Poems lay scattered in the city landscape—lifeless bodies strewn after a blast.I went picking them one by one—faceless, headless, decaying trunks.The ambulance sirens howled on the roadstransporting the dead to the morgue.The burial was tough—for want of space, two or, at times, three,were laid to rest in the earth’s embrace. I searched for the lost […]
Publications
A Guest
I had come to the kitchen to fix a bracket fanWhen I noticed a grey, ponderous chap,sitting smug and unseen near the tea-whitener can.He was nibbling a slice of cinnamon breadthat I had saved the day before to enjoyperhaps with marmalade or chicken spread.Savoring his lunch, he sat there unafraid:his audacious way of eating, his […]
An Instant Portrait Artist in a Chaikhana
My dear artist, waiting for my caffe latte, I see you on a love-seat with a Picasso in hand— You pose as if you were only reading. Lead-grey sweater and casual footwear, a goatee and fashionably unkempt hair: you sit alone, half visible in the corner seat near the exit aglow with a dull blue, […]
Liberty Nights, Lahore
(I walk to a town fair (mela) in the middle of a market called Liberty Market) There is an awami mela at Liberty Market.Every evening I walk therealong tree-lined streetsthe full moon to the left,these months the skies are full of moon: two full moons a month,veer into Liberty’s inner circlethe gole gapay walain front […]
The Sharpness of Grass Blades
Forget about Pakistan for a while. You are on King Street, Newtown, Sydney, and here, you don’t see the moon-swallowing powdered horseshit and the smoke of two-stroke auto-rickshaws that choke the sky above Lahore. The winter sky is clear and vast, the stars glowing. The Friday night crowd of merry Sydneysiders is around you. Gay […]
Wagah
here’s an image of indigenised hippieness:
perhaps I should wear flowers in the lapel of
my achkan/ kurta (what would you prefer?)
drag my charpai out to Wagah where the gate to India is …