Being There

 Also published in Inverse Journal https://www.inversejournal.com/2022/01/27/being-there-a-poem-by-mubashir-karim/

As the year went by

hastily—

excited to reach

anywhere—

probably

the end of the year—

Somewhere.

I too—

with (almost) everything

within my reach

(except Time)

found the festive fair within me

but the child lost—

Lost—

within the maddening crowd—

weeping, talking, reading, texting,

teaching, watching, proving, arguing...

 

This year

I hope,

I could just

Stay.

Linger.

Just be.

 

Like a tree

Hung with a hoarding

Saying

Nothing of any use

But essential

Nonetheless.

What You were born to do

I imagine you – picking

one-after-one-after-one

the scattered matchsticks

from the greasy floor,

crying over your luck

in a suburb

in some tiny apartment.

For this

was not meant to be your fate.

These were

not the activities

you thought you were born to do.

You were

meant for something colossal.

Something mighty.

 

Something like,

Lighting a matchstick

when everything else has dissipated

and endeavouring to light

somebody’s pitch-dark ignorance and

keeping up the rhythm of lightning

one more and more and more

whilst your fingers begin to singe.

 

Look around!

There’s light

(even if only a speck).

Death Foretold

Lightning,

in those days, was

God’s unmetered stanzas about rain –

rebirth, fruition, fertility –

with some of us

delicately holding out

the parched hands to

touch the poems,

wherein,

metaphors sailed like similes.

 

These days,

there’s

an over-abundance of poetry

(if it is so)

the images inundate us.

We fail to decipher anything

at all –

the way things held too close

seel blurred.

We struggle to hold

the sewerage under our noses.

 

Lightning in the sky is death foretold.

Some (un)poetic Contiguities

 

Also published in The Bombay Literary Magazine https://bombaylitmag.com/?p=1192

The tea cup has broken

in the shape of your lip –

the way people break

when nudged by grief.

 

The ink has spilled near the pocket

in the shape of a territory –

the stain stays –

the way an occupier does.

 

The paperback has dog eared

around the edges –

the way Time arrives

as a wave.

 

The mirror has splintered

into fragments –

the way autumnal leaves crunch

when stepped over.

 

The door has been smeared

around the handle –

the way dark circles encamp

under the eyes.

 

The face has cultivated

pimples overnight –

the way poems arrive

in the midst of a crowd –

unrhymed.

Some other Forest

"... pandas betrayed by bamboo go looking for bamboo."

- Amy Leach

We lovers are like pandas

eating perpetually what 

cannot be digested properly

but cannot think, or touch or taste

other delicacies in the forest.

They eat and eat and eat and eat

We love and love and love and love -

that one person 

whom we can't have - ever

concoting scenarios, 

thinking unceasingly

(sometimes even

when the breathing stops) and

consider it sacrilegious to imagine

anyone else.

People try dissuading us

"There are so many options in the world"

Try bananas, yams, fish

But little do they know

We are not in for proteins

We are looking for fibres of the heart.

Like pandas in jungle

Lovers too prefer solitude.

Considered imbecile

by the healthy, clever world

(who believe, practice and take pride

in forgetting people

in less than their single washroom ritual)

we practice patiently

in doubts

in hopefulness

the ancient art of reminiscence -

sometimes

even at the cost of memory.

To understand why we do all this -

To make sense of all this

People would need unlearning and

Lovers would need to leave the forest

for some other forest.

Days like these

Disheveled hair,

ragged clothes,

riding the bicycle -

on a deserted road.

Sending durood on the Prophet -

in almost perfect surs.

Mornings -

this rich

rarely occur,

these profane days.

Suicide Note

Thank you

Everyone!

For gifting me the noose 

of Language and

the lavish table of respect.

I apologize for the delay.

It took me time,

as uncommitted and 

irresponsible I could be,

to find the right place -

to commit...