“بات کرنی مجھے مشکل کبھی ایسے تو نہ تھی”

مجھے خود سے ایک شکوہ رہتا ہے کہ میں اپنے لکھےگئے الفاظ میں معنی ڈھونڈتا ھوں ، اپنے معنی کو الفاظ نہیں دیتا۔ میں ان الفاظ کو اگل بیٹھنے کے فورن بعد ہی ان کے مطلب کے بارے سوچنے لگتا ہوں۔ میرے سر میں کتنے خیالات اور قلب میں کتنے جذبات پس پردہ زباں چھپے ہیں اور اس نقاب کے پیچھے سے جھانکتے ہیں، الفاظ کی کھوج میں۔ مسلہ یہ ہے کہ ان احساسات کو جو کوئی لفظ بھی دکھ جائے یہ اسے دید سے دل میں اتار لیتے ہیں اور باقی سب دعوےداروں کو فارغ کر دیا جاتا ہے ۔ اس جوش خطابت سے نکلی جلد بازی اور لاپرواہی سے کئی احساسات اپنے کی بجاے دوسرے احساسات کا لباس اوڑہ بیٹھتے ہیں اور معاملہ ٹیڑھے سے ترچھا اور ترچھے سے الٹا ہوتا چلا جاتا ہے ۔ یہاں تک کہ میں خود اپنی تحریر سے آشنائی کا دعوہ کرنے سے گریز کرتا ہوں اور اگر کوئی میرے کچھ لکھے ہو ے کا مطلب مجھ سے دریافت کر لے تو بولنے سے کتراتا ہوں۔ “دیکھئے، آئینے میں میں خود کو دیکھ کے میں بھلا کیسے بتا سکتا ہوں کہ آپ کیسے دکھتے ہیں؟”  اور اس طرح کے کئی الٹے سیدھے جملے اپنی لاچاری کو جائز ثابت کرنے کے لیے کہ دیا کرتا ہوں۔

مگر اب میں نے صرف وہ لکھنے کی ٹھانی ہے جو لکھے بغیر رہا نہ جائے، اور جس کو لکھتے وقت اس بات کا یقین ہو کہ جو کچھ لکھا جا رہا ہے اس کامدّع کم از کم میرے ذہن میں واضح ہے ۔ لکھنے کی چاہ میں میں نے بے معنی جملوں کا اتنا شور و ولولہ مچا رکھا تھا کہ اس میں چند ایک بامقصد اور پر معنی جملے اور لفظ کراہتے رہتے تھے پر انہیں نہ  تو کوئی پہچانتا، اور نہ ہی  کوئی ان کی اصلیت تسلیم کرنے کو تیار ھوتا۔ ہم سب کو اس دواتوں اور قلموں سے بھری دنیا میں اپنی لکھائی کا نام بنانے کے لیے کئی کرتب کرنے پڑتے ہیں۔ کوئی اپنی تحریر میں گالیوں  کی بوچھاڑ کر رہا ہے تو کوئی بڑے لفظوں کی بھرمار ، کوئی ہم آواز الفاظ کادیوانہ شاعر آزادی کا متوالا ہوا تو کوئی دلکش تصاویر  پہ اپنی شاعری چھاپنے لگا، کوئی دو زبانوں کو جوڑنے کی کاوش میں لگ گیا تو کوئی نت نئے موزو سخن تلاشنے لگا ۔ میں بھی اس جستجو جدّت میں اکثر سچ کے ایک بڑے حصّے کو کھو دیتا ہوں۔ اپنے لکھے سے متاثر میں ویسے بھی کم ہی ہوتا ہوں مگر جب الفاظ اور تکنیق کی دھند میں معنی ہی اوجھل ہوجاے تو قاری اپنے سچ گھڈ کے میرے پہ مسلّط کریں گے ہی۔ اس سے مجھے خاص مسلہ نہیں، الفاظ تو ہیں ہی سیاہی کے  پتلے، جنہیں پڑھنے والوں کی عقل کی رسیاں انہیں کے دل کی دھن پہ نچا تی ہیں۔ لیکن مسلہ تب پیدا ہوتا ہے جب میرے الفاظ کی رسیاں مجھے ہی جکڈنےلگتی ہیں اور میں ان کے ساز پہ  رقص کرنے لگتا ہوں، نہ کے وہ میرے۔ جیسے زندگی معنی کو لمحوں میں سمیٹنےکا نام ہے، لکھنا معنی کو لفظوں میں قید کرنے کو کہتے ہیں۔ مگر جیسے  آگاہی کے عذاب کےبائث میرے لمحے بھی معنی کی قید میں رہتے ہیں، میں بھی لفظوں کا غلام ہوں۔

الفاظ خود ہی اتنا بولتے ہیں کہ مجھے بولنے کا موقع ہی نہیں ملتا۔

Inability to Sigh Deep Enough

Foxes ran over people on roads, driving unsafely,
“Birds! Please, eat the bread crumbs before some way finds me!”,
my rapidly sifting sentimentalities would’ve had their way,
But the rabbit fell, not into a hole but a comma, under that darned tree!
It clogged its spree, marred its glee,
Branches reached out and shaped the word “plea”.

“Oh that dude? Do worry, he’s not dead,
he just has a burst bubble for a head,
a brain pregnant with doodled lead,
fighting with the slumbering afternoon bed,
lines strangle themselves into words he never read,
beyond a stopping sign where they snobbishly tread.”

The lightning crackled sharply last night,
it sounded like your book page caught in a gale,
Like ivy, flowers crawled up the metal chair,
on which sits throned the fox without bail.
Is the tea stale? no?
Why then you so pale?
Ahh, a lost trail.
Well, all hail!

Wasn’t that what we always wanted!
Wasn’t your fear of being figured out what got you haunted?
Using your blindfold, your compass you pestered and taunted.
Every turn in your road made you realize it wasn’t you but the path that jaunted.
Alongside every drifter’s swirling dust and idyllic maps never flaunted,
There’s the unknown, go get it, you know you want it!

It’s weird… almost surreal…
But you know?
I’m just not, all that daunted?

What now? The hour’s black, Khokhas are all closed.
My friends they’re all with exams overdosed.
my face feels like a sandpaper growing thorns,
and all my poetry’s gone redundantly prosed.

The fox, the rabbit, both chase the bubble heads.
bobbing about a barely betrodden bazaar,
of bitch bravura, banal bashing, buffoon bidding.
The loneliest adventure I’ve had by far.

It’s all never going to come disentangled,
so why don’t you go do something worthwhile?
go get a fox, and a rabbit,
and make them screw each other’s smile.
But be broodingly observant,
notice their volatility all the while.
And when they’re both sitting,
discussing who of Waits and Bowie is weirder,
present them a cup of bile.
Ambiguity? Insecurity.
everything shall turn vile.
Only for as long as you don’t keep count,
there shall always be an extra mile.

So, sit back and let it begin, the trial!

“Try Again, Can’t find this file”?
Go to hell, Force Shutdown style!

PS. No matter what mountain shall against me lean,
I would still wish Sting didn’t have caffeine.

Ghorday

Ek yaad ka guzra mausam lauta,
jab meri chath k fursh per,
barish ki satah pe,
bhaagay katron k ghayab ghorday.

Takmeel ko pohnchay kheaalon k karwaan,
ghirtay parindon k maanind,
jo ab patton ki aardh k sapurd thay.
Chirdyon ki tarha sehmay,
Baadalon ki tarha siyah aur mandlaatay,
Boondon ki tarha num-o-larzaan khealaat,
Yun barastay khealaat,
K meray aangan mein girtay hi bikhar jatay,
Aur dil se ojhal ho jatay,
Takay unki jaga le payein ghultay,
mit’tay armaan.

Uss jalay bulb k se bujh jaatay,
Us k makaan ki peeth mein posheeda,
khaak se sajay, murjhaatay armaan,
jo uski bu se hain wabasta,
jis se mushkbu hain woh koray safhay,
jo aj bhi meray kamray ki khamoshi mein parday,
sun rahay hain,
khirdki k sheeshay pe bajtay tablay ki thaap.
Aur pardh rahay hain,
sheeshay pe mehw-e-ruqs Monsoon k ushaak,
ki akhri ghazal.

Meray ghar k dar-o-deewar,
jo raet k masaaib se waqif,
rookh aur sook gaye thay,
ab gehra rang pakard chukay hain.
Aur barish k russ ko khud pe lagaye,
chaat rahay hain,
meray dil ki haddon ko.
jin mein basta tha ek nabeena
jisay barish k siwa kuch dikhta hi na tha.
Par ab us k kaalay chashmein per bhi,
baarish apni raggon ka jaal bichaye bethi hai,
jis mein dordtay hain abadd k kuch raaz.

Pur ab k jab abadd hua haal,
Falak ki palkon se muss hui ek sard ungli,
aur joon baarish thami,
tau khamoshi chehek uthi,
iss gumaan se k iss peher ka daamun,
bhi hogea taar taar,
kisi k armanon k hijab ki tarha.
Jis pe khaeli jaanay wali holi,
mein urdtay thay sirf pheekay rang.

Aur ab asmaan ki saaf sunehri slate,
Aur us pe kirnein undelta sooraj dekh kr,
Dil baeth sa gea,
Iss soch se k raasta,
Sirf log aur khuwaab hi nahi bhataktay yahaan,
K qos-e-qaza bhi aaj na jaanay reh gaii thi kahaan?

The Sound of Writing

There’s a mechanical drumming sound that doesn’t confine itself to a rhythm, yet is like an immaculate musical composition to her ears as she lies on the sofa listening to him type on a typewriter, in one of the many apartments lining the red-light district. The street is bordered by buildings in whose facades lie hints of the Mughal architecture’s richness, now veiled by multiple renovations and fled light. Numerous first floor windows stand open, and behind one such window lies the apartment. It is a small room, all vacant except a wooden desk in a corner, a patch of Sindhi rug sprawled in the middle and a sofa by a window that looks out onto the promiscuous moon jerking off its moonlight onto the filth ridden street where silence is punctuated by gasps, moans and throaty barks. He sits far off in a darkness soaked corner, with his back to her and a lamp on, illuminating just the surface of his desk. She sees his bushy head from behind, a fluffy cloud of black with a silver lining as lamp light shines through it. His tea gradually turns cold while awaiting a meeting with his lips which are busy mutely mouthing words he then hammers onto a page. His cigarette is now half burned, lying in the ashtray like a broken limb, its ashes swimming in water he’d filled it with to avoid them escaping into the air; like his volatile thoughts he lets nature chain the ashes too.

His long, lean fingers sit poised atop the typewriter’s keys like a Tarantula, ready to burst into a flurry of action any moment, followed by a pause before another outburst. He’s hunched over the typewriter, wearing a kameez and no shalwar, has a handsome, square face and a reason to write. She just lies naked on the sofa and thinks about what goes on in that cloud in the corner. Pinched up from an orphanage in Sindh for easy money by a pimp when she was abandoned by her guardians outside a mosque, she was brought up in the underbelly of Old Lahore, the heart of Punjab, and the Sindhi rug is the only reminder of that language she never spoke, the soil she never walked upon and the dull ache and longing for that life she could never live. But now as she lies staring into distant nothingness, her hand dangles down the side of the sofa, her palm caressing the soft hand made rug contemplatively, her thoughts are those of a past failed affairs with the Maulvi sahab of the neighbourhood mosque and a bank accountant, about how this gawky man is not what she had imagined her most regular customer would be like, and what’ll it all be like if it ends? He has stopped typing and the silence that settles seems to be trying to give an answer: heavy, expectant but empty. But she knows that there’s nowhere else she would rather be. She can’t even recall the upbeat, blaring Naseebo Lal songs, the dizzying red tint and the hoarse laughter of that mujra khana she works in.

Can he fall in love with me? Why does he bother translating everything he writes to Punjabi and narrating it to me like a lunatic? The way his mouth dribbles as he doesn’t stop to swallow the spit… the way his voice trails off as he runs out of oxygen in his lungs since he forgets to take a breath because the next sentence is just too delicious to allow him a pause? He loves me… He loves me for my flaws, she tells herself, not my tits, and for my soul he obviously couldn’t. His eyes can’t see deep into me, the tip of his penis never reached far enough inside me anyway. He loves my cheap smeared mascara, my red bloated lipstick and this scar beside my eye. I probably feature in his writings too, leaving a faint trail here and a soft stroke there. I’m important, I inspire art. But is it Heer or Bhagbhari that I want to be to this Waris Shah?  

As the intangible flows into him like crystal wine, and he dissects and strews it across the page, the Tarantula grows frantic. It jumps and crawls. Faster and faster. She lets her hand slide between her thighs and pleasures herself as the typewriter’s noises ascend. Quicker by the second. His brain tries to keep up with the mind. His fingers race faster still. She is close behind; her fingers are as fast as his now, tremulously frenzied, until she climaxes with a groan as his typewriter makes the ringing sound marking the end of a line. She stops when he does. Two heavy breathing sounds guide each other, knitting intelligently. She chuckles and reaches for the heap of clothes beside the sofa’s one end; he blinks without turning, adoring the way she’s driven to orgasms by his writing but abhorring the lack of subtlety she shows.

He writes to keep his sanity and dates a hooker in that room every other night to make himself feel better, and because he loves everything about her but her. Writing and fucking are what he does best. Got himself the professional typewriter for the prior, and the professional hooker for the latter; both ladies clad in red, he can make love to any to satisfy the other. He therefore brings along the typewriter for a threesome at every visit. He sips the chilled tea now; it tastes bitter than the brittle reality of his self; cold like the shrill hum of his automatic days and manual nights. The Lipton teabag and the crumbled cigarette are like her, he thinks, used and wasted. His eyes sail down to the typewriter and the page once again. The page is the door, beyond it heaven, and those print heads just knock to get through somehow.

He turns around his chair, faces the sofa and the window, keeps gulping the tea but lights a new cigarette. She has slipped into a dreamless sleep. The windowpane hangs beside her sofa like a painting on the room’s darkest wall, the night’s ink black scene framed and preserved. He gets up and approaches the window broodingly, like an observer getting up from an art gallery bench and becoming one with an artwork on the wall they’ve delved their heart and poured their mind into for long. He looks out the window, as her silhouette lies woven into the crimson velvet of the sofasofa, and with a heaved sigh, flings the teabag out through the window and into the night; the Lipton teabag smears the kinetic nocturnal painting. Leaning against the windowpane the vandalist looks at her. He realizes how she is a desert in greyscale under the moonlight of the late hour; her undulating naked body is as graceful and natural as the dunes of timeless sand slumbering upon the vast land of Thal, perpetually shifting, crumbling, trickling, on and on.

As a soft wind pours in through the window and plays with his hair, he drinks in every curve of her beauty and feels his eyes moisten. Lahori nights may be beautiful but never as filthy gorgeous as this hooker, he thinks, and smiles.

Pelt

It isn’t music unless appropriate seduction precedes and meaning proceeds it, while ”it” remains indefinable experience.

When, after crawling hours of rolling flashing, grey sky stops pelting rain,
This mountaintop terrace’s steel railing, plastic chair and plants drip crystal colorless ether of pain;
A dull ache that seeps deep to the roots of 1300 year old trees, throbbing ancient rituals,
Of blood and sweat and porn and sperm and massacres of potential heavenly visuals,
Darkly thick wool hangs low above, oppressively condensing thoughts demanding space,
Slaying a sentiment, a whispering, pleading ambition to tumble it off a cliff with grace,
Seeing this mutely shrieking mourning, hidden in the audible, visible silence,
Lying in every tearful leaf and sheltered shivering birds’ hearts with ominous elegance;
A silence I could not allow pass through my bones, like the shredding wind, its ally,
Witnessing all this from under a shade on the terrace, as I sit dry,
Still drenched in the will to:

Bloom all wry,
Attempt a wingless fly,
Swim boundlessly mortal, like a hooker’s midnight sigh,
Invisible, persistent, lest the freedom mortify,
The petulant contradictions, I choke whose cry,
Castrate all hearts since balls make’em lie,
Hunt that dear who with these balls did toy,
Prepare a line for that old dead fish called joy,
Resurrect all colors from grey, in the wake of fog which die,

So as these wills, crippled but armed, recruit a mob to soil wherein I abide,
Towards me with Day-Lewis like intense, foreboding theatricality they stride,
And I could not Help but chuckle at the illusion of power all these deformed passing beastly kids hold,
Just because the ghoulish weather is on their side, like a parent taking sides, making them grow bold,
But deep down I know these kids will grow to become oaks and thorns with dreadful scorn,
Spreading spiteful regret for not having spilled the poison even though it was pungent before born,
So, to refuse the mechanical beasts fuel which revs up their fatalistic engines drowning souls in their wake,
And blur wants and needs and liabilities and ambitions and confuse horizons with limits in their buzz you can’t shake,
I plan to give meaning to the solemness and despair of the weather and sentiments spilling out from its eye vagina,
All seeing natural, filthy yet believing, the surroundings’ lack of definition and context melting my faulty antennas,
And to conjure this meaning I let the coldness of the polished wooden flute become one with the numbness of my fingertips,
Which rested on all six holes, ready to flutter into motion, discreetly alert, directioning sails of a voyaging ship,
And like expecting that kiss I refused, or Sting’s caffeine, or an artistically rolled joint, the flute lifts for a meeting with my parting lips,

All slows, stands, stills,
As though underwater,
The fluid silence thickens,
Clouding over the valley haze,
And the crickets and dripping,
All wait in slo-mo, paralyzed,
Expectantly but crouchingly,
As though ready to molest if the show proves unsatisfactory,
Every little atom in all that’s hideous and beautiful all around me,
With all their moroseness and dying hopes of fading glee,
halt!

And then that reeling, dazed wind’s lunacy building inside me, I set free,
A grunt, a heaved sigh, of sorrow and relief, goes on a killing spree,
And the first note has arrived! Welcome you orphaned bastard, daddy’s so madly happy!
Now go, travel, be wild, drink and fuck and curse and write!
And paint naked ladies and sing folk alright,
And keep a moustache, for not fasting get into fights,
Wed together children but debate for freedoms! rights!
Crave weird visions and shun crowded sights,
Stare at that ass all clad in tights,
Praise your filth, secure your plight,
Know you’re homeless, half read novels your companion at 7,400 ft height,
No matter what they teach you, beauty’s the diet,
Love doesn’t happen on first conversation but sight,
Go now, sensually and erotically shake nature’s hands with a smile so bright,
Like that Jutt Urdu writer shook mine when we met at that khokha that night,

But hold on, you disagree?
You think that even if ugly is gorgeous you can’t make beautiful ugly?
You think to crush these monsters of weather and within I need to consent to the blue?
That I need to fight with the same frequency and weapons and use the strength in sadness your voice owns too?
So be it.
The sighs and fingers ally,
Albeit,
Doubtful and shy,
Through it,
The self composed melody shall now fly,
I give to receive, exchanging wind for sound,
The playing flute transcending time and logic, liberating limits and bounds,
The soaring, wavering and then fading note swims to the valley and echoes back,
Its destination the valley , and it too its origin since direction it returns from, I lose track,
The valley shines bright with the lent light of the sound the flute sets about it afloat,
The valley, like a moon, boasts a merriment that isn’t its own but borrowed from the searing sun’s gusts in my throat,
Under my shifting fingers I sense and hold the tremors of the sound, vibrating with profound subtlety,
Like holding a petal, holy grail or a dynamite, in possession and control of delicacy, divinity, necessary hostility,
The upper hole’s high pitch being love, and youth and morbid hoping,
The lowest hole winter, doomful trumpeting, a low sinister hollow harrowing,
And jumping from hole to hole, I excel sense’s realms, travelling psychedelic and spiritual, from tyrant to just,
And when I’m with my performance done I see the night’s ink now changed, from past eve’s horizon’s rust,
And one by one the beastly wills grow buff and mighty, sucking at the flute, but I can bear with that,
Since they bow before me, on nineteen mountaintops, for like Hans Landa, to catch a rat I thought like a rat,
By adding to the pallet of nagging shades I elevate to civilize chaotic sadness to harmonized one,
By taking sorrow and trying to give it art and articulating it into aesthetic realm nature naturally shuns,
I finally change:
Tear to salt,
Stab to prick,
Moment to memory,
Sound to music.

Shrink

—opening time—

I’m not a remover that glides across strangers’ pages full of scribbled ink, smudging its white self as it passes,
But I am.
I’ve the right to retain the volume I contain though I fill others’ glasses,
But I can’t.
A honk that was beauteous as Coltrane’s flute went once unheard in the midnight lamp’s chilled glow on a red headed stranger’s street,
But mine is a horn that screams intense, these strangers hear it bleat but hesitate to treat,
Clean pages and glasses full of delicious colors sit atop my table which I desire overturned,
I marvel these and although I blow hard I cannot get the horn to produce the music yearned,
Hence I lay down my head
Reading a fragrance instead.

—them—

I feel this ‘her’, distant as though those nails scared her too much,
But it isn’t so, it’s her friend’s matrix’s glitch,
I feel that ‘her’ shrinking from her liabilities for he’s found among the books she’d touch,
One refuses a slap, the other a touch,
A touch she once allowed, a slap she never lead me to much,
And this ‘he’, and that ‘he’, one hasn’t even touched it while that ‘he’ has his hand on full swing,
This ‘he’ wants mere entwined hands to pester God into mutual blessing,
And that ‘he’ needs an affirmation if the blow should be where it is, landing.
A two way diplomat, two friends reconciliated,
One an overthinker, another thinks thinking’s overrated
And this other girl needs, but really wants, to know,
If there are shards beneath the pearls the world won’t show,
If there are murmuring ants beneath the smooth undulating piano keys,
Whether her playing fingers would crush them beneath or the melodies.
So this ‘she’ is hangin’
and that ‘she’ is her usual yellin’
And this ‘he’ is an imbecile
while that ‘he’ is an artist among assassins
and the other ‘she’ is an artist among speakers.
Speakers I’ve learned the hard way to see as leakers,
People whose worth is defined by others’ secrets they can bark,
And I’m blood drawn to the shark.
And so I enter this bathroom, dark,
And flick on the light to get away from my father who just strode
Into my room, reminding ‘exams in a week!’, so I sit on the commode.
Not shitting it but myself.

—us—

Of that squashed cockroach the bathroom tiles reek,
Dripping conscience that doesn’t tweak,
The crimson liquid from these pipes shall leak,
For her beauty is like northern lights, almost Greek,
And my senses are numb, ineffably weak,
So frail and fragile that even festive affairs affect their nature freak,
So I wish I swim and sway down this drain I see,
This exhaust’s hum drowning alongside me,
So I could excuse myself to swiftly slip assunder since I’ve a severely sleepy sleep to sleep,
Away where whisking whistles of bellowing, wistful winds of a forgotten nightmare don’t wither my ways,
These frays will be the end of your days,
Can I call them that? Nocturnal as they are
Limbo like, as the stillness of the time inside a slumbering afternoon bar,
Where a hunched Dylan in a shadowy corner may cut his veins to bleed out words,
Which many I’s would collect and rearrange and strew into wires lined with birds,
And make them chirp outside the bar, for inside there will always be a bleeder,
A molested child, a driver touching self proclaimed writer, dilemma reader,
A hater of ambiguity of self, yet host to a game of opposites,
A believer of unsaid words and connection above his dick before it all reversely transits,
A target achiever who gets there without a stroll or a ride,
An amphetamine desiring dreamer that looks at an alley seemingly wide,
A restive beaver reflected in another, through machines which kill fascists
A nocturnal screen watcher who the next day doesn’t get anything’s whole nor its gist
A caffeine consuming chicken who doesn’t know where it should stand,
A traveler who knows everything but his wants, in a decision demanding land,
A procrastinating, hairy child molester who imparts slumbering kisses and touches too kinetic for the bar’s stillness,
And all these and more need something to while away the interior’s sleeping dullness
Hence I give them all something to listen,
Those birds on wire outside this bar all glisten,
With an iridescent gleam of pain inducing inspiration,

—closing time—

And the birds are all perched still and sing,
Until a stone at them I fling,
And then the teacher tells me ing ing is a sound fascinating,
She sits there and on a page that musical note she’s drawing,
knitter of multi hued fabrics, she’s pieces of my mind sowing,
And she, those glasses I filled and pages I removed, and the honk will never know
How all those characters, this bathroom, the coming tests and the battles slow
my days and make weeds grow
In the desolate heart of a man who knows
That he’s a cork, he’s a screw,
he’s a blistering hypocrite who’s blue
and would like to selfishly think
That for many he’s between sanity and self a link
Thinking his sage blinking face can bring
people back from madness’ brink
For in his rigid heart the reality can’t sink
That if he desires a beautiful brain with limbs all pink,
He’ll have to dwell in his imagination, style Barton Fink
Otherwise he’s just a cleaner who can’t rid of his own corollary stink
That he’s nothing but a fucking worthless shrink.

Bush

His head was a bush from which erupted a thousand birds each having dark and phantasmagorical colors, bursting into rainbows of light, water, dust and fire. Intertwined in this bush they swirled in a whirlpool, jovial as a midsummer knight’s cat’s whiskers, descending into valleys and voices of death gods.

And the Senator, now retired, whose horses were afraid of elephant riding witches, put his feet up against the sun and screamed and smoked and wore leather jackets with dark lipped, high crumbling hopes, dwelling in grammar and specializing in masks and breakfasts as he typed.

She therefore throws her arms around the Deer now, and lets it embrace, but writes on the piece of past He owns, tying knots and colliding body parts. To Her tapes and drives He delivers packets of commodities and means of trivial entertainment. Both sit, exchanging sounds, interpreting personality traits via binary support, sharing miserable periods of learning, hurling words into one body, sharing visions of slumber and while She likes visiting places, the places visit Him. Some from the future, foreboding. He eventually, inevitably does a somersault above the voyaging ships of the pumping organ and lands in a universe of colorlands and soundscapes where the ocean waves leap, laugh and jest, sizzling like a thousand burning ants and strong like antlers of a centuries old dragon. Rising above Her, deliciously sour symphonies manifest, but He is ok with the typewriter lying unused by him if no one else produces words with it either. But He’s thrusting and thirsting for roger and lust, hinting naiveté. But of small pink lips, black hair accessories, imagined beings from a foreign nation and of blue skies he knows nothing.

So She looks to the Senator again in sorrow and despair, her fox like agility diminishing, opens a door and falls into a rising pit, and pulls a rope but grows still as a cat’s scrotum in a winter night’s icy gale and stagnant like hair on an ice cream vomit, cute and tall above Her senses. Her eyes have smoke in the joint of His body of art work out which He does for Her performance, commending Her frequently burned hair but, changing like seasons, twisted like His brain or black brass wires, like that of a creature from a foreign nation, riding a strawberry shake.

Many journeys away over miles of hut filled valleys and smog covered terrains he sees a faint trace of a dream’s sketch form and dissolve, so he persists solemnly, mutely but she squeals sweetly, bellowing like wind upon which sails the silent leaf of his self. The leaf lands in that bush, which perpetuates.

 

PS. He, She, The Senator and the Deer.

Sexism Zindabad

“Your honor! We have in front of our judicious eyes a Feminist. Yes sir, a Feminist, a woman who is bent upon her preposterously unbending will to grant women their due rights. Women their due rights? Hah! There are no “rights” with women. Yes sir, there are only wrongs and that is my case today.

With all due respect ignored, the disrespected Ms. Feminist here is charged with mass propaganda, intellectual assault on the sage likes of us and conspiracy; Conspiracy to obstruct the course of human development and impede its intellectual and social growth.

Women, as you may concur, are attractive fiends. Throughout the course of human history they have successfully mislead man with their alluringly conspicuous anatomical parts and erotic appearances. They’ve allured man into committing rape. They invite men to do such hideous acts by flashing their appealing looks openly, and men being the courteous and chivalrous beings they are, cannot possibly refuse an invitation, now can they? So Imagine! Just imagine the torment and self loathing, inner guilt and the loss of morale these invited rapists must feel after having done that inhumane act. Are these poor men not human? Do they not deserve to not become rapists? Yes sir, they do deserve to not become rapists. But no, these women have to exist and ruin the lives of these lamentable souls.

Woman is by far the only creature on our planet Earth that is single handedly responsible for the Global Warming. Please hear me out. These creatures’ bodies constitute of unnecessarily protruding bodily parts which take up a huge volume of our environment. Now if you add up the volume of all these parts and do some maths- those guys over at Princeton have done it…That dude in the wheelchair, I think. Stephen Gawking? Yes. – You will then discover that all that volume is making the atmosphere’s height rise. This means that if the Atmosphere containing gases around the Earth was to be 1cm thick, it is now 2cm thick, thanks to feminine bosoms. What’s my point? Ah. Listen closely: This has raised the altitude of the Ozone layer, bringing it closer to the Sun and making it deplete and leave out patches through which pours in sunlight that contributes to the Greenhouse Effect and warms up the Greenhouse Gases, thus fueling Global Warming.

A mass propaganda against Mother Nature herself. This Mother surely needs to administer a few fatal spanks to some volume-occupying bottoms.

They may say I am a Sexist. But I must disagree, your honor! I’m against sex and yet you say I’m a sexist? How very amusing indeed. What was that?… Ah. So a plum woman in the audience just yelled “Gay!” at me. I’ve got  to say I have got to admire your nugatory mind and the intriguing ways it works in. I am gay! I am openly gay! See how I dance about, do the poorly executed tap dance and wave this folder above my head? This is “Gay (adj): Carefree and merry; colorful”. What has become of us! A beautifully elegant word which we connected to the idea of expressing extreme rapture and joviality, now stands with its head lowered, its chin buried in its chest like an impotent, misunderstood and bullied child.

Speaking of children. These women, they want to marry and since that is supposed to involve a poor male counterpart, they take men down in these suicidal pacts called marriages. Not only does the pathetic husband provide ample money to meet her incessant demands, but he also curbs his manhood, his morals and his firm and heroic ideologies; Once a man of honor and integrity now reduced to performing nappy changes. But that isn’t all. This is the most cunning part of these women’s plan: They start to swell their bellies! Yes your honor, I do not hold the knowledge as to how they manage to pull off this trick, but they just do. Then they start to hide behind this belly to make more demands; money for therapies, medicines, doctors, books dedicated to this satanic, or shall I say womanly, cult practice of belly swelling and God knows what. And then they carry children inside their bellies, tangled up in innards! Fragile, little, beautiful children inside their bellies. What torture is this? What insanity, what inanity! I’d prefer they make babies in those test tubes and trays instead. That must be less painful at least. And then there are the Literature loving mother’s who prefer (Julius) Caesarian sections but that is a whole other straw for a whole other cold drink.

All these despicable creatures ever do is bring babies into this world and raise them up. They raise up these children, groom and polish them and educate them about the world. They harness life and let it grow and bloom. They are the caressers of the the souls and subject of the art, passion of a lover and the ink of a poet, Soul to Body and Water to Life, flower to the garden and garden to the birds.

But they are women, right? And women ought to be oppressed. As simple as that.

The defendant is clearly guilty of all these and existence. They must not be allowed to exist, breath or pollute our society by living anymore. And with that I rest my case.”

______________________________________________________________

For any readers who are deprived of the blessing of an in-built sarcasm detector: This piece mocks the irrationalities of Sexism and relies on the use of sarcasm to support Feminism, not the other way round.

Ending the Dark

Into the mirror you gaze. Darkness hovers above. It envelopes your skull and your ears. It’ll soon cover your eyes too, blinding you. There is an irritation, a prickling about. You want it all to end and end soon; You want it to stop, you want to get away. But the noises get higher; slashing metal sounds emanate from above. You wonder when will it all end. You had waited so long for this to begin, waited for you to get away from the darkness above. But now this seems interminable; Each passing moment turns to hours and hours turn to pestering poltergeists which perturb you endlessly. Hands grope you, they grope your skull, your neck and they turn your head where they want it to. You are being manipulated without any control over your actions. You want to rise and drift away but the hands won’t let you move, they won’t let you go. And then the black shards rain down from above. They fall everywhere, even into your eyes which bleed out tears. They fall all around you, coloring the ground in black. And they fall into what you are clad in, so they now prick you from within. There’s darkness above, below and upon you. And then, just then when you thought the bleakness was all pervading and eternal, you see a ray of light; a shimmer of hope as the hands lift the shroud off of you and demand a red piece of paper.

You’ve just had a haircut.

The Liebster Award Tag Post

I’ve been tagged for a blog award by a kind fellow blogger Momina, so here goes the post.

I’d start off by thanking Momina for this, because as much as I feel obliged, I also see this as an opportunity to reflect upon Self and everything that has to do with it. The questions really made me think and sometimes even ponder upon the dark alleys of the city within which I shy away from usually. But this made me listen to the noises emanated by that very city.

So the rules are:

1. If you get tagged you post eleven facts about yourself.
2. You answer the eleven questions given to you by the person who tagged you.
3. Further tag eleven bloggers.
4. Give them eleven questions to answer.
5. No tagging back.

 

ELEVEN FACTS ABOUT MYSELF:

 

1. I do not hold the susceptibility to get bored, for there will always be a book, internet, a mobile, an    ipod, a pen, a paper, or at least ground to engrave words in around.
2. I’m obfuscated by the Universe, its entirety and infinite perpetuity but above all its existence.
3. My mind is host to an eternal war between the opposites.
4. The five abnormally long fellows attached to my palm have the ability to bend backwards.
5. I have had the tortures of an eye surgery, bone marrow, broken finger and teeth braces levied upon my frail body in the brief existence of my Self.
6. I’m a believer of Will and the Ways it can make.
7. I believe I have a novel within me, at least one if not many, waiting to come out. Ah! but maybe it’s just a dream, but then again they do say optimistic things regarding this subject.
8. As already stated, or perhaps overstated, on this blog: I crave fame and all the positive changes a man may make with the authority and relevance it brings to your thoughts and actions.
9. I adore rain but abhor lightning.
10. Friendships are a confusingly volatile affair; The abundance of vulnerability to get hurt that comes with it is depressing to me.
11. I think many facts are fat lies. These are not, because I do not see the above bullets as strictly “facts”. These are mere reflection of my mind on paper regarding my feelings and views. And my mind doesn’t understand me that much either.

 

ELEVEN QUESTIONS:

 

• Favorite quote, and why?

“I don’t think I’m tangible to myself. I mean, I think one thing today and I think another thing tomorrow. I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else. I don’t know who I am most of the time. It doesn’t even matter to me.”

-Bob Dylan.

Now such a painfully honest judgment of oneself coming from someone so profoundly influential and effective as Dylan is a comforting thing for me since the quote sums up much of what I am. I do not know what I want but yet I do. I have ever changing tastes in music, movies and books. I think good and bad of a person within the very hour or even simultaneously. If I sit upon judgment on myself, I can’t; firstly because I just cannot figure out anything of substance and secondly because the truths I find about myself are hard and affronting. So I just nod along to Mr. Dylan here and choose to accept the only thing about myself that I can be sure of: I change and I can’t afford to care.

• One thing about you that people wouldn’t assume by looking at you?

I’m an inherently shy person contrary to my bouncing, cheery and generally confident appearance.

• Would you rather forgive something said about you or verbally lash the person who said it?

I would want to communicate my feelings in a polite yet decisive manner first, and then think about forgiving.

• Something about you that makes you really proud.

I have a (mostly self proclaimed) skill with words.

• A single favorite book you wouldn’t mind reading twice or thrice. Why?

Asking an avid reader to name his favorite book is akin to asking a mother to name her favorite child. But although I may not be able to name my favorite book, I will not be able to do so even more if you’re asking me to name a book I’d want to read again. I’ve never read a work twice. I read with scrupulous attention to everything in a book to an extent where I do not need re reads. Moreover I’m a slow reader so I cannot afford to spend time discovering an already discovered America; Let’s explore space, I mean.

But I would quite contentedly re read a poem collection by Poe, Frost, Blake, Cecil Day-Lewis etc. as poetry has something new to offer in each read.

• One person whose (God forbid) death would change you? Why? 

If the person I call “Me” and you call Usama dies, that would change me. My body shall be served in the tray of grave in an underground banquet of dilapidation; Feasted upon by the plague and insects. And when I’ll rest in a million pieces in the now replete bellies of these small beings with their appetites satisfied, I would slowly be excreted and after many years, turned into fuel. This fuel may then once run a teleporting automobile of a kid from the 30th century New World Order. And I shall then turn to smoke, sound and energy.
And my soul, it shall soar away into realms we do not understand and aren’t meant to wither.

• What’s that which you desire the most from life?

Huh! Simple: Happiness.

• Your favorite word. Yes, word.

Rem acu tetigisti, a phrase but still.

• Beauty comes from ______ ?

Beauty comes from within the eye of the beholder.

• Five things that life is about.

Love
Hatred
Success
Failure
Opposites

• Words for you are?

You mean to ask about the words which describe me or what do words mean to me?
I’ll assume the latter because as discussed earlier, I can’t describe myself.
I see words as bricks that build a mansion, as an arrow which kills the dear and as a flowers which brings alive the garden i.e. They constitute sentences to express ideas and feelings as a vivid whole upon a page and they have the ability to harm as well as beautify.

They help me create, and creating is marvelous.

 

 

QUESTIONS THE TAGGED VICTIMS HAVE TO ANSWER:

1) What does life mean to you?
2) If the world was to end tomorrow, what would you do?
3) What is it that scares you the most?
4) What is your favorite singer/band, song, book, actor, actress and movie of all times? List all.
5) Ginnie emerges from within the mist and inquires about your three wishes. What do you say?
6) If you had to, what would you eat? A cockroach or a lizard.
7) Who are you and where would you rather be?
8) Write a few lined letter to your 30 years old self.
9) Which super power would you prefer to possess?
10) If you could resurrect one historical figure and spend a day with him/her, who would it be?
11) If you are the last person on Earth and have to write about Earth and everything that was within it in a paragraph for any soul to find, what would you write?

BLOGGERS TAGGED:

Tangled Up In Blue
Third Eye
Triumphs and Charms
Monty Bandial’s Two Cents