Aftab Yusuf Shaikh: December 2016

QUAKE / QUANTUM

The son doing things in the phone
that the father only dreamt of.
The quiet pious daughter wrecking havoc online.
The phone was the only family everyone had.
Mother Earth was so angry
that she shook dispassionately in angry haste and
opened her mouth wide with a shrill cry.
Everyone's phone and computer
and what-not fell into the cracks.
And then she shut up and relaxed,
bringing everything to the start again.
And leaving humans with their last possible quantum of humanity.

PROBLEM/ PAIN / PATIENCE

At the edge of all patience,
fed up with the pain of living,
I stood before the open window.
The rope on the fan waiting for me.
I was sure
I had the greatest problems in the world
and none will understand my ache.
What is love, bread, life, peace without
that whiI don't have.
Ah! My great problems were only great
until I heard the neighbour and his wife arguing
whether a rope to hang clothes
was as important as bread for the hungry children,
with the week's savings.

OBLIVION/ ONUS

If the dazzle of this world blinds you
and the made-up faces
and individuals interest you,
you are the one for me.
You are one of the billions,
not my one in a billion.
If silence and darkness haunt you,
you will die of suffocation in my life.
For when you wished to be with me,
you should know I am a strange being.
Not your regular born-sucked-dead guy.
I am the best creation of my Lord.
When I embark on my journey towards oblivion,
you have the chance to come along
and be popular in my world of two.

NEXT/ NOSTALGIA

I am burying bits of me in the hearts
of all those who love me,
for you I am preserving the heart.
There can never be a next after you.
In you I will pour myself to such depth
that you may lose yourself but never me.
They have a word for the endless evenings,
those entwined fingers, those entangled eyes,
those words and sweet nothings,
every passing moment will become our past
and sum up as nostalgia.
That strange sweetness of our gone lives.
So when I leave this world and go to meet my Lord in the next life,
I shall beg him to grant me this bag full of nostalgia.

MYTH / MEMORY

What do you expect after all your transgressions,
lowly human? I am no god,
I know no forgiveness.
Your great words and high promises of forever
and whatsoever are all lying broken in the dingy lane
where we shared our first kiss.
Your soul had kissed mine and
that was tge only closeness we knew.
And then this!
This lie you uttered has pushed me away.
Too far your hands to pull back.
The myth of your love and titanic words,
has been wrapped in a sheet of shit
and thrown out of the cabinet of my memory.

LIBERTY / LIE

Standing right before the underpaid judge
and the perfectly blind lady of justice,
they emptied on me all their accusations.
They said I burnt their book,
and hid how they burned my whole house.
They said I cursed their mother,
and hid how they cut open dozens of pregnant mothers.
I was sentenced and they were freed.
They rejoiced at their liberty to lie.
I was apalled by the lie that liberty was.

KILL / KINDNESS

When the child saw the state
if the world it was being sent to,
much before its birth,
it cried to the mother, 'Mother dear, kill me,
for I know I am your dream,
but kill me.
Be kind.
I see a nightmare awaits me.'

-*-

When the lover saw the dagger in his back held by his very own love,
he said, 'My love, twist it hard and pluck the life out of me.
Kill me by your hands.
Be kind, let not me live after this treachery.'

JUDGMENT/ JUSTICE

'Be just, good king.'
The crowd expected the king to let go his son.
The blacksmith's daughter hardly mattered to the people.
'Love is worth everything,
justice is worth all love,
' his heart shivering and eyes wet,
'The accused be hanged for ruining the honor of a daughter of my kingdom.'
The son smiled.
Being born in a palace cost him greatly.

INTUITION / ILLUSION

Do we really feel things
when we utter them
acting as human beings?
Our words travel through by the wavelength
of emotions and hit the hearts of people who believe us.
We play with the trust people invest in us,
fooling ourselves to believe
we will never be fooled like ways.
What inch of earth will we have to stand upon,
when our intuitions turn out to be mere illusions.

HISTORY / HATE

HISTORY/ HATE

There are always three versions of a story:
your version, my version and history.
Then history itself has three versions:
your history, my history and the truth.
I hate that history of mine
which is drenched in your mistakes.
You hate my history garnished by your suspicion.
An unwanted child born out of time's womb.
Waking up to from your bed is no flattery,
making up what you don't know is not history.

GOSPEL / GOD

GOSPEL/ GOD

When the earth was not there,
and the skies haven't seen themselves,
and when water didn't know it was wet
and stars had no light to show;
then I had loved you.
If you do try to understand.
Before all of these,
we were souls kept in some cosmic vials.
Your vial kept next to mine in that divine inventory.
God, almighty, lovable, commanded us,
'Be!' And we became. We are all gospels of truth.
We are as well the Word of God.
But we forgot ourselves on this soiled earth.

FATE

'Do you love me?' he asked.
She took some time and said,
'Don't know.'
He smiled and looked away.
It his last try.
The doctor had said,
'Not more than a month.'
And he knew
she will then shout her guts out
but then her I love you will mean nothing.
Sadly, she will blame fate
while it was her all the time.

ETYMOLOGY / EX

Once, somebody came to my life
with a fake world of love.
I was so much into that somebody
that I lost myself and still haven't found.
That somebody was a mistake and not love.
That somebody should know their broken promises
are rotting in an alley of my heart.
Also, I have found somebody
who is the first love of mine.
This somebody is a hell different from that somebody.
Undear that somebody,
I never knew you.

DESTINY

I missed the train and got late for work.
I reached late for work and was fired.
I was fired and hence couldn't pay my rent.
I couldn't pay the rent
so became homeless. Bad day.
The train I lost met an accident.
The job I lost was sucking my blood.
The ceiling of the house Ieft, fell down.
On my first homeless night,
someone near me a bag full with seven million rupees. Bad day?

COFFIN

They said, in this mad storm
it was not easy to bury his wife.
And the cursed woman,
the sinner that she was,
the coffin must be burned.
Set afire the coffins of the sinful,
they cried. These small two pennny worth gods
he couldn't fight.
He was dead without her
and the resting places of the dead are called coffins.
He went ahead and set fire to his house
and the village church.

Brothel

BROTHEL

Her heart had become a brothel.

People came, spent some time and went away.

Leaving behind their smell and dirt and what not.

She was disgusted with herself when there came a man

who thought she deserved honour.

He gave her his name and they together

begged forgiveness.

He washed her heart with God's love.

And the brothel became a temple.

For the people,

it is still a prostitute's residence.

AGE

People could never stop
talking about the age gap.
'A decade' they would exclaim,
those filthy do-gooders.
In spite of the age gap,
the thought gap and the sanity gap,
they both thought of jumping
down the bridge that night
when it became
impossible
to hide.