Work-Life Balance

Catching the dusty sun beyond my home;

Across a line of borrowed water

Dying, still, between two slabs of concrete;

Grey half-circles under its eyes,

In a hurry to leave,

The day’s pending jobs hiding in twilight

To reappear at daybreak

When a dusty sun rises.

Before the New Sun Rises

Am I doing the cliché,
looking at a poem, and thinking of you?

Did I make you smile, bitterly,
Looking at this poem, and thinking of me?

There are two magical words in the language of poets:
Qurbat, is one.
You’d know, I’m near.
I had to leave,
The part of me behind,
The one that could not stop loving you.
Moajza, is the second.
It is nothing short of a miracle.
To have my heart pried open,
By a year that is passing.

I looked at a poem,
And I thought of you.

Hyacinth

Do you see them, in hundreds?
Dancing to the river’s music
The breeze carried.

Do you see the forevers etched
in their veins?
To be dead tomorrow.

Nightmare I

The ocean takes away pieces of my soul,
I cannot leave, I am the shore.
I wake from nightmares of blinding lights
to your clear voice, whispering,
“Hush! Come here,
Hush! Its okay, come”, and you hang up
I pry my eyes open
I want to see your face, you’re here
before I fall
into a dazzling wakefulness again
into familiar streets, deserted
in a town I think I know
a lone bull in stark sunlight
chases memories to trample
I hide in empty houses
my father waits;
he brought me water
he knows I return thirsty,
with an empty water-bottle;
at a little shop outside the city gates
Isn’t this the ancient mariner‘s curse?
You’re an ocean
And I’ve no water to drink.

Surkh

Have you been bold enough to write in red? 
In life, Red may have told you of its grandiose of love and passion
it’s twin mistresses.
Do you remember a life before that? 
When red only glared at mistakes?

I chose to write our lives in red.
I’ll let you decide if this will be one glaring error 
Or another, that is love.

To an Ocean

I picked a few empty shells
along your shore.
Empty homes of your children
now long gone;
Echoing you, the breeze, and
their conversations with the sand.
I wear them around my neck,
at a home away from you;
Little kisses, a sunset, and love
rest on my bones.

Secret Letters

I write letters to you.
Letters I’ll never post,
Letters I’ll read and reread
and imagine your replies to.

Should I have used the bird stamps?
Or the blue ones with the airplanes?
Would you be home when the postman got there?
Where would you tear the envelope?
Would you make a clean cut
Or a messy one?
I thought of a paper knife.

Do you put them away in a book after you’ve read them?
Do you sit down to think what paper you’ll use,
what color of ink,
what pen you’ll write with?
Will you write to me tomorrow?
I bought new envelopes.

Could you find the kiss I tucked away
between paragraphs of banter?
Did you smile when you found it?
Would you send me one in your reply?
I’m running out of paper.

I love you – I

Worn out nights,
Worn ‘I love you’s
discarded, like the days’s clothes
Smelling of your cologne,
sweat, you.

Cold comfort of warmer nights;
Silent companions of busy days –
Your clothes, the smell of your cologne,
sweat, you.

Red

kırmızı | red | rouge | rosso | rojo | أَحْمَر | červený | κόκκινος | красный | vermelho | rød | màu đỏ | แดง | लाल | লাল | سرخ |

Love is red.
Red roses are for lovers.
There was love.

Now there are remains.
Like memories, the red roses bloom.

An Advertisement for Grief

In little measure, perhaps like salt,
Grief makes life bearable.

Sometimes stacked between the unimportant news items of pages 5 and 6;
Sometimes, worn like an ornament, flaunted – unlike loneliness and melancholia – the crown jewel;
Sometimes, a window dressing,
inviting you to take a peek inside my mind,
And find there, sitting pretty, among mold and moth eaten pages – grief.

Of a lost place, a person long gone, a feeling no more – shadows in place of what once was.

You will always find me waiting.