Incorrigible. Over demanding. Rude. Brutal. Insensitive. Robotic… Overthinking over analyzing schmuck. Overplaying my hand at every round and turn…
This is all I become… No. This is all I remain… When you are not here.
Because everyone can talk to me. But not everyone can make me listen… Sure many can touch me, but not everyone can move a soul beneath. There are surely many who can hold but not so many who can contain me… Many can walk along, but not those who can align with me. Many can give me shelter but not one who can become a sanctuary… There are many to whom I am visible, but not many who can find me…
It’s you, who can do that. It’s you – without whom then I feel incomplete… Because I never was complete.
Nazr k samne hua dhundhla ban gaya. Ishq na mukamal hua falsafa ban gaya.
Uska na dekhna phir mud kar kabhi. Pakki deewaron par zalzala ban gaya.
Us lamhay ka kia kijye jo guzar gaya… Jise katna tha woh marhala ban gaya…
Kis ki deewangi ka asar hua hum par. Jitna qareeb thay utna fasla ban gaya.
Na bujhi pyaas kyu tujay dekh kar… Kis had se guzara k karbala ban gaya.
Mene kab chaha tha k aksar miljaye. Bhulnay chala tha jahan kafla ban gaya…
Gham-e-duniya kia tere gham k aagay. Darya kia samandar bulbula ban gaya.
Koi rok na paya phir is deewane ko… Woh aur deewano ka hosla ban gaya.
Yeh kis waqt mei paida hogaye Sohani. Izhar-e-Ulfat jahan bas jumla ban gaya.
— Dedicated to those souls who wished to become lovers but ended up becoming philosophers. Also experimented here a style reminiscence of Modern Urdu poet: Tahzeeb Haafi.
I am fallen but not broken… I am beaten but not succumbed… I am shaken but not withered… I am deprived but not frickled… I am snuffed but not perished… I am in ashes yet not departed… Not yet. I am here, I am still here… Hear these beats, feel this pulse. Feel the rhythm in them that yells inspite being in dust… And know this no more surer… I will rise. I will rise.
For you can arrange fall of my body but not the soul with-in. You can beat me to a pulp, but can’t tear throug my spirit… You can jolt me to the core, but can’t nudge my belief… You can deprive me of what I deserve, yet you can’t weaken me of what I find with-in… You can choke my flame, but you can never extinguish the fire tintillating… You cannot bury me, sink me, subside me… I am more than my body, my physique — my color, my race, my creed… I am more than the place I was born in… more than a society I grew in. I am more than a piece of paper I was given time and again as an identity… And more than a label I am put in for leveling… Know this no more surer… I am more… I am more…
I love how beautiful the sky looks at a time of twilight…
Those purples, and the orange tint, those lavender, and golden strides…
I have never seen anything as beautiful as this, those level of creative combinations in my entire life.
Each day reveals a yet new mix, a new background of tint, to bask the landscapes in…
It’s almost as if the canvas was prepared by an artist, that tapestry of colors hand chosen. Set in a motion after days of work and marination performed over it.
But I am taken back, when arrives a moment, at end of the day… as the shroud of darkness covers the sky, and the colors are taken away.
Not so soon as it happens, I start to miss the dance of hues, in the heavenly skies… That tapestry where I saw, my name written all over it.
But then occurred to me an epiphany… Is it the sky that changed its color? When is it ever that the sky is changing??
It never did. It’s never been the sky, from the beginning. But only the light I was seeing the sky in… It was when and where on earth I was, when I was while admiring its glory.
Isn’t quite similar is our life and the clock we measure with aging? Our perspective is all that it needs perhaps to make matters sour or to render them sweet…
Worry not, if all you see is the darkness from where you happen to be… wait for the night to pass, and for Sunlight to be.
Perhaps move a little, step out at a different time? and step into a different light to see what’s missing… And while you are at it. Savor it. Because know this for sure, that you would only come across the same combo once in a life-time.
— Dedicated to time and light, and all juice we can extract from combination of it.
My love, I see… the moon as big as the mole on your skin… simmering above the ocean tonight. My eyes are to engulf it, quite like my lips once did caressing with all their might. It tastes like a pulp of a melon, as I licked it from top to bottom… savoring both sweet and the salty at the same time. And there, so did my eyes when they opened again, confessing same with the water, fresh from the sea I drowned in. So, I sit here in wonder, this is how it is perhaps, the true bond of love, since that too happens only, once in a blue moon… once in a life-time…?
Without you, I am a bird without the wings… I drank from fifty wells, yet I remain unsatiated. I flied to a hundred places, yet I remain untraveled. I am touched by hundreds, yet I remain unaffected. I witnessed hundreds of miracles, yet I remain unshaken. I learnt thousands of words, yet I remain among the unlearned. I uttered thousands of words, but I remain unheard and stifled. I met thousands of people, yet I remained unseen, hidden. I watched thousands of stars titillating, yet I remain unstirred. I get to rest hundreds of nights, but I remain exhausted. I get planted with thousands of seeds, yet I remain barren. I feel gusts of springs, the winds from heaven, yet I remain unmoved, unyielding. I swing among the rainbows, yet I remain colorless, unblemished. I host dozens of people, yet I remain uninhibited. I drink thousands of meads, yet I remain sober and not drunken… I slept with no matter how many, yet I remain a virgin.
I am never 100%… There’s not enough of me… I am what’s left of me – a word half, sentence unfinished.
A response poem to an effervescent poem of Miss Maha Madad Ali (young poetess, I miraculously crossed the paths with)…
Have you ever thought why I love the beach, it’s not just to be Sun kissed… It’s to be at the altar of the beloved you know you cannot unite with… It’s to bathe in its love but at a distance. For I am a moth, who would get consumed way before its thirst is quenched. Akin to Icarus, who would end up burning his wings for a flight endearing… wondering, how close is close — before it’s closing. My demise would become an example of over-passing, rather an example of devotion I fell for someone to pursue the love like a Phoenix, who would rise from the ashes… Did you ever taste the ocean my dear, Sun does not hide behind the waves, my sweat and tears have filled the valleys…
Have you ever considered, how it’s indeed better sometimes to be washed away than to linger on like a vivid fantasy that can never be a reality? Why would it be important to exist, yet as nothing but a caricature of your past being? To live but being dead with-in, because you were always someone’s “maybe and perhaps” never the “only”…? Those names written on the sands of the shore, were perhaps meant to be forgotten, quite like the promises of “forever” once happened between the moon and the ocean, before tides came in between. Those castles too were not for living but to be abandoned, better losing themselves into the arms of time as each pendulum swung, at least waves managed to taste a portion of dreams.
Has it ever occurred to you, why I tend to collect the sea shells? For they remind me of possibility that in spite of all the pull of the universe not for once happened, For a dream of destiny that’s no more now than a shell of its former self merely… There’s no pearl here, anymore… No necklace you see… But when did lovers pursue the dream for such entities? You were all the glimmer that I needed. I was all the ornament you ever cared to wear… Yet washed up we are on the shore, like those who tried to create perhaps too hard a bottled magic, failing to understand miracles happen when and where we submit, When objects in universe give themselves away without knowing what’s coming forth for thee…
Did you ever ask an Ocean if it’s really tiring for it to try and touch what’s beyond its reach? In spite of infinity that it holds with-in she starves for that one connection that would still make it feel unleashed. That ocean, which remains there where it’s but invites me to come at her door time and again to leave the footprints… for it to swallow as in it’s compensating for what could perhaps never be… For Ocean and I are the lovers, who cannot become one even if we tried… No matter how sunk I am in her love, I cannot exist in her world, and she cannot overcome mine without submerging me…
So, my love, these kisses and hugs you see, those washed-up pebbles and shells I sweep, those names and sand-castles I surrender, and those foot-prints I set free… Are all nothing but an excuses… the ways we tease each other and get away with it for perhaps there’s no future together for the worlds apart beyond this…
– Dedicated to the love and perceptions.
Original piece by Miss Maha Madad Ali… “Have you ever!?” — What a scintillating read.
Sard raaton mei teri yaad ne behlaya hai. Jaise aangan mei naam ka diya jalaya hai. Hai mumkin k aajaye tujay kuch iski lou, Yu ghar k har dareeche ka bazu phelaya hai.
Mat puuch kis haal mei raha hai woh… Jo kisi haal mei bhi nahi rehpaya hai. Tu apni bata, Us dil ki baat chhor de, Jisay yaad k eendhan ne chalaya hai.
Farishtay, us k darwazay se to na mur, Jisne tere intezar mei ghar sajaya hai. Yehi soch rahein hein k pighal jayega, Sard baton ka mujisma jo banaya hai.
Us k zabt ko kia torega toofan-e-sagar, Jis ki kashti ko talatum ne sehlaya hai. Mat jhaank yun mere gireebaan mein, Tere khaton se apna taviz banaya hai…
Hai pareshaan yaar qalam ki talash mein, Kyun aashiqi ka naam sabar likhwaya hai? Ho hisaab Sohani tera magar, khataon ko Tere mehboob ki duaon ne bakhshaya hai.
Serenades of a dreamer... 