Tasenda

 We will be counting days again, till we say hello again— only for us to say goodbye again. We always knew we’d have to say our goodbyes one day. Then why does it hurt so? Even so, when we know it won’t be long before even goodbyes are a luxury. We cling to hopes— that this isn’t the only life we will live. That one day, we will meet again, in some other life, in some other time, where we won’t have to say   G oodbye.

The bombs have gone quiet The night is still again,  Holding its breath  As the morning dawns Lazy rays make their way To the scattered glass and stone A bedazzling show of light Incendiary bombs, briefly, an afterthought It's an empty plane, Just like Allah has promised, On the day of judgment, Maybe it is doomsday after all! Unlived lives, unfulfilled promises Broken hearts, grief lingering on Masquerading hope, a few bits of bone And some lonely souls That, and me is all of what remains of the dead

--- The following is for public record  for posterity and history  Let them know you were here  etch your names on these walls   Die in the name of revolution, Industrial, or  Agricultural,   Political or, Sexual,  Just find a cause  Don't decline this invitation to your private doom,  It is a limited-time offer,  For all sales must end     What utter madness is this? Why are you running away from this? On what list is your name on?  Who did you meet?  What did you talk about? Was it about me?  Am I sounding too paranoid?  A little insane  Ignore the glint in my eye, I take no pleasure in this  All I say is accept this love  After all,   whose love isn't a little tainted?  Whose name,  a little tarnished?  Spill out your silences now, I have shown enough love  Others here are much worse, Brotherhood and fealty mean nothing here I am here as your fri...

My death won't be covered No obits, no pictures No profiles with a catalogue of dreams No 3000 word essays in the New Yorker Maybe an inch in the local paper My death wont be covered I am not sexy enough I am not white enough  I am not interesting enough Unless they can pin something on me My death won't be covered My blood isn't red enough My grief isn't relatable enough My life isn't worth enough Maybe it is not fashionable enough My death won't be covered Public executions don't draw crowds Private ones cost a fortune  Poverty is a boon after all Not everyone has company in the grave after all My death won't be covered  I don't have a name or even a number I don't have a home or even a shroud  I don't have a bomb or even a cause Or a mortgage to buy a few minutes of respite My death won't be covered  And i won't even be remembered But my oppressor will be celebrated His pain will be taught in schools While, My death won't be co...

I have seen your dreams I know why you scream Why the city of your heart is so utterly desolate I see graves shimmering, with  Mountains on fire, windows shuttered and empty picture frames   Vendors of rain litter your streets,  knocking down broken deodar doors  Slogans smeared on your empty walls,  promising that the revolution is in the air Boarded-up lanes guarded by strays  Lead up to vacant homes,  embers of lost stories keeping fire barely alive   Even your distant skies, a screenshot of  paisleys inlaid with grief are  knotted into a prison  made of shattered glass   I have seen your dreams I know why you scream !!

How does it burn through the body this desperation, this fire unquenching desire works on the heart like acid slowly eating it away, leaving nothing behind but everlasting hunger How it burns through the body this desperation, this fire unquenching here we are, suspending physics mid-air no gravity, no friction, no dark matter to explain what is going on how it burns through the body this desperation, this fire unquenching can you smell it too? this desperation that reeks in the air, choking all reason in its putrid, miserbale path how it burns through the body this desperation, this fire unquenching this desperation, this fire unquenching

There is an uprising coming it was supposed to be here yesterday but I suppose it is lost in the mail who do I write to the website had no address only a small warning goods once sold can not be returned maybe I should have known then not to trust Nigerian princes with unclaimed millions and fully functional revolutions leftover from the days of the next war Maybe it is stuck at customs maybe it would have been better to wait for my cousin to travel in, so he could sneak it in packed neatly between airport  toblerone and contraband iphones

Can you hear me  in the echoes of those  ancient duststorms that  wandered the prehistoric earth Before the time, when the mountain was lake and you lay in arms i have always been here just beyond the corner  of your eye flirting with the edge of the mirror  can you hear me tapering through the stone breathing ever so delicately, like the wind  blowing through a slow delhi afternoon i have always been here a forgotten memory, held hostage by a desprate love  trying to call you over all this din can you hear me a vagarant song on loose lips  sneaking around the world by hitching  rides along with unsuspecting ruffians feeding on scraps of love that you  unwittingly throw away   i have always been here embedded in radio broadcasts and sewn into silver midnight light sending out SOSes through ripples of time Can you hear me !! please.

This Angular Mohabbat Fashioned out of old wives tales Of failed romances, dead Mahiwals and broken hearts A tapestry of faded old songs. Their meaning now buried under the years   Shadowed by the daily routine, This Angular Mohabbat So black and white like sacred pianos of Time Voice garbled by the sadness of being alive, An orchestra of Beatle look-alikes Our madness now accentuated by the rising sun All those people we talked to now dead Poets that no longer kill, disappearing along their own trials   Crying out Khatam-Shud, Khatam-Shud Khatam-Shud, Khatam-Shud Khatam-Shud, Khatam-Shud -- Tz

 All calls ,from and to, Kashmir are monitored for "quality purposes" Hello!  Hello! Hello! I have called out for you So many times, on my empty phone lines You trespasser on my conversations You holder of my secrets  You unwilling, unwitting witness to my destruction  Tell them all,  what I said,  when I cried  And how I screamed into the void You professional sabteour,  You secret nazi swine,  You precious pervert  Tell them all,  Leak out my secrets, my inner fears  And my weak attempts at humour Hello!!! Hello!!! Do not pretend you do not hear me,  You who archives my life,  You who measures my conversations, You who polices my twitter Do not be an false god, unhearing, unsympathetic, unbiased You who chronicles my misery in kafkaesque detail,  You who stoically stabs paper with my name written all over it Release all my conversations,  Torture my rage,  Dismiss my existence Hello!  Hello! Hell...

If only Life was resolved In small moments of Celluloid Clarity, Where breakfasts and brunches and sad little lunches Had small interludes, where we lived our lives Where we were caricatures or men and women of certain types All our flaws, all our smiles, all our little hopeless dreams Would be resolved in time for dinner, with space left for small snacks If only Life was resolved In tiny trespasses along Alliterating allusions, Where time and pain and all those little hurts Would pass in a montage, set to silent soundtracks Where ghost-quiet nights were woven together into magical quilts Held together by the threads that were unknotted from latticed shrines When the invisible returned from shadows of memories, to be whole again If only Life was resolved In small moments of Empathic epiphanies, Where prayers and amulets and objects of unverified provenances Had the power, to turn fireflies into starry nights Where our messy little truths, no longer colli...

Have you considered the Wolfsbane flower ?? And it's Terrible beauty, and it's Bewitching power to hold you in its thrall While it slowly kills you inside Without you knowing Have you considered the Wolfsbane flower? And it's God complex, and its messed up Messiah complex that holds you Captive but unchained within the Labyrinths of a broken heart Have you considered the Wolfsbane flower? And its silent dysfunctional relationship With the world around it, Slowing adding a sepia tone to old memories, To make the truth palatable Have you considered the wolfsbane flower? Have you considered love? -- Tz

There, In Srinagar, In bylane behind a bylane, Surrounded by empty darkness  And plastered in sound-muffling mud Is an old workshop,  that was once a home Where they break little boys and old men to make them sing Miraculous little white lies  before sending them off To be sold in small bottles in the weekly bazar Next to silken wounds  woven in absurdities -- Our tangled, unkempt memories, Lie strewn around the floor like discarded histories of former lovers and a single, solitary question scribbled by broken fingernails across ugly walls, barely visible under hurriedly whitewashed walls, Am I dead yet? --

Anonymous hands wove loathing into Soft pashmina shawls Embroidering them with phantom thumbs, With threads sourced from the Rags which had been tied At shrines of a thousand saints for The safe return of those who disappear Each weave, a paisley of memory Each knot, an unanswered prayer Each border, an unadorned tale softly woven to rest on delicate shoulders, So every winter night, when rich women in faraway lands, Hold themselves tighter in a garden party, a small part of us will breathe the free air of an alien land before we all disappear -- Tz

In my dreams,  sandwiched between forbidden loves And incestuous wars,  I dream of dispossession Of cold posters plastered over my home, Declaring me a fugitive of exile, Of rusted rifles guarding empty hearths waiting for new occupants,  who arrive in shuttered buses  holding papers  dipped in  cold black ink  confirming peace Of the old occupants,  all that remains are old books and  memories razed and blotted by pressed blood -- In time, I will be an Iberian Jew Cast-out and doomed to roam The earth, till one day when I Too shall cut open the last stitches holding Me together and drive others to exile They say when Azra’il comes For the sinner’s soul, he rips it apart Like Muslin drawn through a rose-thorn bush -- Let me bargain with death tonight And desecrate its oblivion To conjure a map of home From the memories of my ancestors From my grandfather, who died to...

Little shards of joy, broken pieces of grief  Half read manuals on fixing Broken hearts Little prayer beads of ivory dipped in Archaic Arabic by illegible Urdu scribes  Unfiltered guilt, registered sins Names of forgotten lovers along with The unforgiven ones Sad betrayals coated in music Little lies told with the best intentions And under the orgy  of rubble and shattered glass a moth-eaten memory  You 

My smoke filled apartment opens onto purgatory Neon enveloping the empty silences around the sparse furniture The bitter taste of your unkempt dreams lingering on my tongue Silence now stands frozen in my veins, ready to bleed into the night Your pain lightly stenciled into my skin, the morning sun filtering through me Scattering pieces of me across the landscapes of so many strangers Absorbing the bitter fire, That burns inside me and You

There are words that need to be learnt The hard way Through template emails, stamped letters Or heartbroken silence There are some memories that need to forgotten The hard way Through fragments of time, colossal machines Or ritual exorcism There are some spells that need to be broken The hard way Through enchanted kisses, old books Or desolate loneliness There are songs that need to be unsung The hard way Through molten mirrors, shattered sorrow Or stunned silences

Are you done shooting me? A million bullets headed my way Blinding me, maiming me, cutting me Now that you have me by my balls Is it what you imagined it to be like? Are you done praying for me? Condolences swathed in batons sent my way Pimping me, stripping me, strangling me Now that you bribed me with blood money How does my ash-stricken flesh taste? Are you done fooling me? Fake kings and queens that you sent my way Flogging me, skinning me, murdering me Now that you sit on the throne How does it feel to fuck over the dead?                                                                        ...

This fog of derision That I am driven through Every night in my dream, Darkness in combat boots chasing me, will lift one day I, Who am trapped in my own mind, a recently developed ghetto, Will slash through the urban jungle With its thickets of half baked houses And rivers of human sweat, breaking free This prison of my own choosing, An exile which is bonfire of my vanities Kindled by an ego on a feeding frenzy, Will have its bars bent and its walls pulled down I, Collector of broken things And broken people, who devours the Sun every morning and holds onto Little madness that falls gracelessly into Insanity, now sells scrap metal Secretly inscribed with Nashtaliq