or raags From magical rabbabs will ever heal the Scars that run from your heart to your soul We walked till the evening dissolved into stars Saying goodbye for one last time, as the night Unclasped itself from the moorings of romance And I stood alone in the semi-vivid darkness of my dreams