The graves are filling fast

When they dropped chemical bombs on Syria


Cover me quick,
The clouds come hither,
How do I stop from breathing?
Cover my eyes,
I can't see mother,
How will I find my way?
Cover my arms,
My skin is burning,
How do I burn alive?
Cover me all,
There are so many,
How will you bury us all?
Cover my uncle, my aunt, my brother, my father,
The graves are filling up fast,
Soon there will be no more left,
To cover us at all.

Smothered!

I grow old
Weakening with each breath I take
Watching the seeds I sowed,
Sprout new leaves.
Relishing in their strength,
Yet looking at how my roots whither.

I grow old
The wrinkles edge closer to my soul
Each step driving me further into the ground
I so proudly stood on
I am sinking
Unable to stay afloat

I grow old
The dust has all but slipped from my fingers
The days are all but done
I pack all my testaments of my own greatness
And get ready to take that eternal trip
With nothing to look back upon

I grow old
I am nothing
I was no body
I will become nothing
But you must shine
You must avenge my obliteration

As I Sit Here

Dedicated to Omran from Aleppo

As I sit here
In my orange seat
I look at you
You look back at me
I see two eyes, curious, but uncaring
You see my forehead grimy and bloodied.

There isn't much you can do for me
I am, after all, beyond your reach
You look at your children
Still warm in their beds
You are grateful to the God
That did this to me

I will sit right here and wait
Wiping my wounds with my tiny hands
Crawl out of the rubble that heaps over my head
As you barrel bomb and fill me with lead
You will forget
Like you did Alyan

So as I sit here
I think to myself
what it would take for you to cry
For my mother, father, my brothers, sisters
Not until yours will also
fall like flies

The longest year

In memory of the children we all lost on 16-12-2014 (APS Attacks in Peshawar)


It's been a year and nothing has changed,
The pillow you rested your head on
The cricket bat against the wall
The book you kept open
That day you went to school.

It's been a year and nothing has changed,
The pain whenever I remember,
The tears that fall unbidden,
The people who look at me with pity,
The heavy-footed walk to your grave.

It's been a year and nothing has changed,
The posts on Facebook with your smiling faces,
The comments of remorse,
The shaking of the heads at your memory,
The sharing and re-tweeting of apologies.

It's been a year and nothing has changed,
The hangings in your name,
The songs of bravery and valor for you,
The debating over how wrong it was,
The indecision on who to blame.

It's been a year and nothing has changed,
The hypocrisy
The excuses
The games
The questions

It's been a year and nothing has changed,
The war has raged only in peripherals,
They have not learned a single lesson,
They'll never know what they lost that day,
It was not just a school full of children

It's been a year and nothing has changed,
Your murderers still lurk around my love,
They have taken lives in France,
They have made little children from Syria drown
They continue to snuff out innocence.

It's been a year and nothing has changed!

Leaving home

This is dedicated to Alan and Galib, the two who only wanted to be safe. They were too young to understand this world is not for children.

Come sleep in my arms child
I shall rock you to sleep
Let me cover you in warmth child
my bosom is deep.

Come sleep in my arms child
for mercy is in death.
Leave this place for the cruel child
let this be your last breath

Come sleep in my arms child
I shall wash you ashore
there is trouble in the land child
it's humans they abhor

Come sleep in my arms child
for your mother needs rest
they have been running for too long child
and daddy doesn't know what's best

Come sleep in my arms child
or they will riddle you with guns
your home is their war ground child
they will ravage you in turns.

Come sleep in my arms child
shut your eyes, go to sleep
Play hide and seek child
And let them all weep!

Old Pics

Recently a friend posted old pictures on Facebook. Nothing extraordinary about that. People always like to relive the past when the present starts to become mundane. A bunch of teenagers sitting around in their school uniform, seemingly with endless time on their hands and the spark of mischief in their eyes. Each picture was an encapsulation of incessant activity. Youth is energy personified. We looked almost bored with our vitality and apathetic to the blessing that is life.
Ever since I have laid eyes on those harmless posts there is a lump in my throat. Where has time gone? Yes, some of those uniformed friends would shake their heads right about now and remember me as the overly emotional one. But I cannot shake off the feeling that we should have done better. I do not mean in the future, in the now but we should have realized how very precious those seconds were, slipping through our careless fingers and we should have done better.

So many lost moments, where one could have told each other one more anecdote, another deep thought, if we had any back then, shared another heart ache, decided to walk away, decided to stay. As I gaze into the past I long for some to come back while I wish not to be reminded of others.
Those were precious days for me more so because I got to go home to my mother. She would wrangle with me to change out of my uniform so it could be washed. Every morsel I put in my mouth gave her strength as she sat watching me ungratefully guzzling the meal she had slaved over the entire morning while I 'hung out' with my mates.

One of those mates was taken away quite suddenly. He is in those pictures and I can clearly recall sitting in the school bus outside the closed gates of the building as we were told that there would be no studies as someone had been killed. I remember the moment of silence the following day. The feeling of disbelief yet the youthful hopefulness of the future. None of us were truly moved that day for not one of us truly knew the significance of death. The finality of it had not touched our souls. We were 'deathless' as the young generally is.

The many heart aches come rolling back and the regrets over relationships that, had one known better, would not have given a second thought to. What a waste of such precious gifts, tears, to be shed for someone who really matters. We all look so blase to each other when in fact there was such a keen awareness of people around us that we could put a cheetah to shame. Every sip from the coke bag, every twirl of the hair, each bungling step we took was for the attention of another. Such a waste of energy.

The pictures reveal the universality of youth, we could be just about anyone from any continent, any where in the world. Yet we took ourselves so seriously that we were unique in our own eyes and that separated us from all. How naive of us. How naive we were to think that we could sit on that stoop all our lives sipping carbonated drinks soaking up the sun. How insanely oblivious that we believed all that we heard and saw was the truth. How absurdly ignorant that we thought friends would stay friends. Straining to keep those close to us that did not deserve it while not turning a hair for those that would stand by us through thick and thin. Spending all our time with the wrong ones, leaving the ones that matter alone.

Perhaps my forty year old hormones have received a jolt having glimpsed what I was and realizing what I could have been but that lump in my throat is evidence that time passes by with such frivolous cruelty that you are left wanting in its wake. To be able to come home to mum, to call that friend who has been waiting for so long, to not call the one who couldn't care less, to spare the heart of the timid and the sensitive, to lash out in favour of the weak, to choose between company with wisdom and to throw caution to the wind when standing up for the truth. The smile on my lips, as I look at the pictures,  is not for how similar I look to my past self, that is not true, we have all changed, for the mischief has been replaced with cynicism in all our eyes, it is for I know how foolish we all were,

All Bare

To the boy who bathed in the manhole



Not a stitch to hinder me.
Not a care but the rumble in my stomach
I dive into heaven
Bliss and nothing more
The stink invades my thoughts
Mouth shut, eyes clamped
Ground touches my toes

Cool after the burning
As though banished from hell
Sunlight beckons, breath runs thin
I must reappear
Must head back to the burning
Pushing with my feet
Reaching and breaking through paradise

Brother hauls me out
There is room only for one
In the hole that leads to heaven
But smells like hell
The pavement feels sharp
It pricks a thousand times
Into the soles of my feet
As I run to mother
To eat from the bag
Someone's meal from a few days