Apt

Dear readers / assalamu alaikum

I didn't achieve even 1% of what I set out to do when I made this blog.  For reasons that are somewhat painful to explain I will no longer be writing poetry . I just want to apologise to all the people I haven't replied to/ kept in contact with properly - I don't really have any excuse just shortcomings in character.

Alhamdulillah I am well for those who have asked.

Please remember to make dua for yourselves, God listens to the one who is need .  

I feel like I've been watching home videos , you know the ones that are slightly lopsided and the colour is fading at the edges. And this is the last reel of tape.

Gardens within Gardens

Life is bitter but God is sweet
All the endings are rewritten to have twice what we leave
Oh dweller of the grave speak
Gave away your world
Six foot deep remorse
Thus your return was peace , complete

( in reference to an old favourite )

Dua

I am grateful for the sadness

That bloomed into their joy 

This is what I asked for 

I mutter prayers so only God can hear me 

Between all the mundane happenings of living

The sky has been all the shades of bluebells recently

I've written beautiful things in untraceable ink 

The corners of their smiles don't know their own roots 

Imam shafi said about the arrows in the night 

They've been orbiting you since before you knew 

...

Are you afraid of sadness
Do you think that this will be like the heavy rains you once knew
The type that mould the earth they land on

In my mind there is a bench of iron
Sat beneath bubblegum cherry blossom
A little girl is singing her voice sounds like tears

I have happy poems beneath a thumb and a finger
Between promises of a tomorrow that is sweeter than today

I see beauty and it swells in my heart
it overfills , spills onto grey pavements
Moments I can't keep , can't share

If my eyes are a prism
Then I am looking for space for all this light

..

Apne kushi meh sab ko takleef deeya.

 Distorted and bruised , the heart still feels what it feels.

My safe space is getting smaller and smaller and I've been folding in on myself like dark matter.

My fingertips are blue because of the cold, because I am tired , because simple living evades me , because there is nowhere to unpackage these dreams. But second skins never shined so bright.

' They passed right by and never knew'

Gibberish

It's been raining for two and half hours , trust me I'm sure
And your freeze frames are piling on top of each other
Like bedazzled mountains blinding the peasants
Nobody needs to know how it feels to fall into a fissure of time itself
Or how the white tiles reflect back words repeated again and again
And you're choking on the silence, on the space between understanding
Like someone you should recognize
From an old poem I gave you a copy of once

I finish the paper exactly thirty minutes early
the admissions that hit the paper warrant only broken smiles
I would've done anything to take the sadness from your eyes that day

When I tried to ask the answers came quicker than my question
The walls of this box were tighter than I first imagined
So I learnt to breathe shallower
Then the words came abruptly
Like driftwood tossed by the sea

My riddles weren't riddles
They were tongue tied , suffocating
Between reaching something they could not reach

Really I'm a coward
always afraid of the things I want the most

My words hurt me before any one else gets a chance

A hodgepodge of untold stories
Of narratives that do not match

The whole world is one colour
And I am another

Maybe one day I could bleach the jagged edges to these sentences
And forget the watercolour rain

There is a price to being free
and there's little in me to give

.

It feels like my insincerity is making a noose around my neck.

This narrative is laughable.

The light burns inside.

In the end, my end will be others beginning.

Grind my bones into dust and a singsong for the children when they sleep.

Minutes

I'm taking time and redefining it to end points I don't share with anyone
Because I've found burdens are more often offloaded than dealt with
Let me show you the detour every day until we run out of days
And I never get round to carrying it too

I've compartmentalized destinations into narrow strips of land
Where my kingdom collapses in on itself with every resting of this eye

They cant find these roots like the statue of a man
Knows nothing of whats beneath his feet

Help me.