Ma Wara – That What Is Beyond

Nah thā kuch to Khudā thā, kuch nah hotā to Khudā hotā
Duboyā mujh ko honey ney, nah hotā maeyn to kyā hotā

Hūā jab gham sey yūn beyhis to gham kyā sar key katney kā
Nah hotā gar judā tan sey to zānū par dharā hotā

Hūī’ muddat kih Ghālib mar gayā, par yād ātā haey
Voh har ik bāt par kehnā kih yūn hotā to kyā hotā

It was called the Poetry of Dissent. I always used to judge some courses for having such overly provocative titles. And I also do not like to overly laud people who seem to have done much, but have either been acknowledged a bit too much, or a bit too less, or for the wrong reasons. There is an approach in literary criticism, called “Intentionalism”. Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism summarizes it thus, “In every work regard the writer’s end, / Since none can compass more than they intend”. But I don’t agree, really. I spent about four years – and maybe more I think – in trying to figure out that words are not supposed to assert, but only to intend or merely suggest. Scripture does that. And words cannot take on that role. That’s why metaphors can only be – and should be – limited to this world alone. And this has to be understood by looking at the world as a metaphor, a point of immediate comparison between The Word and how any word tends to approximate Its Meaning. Never become. Never be.

A few days ago in class we were discussing this letter sent by this random kid to some random editor describing his vision of the perfect world. I asked the kids if they had studied ‘limits’ in add-math. They said no. I asked them if they had studied graphs. They said yes. Then I explained to them the working of an asymptote. Mathematics is a fascinating subject, all of it, algebra, geometry, arithmetic. All of it. Simply fascinatingly metaphorical. An asymptote is the metaphor, that painfully frustrating attempt to fuse with the axes, but it will NEVER happen. Why? Should that happen, the gradient will become stagnant. And that’s not the point of any movement. We’re all clinging onto the graphs, plotting our own plans and plots, tending, intending or extending ourselves towards perfection. But it’ll never happen in the end. Perfection is an unattainable ideal so said I.A. Richards. Cool guy. Pretty cool. I think the human mind has spent a bit too much of its resources in trying to figure out what the whole fuss is about. And these questions have been coming up again and again. And the biggest interrogation is the WHY? Second last of the alphabet prefacing the end. And that’s the real question. Phoebe Buffet from FRIENDS was having this argument with Ross Geller. He was trying to convince her of Darwinism being the only explanation towards everything. And he demonstrates that by putting up toy-figures in a series showing evolution – that asymptotic journey – towards the state of (hmmm) perfection, which is man. And Phoebe looks at him very smugly and says, “Well, now the REAL question is, WHO put them there, and WHY?”

And that’s the real question. And the only question.

Today’s is Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s death anniversary. Don’t worry – I added the disclaimer that I’m not going to laud him unnecessarily as he’s just a person who just used metaphors. He died in 1769 and here I am, some 240 years later, talking about him yet again. The ghazal I have used epigraphically was the one that I think that we studied towards the end of the course. We talked about Infinitude and Nothingness, ‘adam (not Adam, as that’s alif, daal, and meem, Adam that started it all, and who was not a chimp) and imkaan (a bit like makaan, although the etymology is the same, a word that we have misused sufficiently yet not too efficiently. People live on the streets you know. Possible survival of the fittest of them all). This is the ghazal that I have quoted a bit too much, beaten it to death really, and have used a bit too much in my academic writing. When I was recalling it in my head today (and this is the only ghazal I know by heart, the rest I only pretend to know to look cool), I thought it was so damn ironic that it actually mentions his possibility and inevitability of dying. And how probably 240 years someone would dig him up and try to figure out what is was really about.

What I am crazy about with regard to this ghazal is its frustrating simplicity. It was this ghazal that made me respect him for his poetic genius and his philosophical AND religious leanings. No no, I am not saying that we should emulate him and follow his ways. Not at all. But what I am saying is this: that the man had a question, and he came up with an answer, which we all know. We have answered it Before. But why bother asking a question whose answer is known and too simple anyway. We’re all about problematizing. And who does it the best is the winner. That’s where the real fun lies. And in the process of dissembling and deconstructing which we misunderstood as deciphering or discussing, we ended up disintegrating and degenerating, and now only the cipher is left, and we’re sitting back, cussing.

As I have been told that I am not so good with words and I have atrophied my brain sufficiently by teaching allegedly brainless kids, I will just reproduce my analysis of the ghazal that I used in my swansong:

The final ghazal combines human stoicism along with the metaphysical questions about Divine Transcendence and Immanence. Composed of merely three sha‘irs, this ghazal perfectly exemplifies the aesthetical sense and sensibility of the genre, and in doing so, it demonstrates the potential of the form to transcend its structural constraints and offer semantic equivocality. The language is straightforward. But the configuration of the words according to the requirements of the form evokes multivalence of interpretation. The Sartreian existentialist temper is one oft-quoted suggestion (Pritchett). The states of ‘being’, ‘becoming’ and the parenthetical reality of ‘nothingness’ are questioned with deceptively simple statements. There is a deliberate elusiveness to the verse. The opening question(s) further into an argument that postures to be indeterminate. But polysemy should not be mistaken for the verse’s (apparent) weakness. The interrogative words harmonized with negative qualifiers heighten the complexity of meaning as the matlā‘ masterfully demonstrates. The consonance of the interrogative with the negative creates musicality. Thematically, the notions of nothingness and God’s Immanence within this state are expressed. Then the paradox of nothingness is brought forth with the mention of finite ‘being.’ The elusive, “kyā” sockets these ideas of being and nothingness together which leads to the Hamletian-overwhelming question. Had there been no being, then what would have been but the Immanent Being? And would human nothingness have mattered. The second sha‘ir is an approximate answer. “Gham” is repeated which enhances the pun. In the maqtā‘, the equivocality of the matlā‘ returns. The last line of the ghazal immaculately sums up the argument by generating multiple resolutions: “If it were so, then so what?”, “If it were so, then what [a state it] would be!”, “If it were so, then what would be/happen?” Again, this semantic multiplicity is evoked through the word, “kyā”. Through this ghazal, not only is Ghālib’s erudite contemplation about human purpose revealed, but concurrently, the function of the genre to communicate meaning to its maximum potential despite its structural considerations, and its ability to use the content to synchronize with the form to create richness of meaning is also evoked.

So what’s this crap about? What I was approximating to say was this: this ghazal rocks, the genre of the ghazal rocks, Ghalib rocks, and God Rocks. Basically, that. I mentioned two controversial figures, Sartre and Hamlet. Both were terribly confused. One harped on and on about existential angst and the other dangled between to be or not to be and he thought that that was the real question. And Ghalib says that towards the end, “Dude, Voh har ik bāt par kehnā kih yūn hotā to kyā hotā…?” In other words, big deal. Here’s the deal. He is saying that listen, when no one, nothing was there, God always was, and if nothing would have been there, God would have been. The (obsession) of ‘being’ drowned me (in the Urdu we use this idiom quite nicely, dhoob ke mar jao), if I would not have been, so what would have been (read, it would not have been a big deal, really). Then he says, when it got all desensitized (quite a word for beyhiss, which means without hissiyat, which comes from the word ehsas or feeling) so why get all sensitive about the head getting chopped off (cool play on the word gham); if it hadn’t been parted from the rest of the body, it would’ve been rooted to my thighs (which means that he would be in sorrow all the time banging his head. Which could mean simple manic depression, or our constant craving to make sense of everything and getting frustrated in the process. It might mean a simple headache too. You’re free to choose). This shair encompasses one of the hadd punishments for messing big things up too. It also might mean how the human head, or rationality, has to make sense (and feel) things so that the body does not rebel against thought. You know the whole reason and revelation making sense together so that laws can be understood in letter and spirit. That stuff. And the last one is what the head does not think or feel about. He says, so Ghalib died a long while back (24 decades ago, and we all have our dusty lives so neatly sorted out in 24 hours never wondering if this might be the last one of those many days) but he’s still remembered (well, smart rascal got that one right). Remembered for what? For saying, “If it were so, then so what?”, “If it were so, then what [a state it] would be!”, “If it were so, then what would be/happen…”

And that’s the problem. John Mayer said that he wonders sometimes about the outcome about this still, verdictless life, and if he’s living it right? Well, the outcome would be known after the clock stops ticking. But everything is so still, so motionless, that we’ve come to the point to believe that it’s really okay. Everything is really okay at the end of the day. And at the end of 24 hours, or 24 decades, or even longer, much longer, it’s still okay. And now here’s where the Game really kicks in. God is very Witty. He Says, that listen, do you know who would be the really “LUSER” at the End of All Things, who would be thinking throughout his or her many 24 hours that I did everything right and I’m all set. But then we get to the Scores, and you’re down by negatives. And you cry and grovel and whine and ask Him that please, let me go back and I’ll do it all right, I swear. That whole dilemma about if (only) I had done this. But then there’s no going back. You came, you saw, you messed it up.

So then what’s the problem? The human mind has become so accustomed to this mode of thinking. We can’t function unless we’re given a problem. And when given a problem, we won’t function. So then what’s the solution? Should we cut a black cake to celebrate his death? Should we start watching FRIENDS? Or should we listen to John Mayer? Or read Ghalib’s poetry? Or get a new watch?

These are only people. And they work only with metaphors. A metaphor only seeks and approximates, tends towards perfection. And Perfection Works the other way around. It’s not an accident that it Begins with Praise and Ends with us – something I learnt in my Urdu courses. And It has Ended with us. The freakiest thing about Death is its finality. That it has no tomorrow. Fear in a handful of dust that can be mopped later on and no one would ever know. It would not matter. The One Who has to Remain, shall. And everything will perish except His Face. And even if nothing would have been, He would have still been there. The question is that now, we’re here. And we’re not here to stay. Intend and End. That’s all what it’s really about.

Black Hole

I miss fountain pens. I always had a painful revulsion for ballpoints and biros. Blue or black ink or ball-point the GCSE lady with short-hair and that pruned South Asian accent would say. And now these girls actually ask me if it’s okay if they used a ballpoint when the ink finishes from their pens. And some of them carry ink-bottles in their bags. Some don’t. They share. Royal blue ink. And when it would gasp its last it would pale into a twilight blue. And when renewed, it would be a rich sapphire – that was the one I loved. It was closer to violet.

But now I like black ink. It looks more scriptural. It reminds me of pale parchment, and lavish, rotund script. There is something nothing about black. Something that tells you that things can begin from it, and end into it. The whole let there Be Light deal. The whole, “Write, write whatever shall Be.” I bet it was a Fountain Pen that Wrote, with rich, black ink as heavy as a summer night when the electricity fails. And you can see these houses plain and vulnerable. And you can see the sky that you always miss. Darkness has its possibilities.

Fountain pens and ball-points are just like tea and tea-bags. The latter in both equations are made to be trashed. Use and dispose. They’re cheap. They’re accessible. They speak of lonely boys who rush and buy one before the 1550 class, or have one at 1730 to call it a day. There is something selfish about both. When you make tea in a teapot, it requires patience. You sit there, and you wait. And tea colours according to its temperament, under the right conditions. You have it in a glass or earthenware mug or a cup made out of china. One tea-bag per sorrowful person. And tea that can be programmed to be light or heavy, for you and you alone. A tea-pot meant that there are two at least, two for joy. I was to get my grandpa’s fountain pen as a becoming gift. But I never set out for that adventure. It became to unbecoming. My own adventure turned out to be quite different.

And come to think of it – my lousy reverie for a holiday longing to see mountains – I want to sit atop not to watch the sunrise and listen to eagles. I don’t want to see the sun sprouting through the lavender loam of the horizon like a desperate seed. I want to hear the darkness of a night’s way on that mountaintop. How do mountains sleep anyway? Was it not Said that they would sing when one of Them sang. He had heard the mountains singing with him. I do not think they will sing to me.

But it’s worth a shot. Some run through two. Others mount the same one over and over again and measure that as reaching the summit of happiness. I spoke that day about a song that speaks about miles and miles of mountains and one asking for the sea. And she keeps saying that volcanoes melt her down. I remembered what I had written about volcanoes. I talked about them now, my first lesson which was not free for them anymore, about them being mountains having a sea of fire in them; that how seas begin from valleys which are cradled by mountains. How mountains have been Called pegs that hold us all, together. And then the Pen stopped writing and that ‘when’ is Marked when mountains would neither sing, nor sit, nor stand. They would simply float as random rocks that stray about some other black-holes.

And so I remember the poor underground man, the ‘anti-hero.’ He was so cool. He was so grateful that he had his ennui. He wished for the world to go to hell so that he could have his tea. Bet that tea was not made out of a lonely tea-bag stacked with others awaiting their slot-machine fate. And he was alone, trust me. And I think I said something about sitting in my burrow and sweeping. And it was thought of as a typo. What thought came from that king of infinite space, bounded in a nutshell, quintessence of dust he calls it? Yet he was the one who picked out Yorick’s skull and said, ‘The skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once… a fellow of infinite jest...to what base uses we may return.’ And to that his Samwise says, ‘’twere to consider too curiously to consider so.’ And another had already said that he can show you fear in a handful of dust.

Even though there is no mountain – which (eventually) Must crumble to dust –
there is no teapot, nor any fountain pen, my only fear is not to be a loser, a loser Big Time. I can imagine my mountaintop, perfect perforated stars, a deep violety night sky, a blue earthenware mug of tea, and a Samwise with me, and a Light that no shadow can touch, but I wish not for the dust that might have to be tossed aside like colourless ash. Too light, too cheap, too paltry.

I turn so pale now, a whiter shade of pale. And I have taught them about the invisible man. An albino who was interested in the problems of light, and he eventually discovered how to be invisible completely as he was a shadow in college anyway. And I explained all that by saying that when light darkens, it eventually becomes transparent. And how many random particles of dust roam around black-holes.

6:103. I love that one. I once wrote it in a million places I think. La tudrikuhu alabsaru wahuwa yudriku alabsara wahuwa allateefu alkhabeeru. No vision can grasp Him, but His Grasp is over all vision. One needs to blink twice to see in the dark. Two eyes, blinking twice. Latif comes from the word lutf, to have subtlety. Hence the word, ‘latifah’ – to sift out the sensibility of the joke (cracked by Yorick?) with a subtlety. And mix THAT subtle etiquette to Grasp everything with being Aware all-ways. It can see Through you, whether you hide in a mountain, a teapot or a fountain pen. It can See through you. Even if you’re transparent. Even if you’re lost in a black-hole. Even if you’re blind.

I am reminded of my friend and father, Jake.

And as another has said, on his blindness, ‘those also serve, who only stand and wait.’

Works Not Cited

Al Qur’an

Genesis

Hamlet, the play by Shakespeare

Jennings, randomly

LOTR, the movie, by Tolkien and Peter Jackson

Notes from Underground, the novel, by Dostoevsky

On His Blindness, the poem, by Milton

Rhythm of My Heart, the song, by Rod Stewart

Volcano, the song, by Damien Rice

Wasteland (the), the poem, by Eliot

Riddles in the Dark

So he sang
And had each chord
Sound and string
Into what was Music
To Your Ears.
He sang and they all
Sang with him.
Despite the throne,
He would sit on the ferny floor,
Where insects would crawl,
Where trees stood firm,
Where mountains were rooted.
And his voice would
Defy gravity
And it would reach You.
And so You Heard.

I know no psalms.
I have no harp.
I suffer
From stage fright.
I have famously fumbled,
Stumbled and stumped
Over what I knew
But have now somewhat forgotten.
What is this secret Chord?
I heard It too – and It
Shook me.
My silences and shadows
Surrendered.
And I would find solace
That I did not even seek.

I seek it now.
What part do I play –
I just keep missing the cue.
I stand here
Now – stiff, awkward, unnecessary,
A prop catching
No attention.
I am afraid, I say, afraid.
And now, quiet,
Miming with the same shadows
That deepen and darken
Till I see, hear, feel,
Nothing.

How much darkness
Does one need to see
Light again.
How much silence
Do I need to hear
That Music again.
It’s all a clatter now.
Empty tin cans and glass bottles and paper cups
Chatting and shouting and scuffling
Together, at the same time,
Together, in the dark.

Should I go and seek
Now a lab, a studio,
Or a kitchen
Where I can find even a sliver
Of that Chord?
Could I steal It and keep It
As my own?
Or will You chop my fingers?
Take my hand – I am afraid – Take my hand.

It’s so dark and noisy.
I know not where to turn.
How much could the blind and deaf do?
Dare I scream?
Who will hear me – I cannot hear myself.
Take my hand,
Lead me, too – and I will run.

10 January 2009

Running After

So we peruse through passages,
Those stubborn asymptotes that
Snail towards eternity.
And then we plot each path,
As a perfect perforation
On paper to admire
A pattern that we knit through.
Neat. Precise, plagiarizing
The mechanics of the cosmos.
How dare we unreel darkness
Only to see better.

But then, how often is perfection
Willing to have itself imitated.
How often does the mirror speak truly
To that which stares back?
It merely frames what can be
Reached.

So then shall we splinter illusion
To find its own shadow across dark, deep skies.

A bottle full of ink, a parchment pale;
Each slivered phrase is a firework
Blotting my eternity, confusing me
To believe that certainty is only
A galaxy away.

22 July, 2007

Room for Squares

I think I am ambivalent about lunar calendars. And I hate full moons, full and fair looking down from a safe distance that says, “You can’t reach me. Flow all you want.” And flow we must. Lunar calendars make us flow faster. We age sooner, peeling off our skins until the whole thing becomes nothing short of a delirium. Ebb and flow, mere anarchy being loosed upon the world, blood-dimmed tide – you get the picture. It’s like a chaotic crescendo. You hear it rise up, like a mad fever, till it boils over and then things just fold up. The sun and this pompous, self-conscious moon would fold up too. And there won’t be any skin left to peel.

But there’s something slippery about April. Cruelest month. You bet. There’s something strange about these two guys. They talk about history and its measured movement as if it were all dissolved with a plastic spoon in a paper cup. Best to recycle. I think we’re at the edge of producing anything afresh. All this ‘meta’ talk and denial of the center. How happy we are now clinging onto the rim of this world as hopeless tangents.

Mathematics is fascinating. Algebra and trigonometry even more. I think with us – and I mean those on the other side of ‘narrative’ – everything seethes down to turning Back. You flow, fall or simply dangle – it’s all about going Back.

It’s almost been a year since I, like a tiny tangent, stumbled to make this move. 37 songs. One micro SD card. And one impersonal option: ‘format memory-card.’ And it’s amazing. It’s like affected amnesia. You consent and poof – wiped out from memory. Enter tabula rasa – a whiter shade of pale, almost like a sick moon. Tiny blackheads on its pretty, white face. And you walk out of the room and it’s all gone. Beginning from “Rebel Heart” of The Corrs, and ending with – see now I don’t remember. Oh well.

But I have accused myself of a clinical madness, something that I call semiotic fever. I read too much into symbols. Exploring ironies eh. Just today, I was told that I think Lord of the Rings is nothing but the Truth to me. And, a year ago, I was told that I take my Truth from Lord of the Rings. And strange that last year I defended myself and said: ‘No I don’t.’ And today, I said: ‘I will defend this claim till my death.’ Exploring dramatic ironies indeed. I was equally emphatic – both times.

So as I was dealing with my semiotic fever today, I remembered my old pal John Mayer with whom I haven’t spoken for a year. And I decided that I would – like a cheap loser – talk about four of his songs that complete an almost perfect square. And hence the title borrowed for this rant from his album: an aubade for the end of our pal-ship.

So I began my recalling “Love song for no one.” And two lines stood out: ‘I’m jaded. I hate it.’ Oh heck, this is what he really says:

Staying home alone on a Friday
Flat on the floor looking back
On old love
Or lack thereof
After all the crushes are faded
And all my wishful thinking was wrong
I'm jaded
I hate it

I'm tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
So tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here

Searching all my days just to find you
I'm not sure who I'm looking for
I'll know it
When I see you
Until then, I'll hide in my bedroom
Staying up all night just to write
A love song for no one.

And so I thought of another pal, Prufrock. I always wondered what the J. stood for in his elusive name. Jaded? Maybe.

And then I tried so hard to recall one song that I would hum so much about six years ago. Six damn years. Feels like ages ago. At NCA, the three ‘burger queens from Grammar school’, we would talk about a depressing line from “’83,” ‘whatever happened to my, whatever happened to my, whatever happened to my lunchbox.’ And I still bloody wonder what happened to it? Recycled I’m sure. But “’83” was not the song. The song was “No such thing.” And it suddenly came back as some satanic verse. The cool – and not-so-satanic part – goes something like this:

They love to tell you ‘stay inside the lines’
But something’s better on the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
just a lie you've got to rise above

I am invincible
I am invincible
I am invincible
As long as I’m alive

And so I thought about it – all. “Noble lies” were mentioned last night. And I thought that hey, I still like good ol’ John for his elemental truth. I am on the other side, right hand-corner of some elaborate constructed ‘discourse’, and I have finally figured out that it was all a goddamn lie. Because the Truth – and iktilaaf is NOT a mercy my friend – lies on the other side, in one tiny corner. I seriously want to run through that corridor of the Convent (that I think about when I am feeling that feeling of endlessness) and scream out and say: ‘It’s all smoke and mirrors.’ After almost two and half decades, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

And, it’s funny that a year ago, I would relish this bit: ‘I am invincible as long as I’m alive.’ And Mayer says this with such spirit. And today – it took me a year to see – how this (too) is dramatically ironic. I have time till I am breathing. But once the clock stops ticking, it’s over. ‘Hurry up please, it’s time,’ the bartender says in “A Game of Chess.” See, bloody squares again. Check-mate. Game-over.

So I paused and wondered. “Why, Georgia” played in my head. And I have to admit that good ol’ John was better as a lyricist than a musician. And I wondered where he’ll be at the End of All Things. Because it makes one – at least it makes me pause and wonder where I’ll be – as he says:

I rent a room and I fill the spaces with
Wood in places to make it feel like home
But all I feel’s alone
It might be a quarter-life crisis
Or just the stirring in my soul

Either way, I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still, verdictless life.

Everybody is just a stranger but
That’s the danger in going my own way
I guess it’s the price I have to pay
Still “everything happens for a reason”
Is no reason not to ask myself

If I am living it right
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why Georgia, why?

What I like best about this is when he says: ‘either way’ – and if you haven’t heard the song (which I advise you not to now, trust me) – you’ll notice that it’s the backbone of the verse. Extended metaphor of the quarter-life crisis, stirring in the soul, and the angst (God, I hate this word) with the ‘AM I living it right’ bit. And that’s the overwhelming question: am I? What to do and how to live. So says the Dostoevsky dude. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has been Given to us. So says the Gandalf dude. And so have many other Dudes with staffs. But we’ve had our Miracle. Each verse sent down on the heart. Just today, I was telling someone that we format memory cards, and replace the 37 mp3s with the Last 10 m4as and few from in between and listen to each verse as a new, meticulous habit. 114 of those. And each on one heart. And never do we pause and think about this still, verdictless life. No either ways about this. We can be moral without a staff.

And so I remembered, “Back to you.” I remembered my Sufi days. But I wasn’t embarrassed. Nor did I feel sinful. Because the analogy does make sense. That’s what metaphors are for: hieroglyphic truths, no coercive, assertive finalities. And the whole year, with its lunar slippery slope where we dangle as tangents, came back like that damn Porter’s persistent knocking.

Back to you
It always comes around
Back to you
I tried to forget you
I tried to stay away
But it’s too late

Over you
I’m never over
Over you
Something about you
It’s just the way you move
The way you move me

I’m so good at forgetting
And I quit ever game I play
But forgive me, love
I can’t turn and walk away, (this way)

Back to you
It always comes around
Back to you
I walk with your shadow
I’m sleeping in my bed
With your silhouette

Should have smiled in that picture
If it’s the last that I’ll see of you
It’s the least that you
Could not do

Leave the light on
I’ll never give up on you
Leave the light on
For me too

Back to me
I know that it comes
Back to me
Doesn’t it scare you
Your will is not as strong
As it used to be.

And so the Sufis I think like to play with fire. But then I wonder what Momin Khan Momin meant when he said:

Kyūn suney arz muztarib Momin
Sanam ākhir Khudā nahīn hotā

And that’s that. It scares me now that at least my will is not that strong as it used to be. And it really is late, and getting later than usual. I think of the verse about the Spider. And I remember Ungoliant and Shelob, and then about what it really means to dangle from a spider’s nest. Each one would taste Death. Then (the ‘then’ adds that assertive Finality where no one would be really late anymore), unto Us you shall be Returned. And that’s the point when once the lights go out, sun, moon, stars, all would be folded up, it’ll be so dark that even bare skin won’t matter.

And this is just another April after a painful lunar year. Perhaps there is still room for more narrow squares and pointed corners on this side of the fence.

Friday, 11 April 2008

Q and Pi

How farther did those Hands Stretch,
Etching through blank darkness
Corridors and passages through skies and seas,
Dissected into sections – so many arcs –
Spiraling through Light and shadow.

And so Motion began.

How much did that Pen scribe
Those black alphabets on pale parchment,
And phrases cohered into meaningful
Metaphors that speak of the Truth alone.

And so Conclusion began.

I take the same compass.
I recall many dervishing similes.
These two arcs can only trace a complete shadow
Concluding itself into ceaseless repetition.

I use the same ink.
I think of brimming libraries
Packed with so many words and phrases
Fumbling, stumbling over mere translation.

Let all these pages elude the grasp of your thumb,
And see the delirium the rustle would whisper.
Let all these arcs arch over your eyes,
And see the distance the circumference would unfold.

We are mere tangents trying to edge closer,
As quickly as precisely as we can,
To our Watchful Center,
Each distance severed into several halves,
Each leap only barely touching, not grasping

Till the Center would pull each of us
Back, from smoke to blind mirrors,
To see, read and
Know what lay beyond
Each seemingly impossible distance.


21 February 2008

Dyslexia

“Bring forth men-children only!” [Macbeth, I.vii]

Speech stammers now.
A galaxy rips into pieces of constellations,
Stars straying about, perforating the floor with
A delirium of fireworks;
Splinters of broken mirrors
Pierce my eyes, peeling off strange patterns.

I see nothing – This is not what I heard –
Did it speak to me, before, this White sky
Collapsed onto a murky plain.
Pages and pages were laid before me.
Crystals that I should have clasped
Safe, are now lost.

It is too dark for me to Read, again.
This ink stares hard at me.
I can feel it, grinning now, as if I
Misunderstood the joke.
I am embarrassed now.
Let me shroud my face with blood.

These slivers prick my fingers –
So much mess on the floor.
Gather it all – let me arrange these fumbling
Phrases into some order.
These shadows clot into darkness.
And my hands smell of stale blood.

27 January, 2008

Rimless: A Portrait of Sleep

It was a different dawn.
Outside, colors ripened
Beckoning a day of blackened,
Forgotten memory.

Pictures formed framelessly –
Locations rushed, jumbled,
Faces flashed, some followed,
Disjointed flesh and bone.

I knew the bricked walls of our eroding castle.
I knew the marble stairs of that quiet chapel,
Knew the grounds, both visited and unvisited,
Compounds and courtyards, corridors that continued
Through the delirium.

And now the palette of a new twilight glistened.
Blood warm in a goblet, a sky lavishly inked.
Another courtyard, a mosque, a street, a channel
About to tip over, and the spectrum shall spill
Through a continuum.

Images, phrases, form
Were strangely socketed,
Neatly wrapped, then revealed
Like syntax that ordains

The timing of tenses.
Territories unmapped,
Categories confused
Yet I traced momentum.

The unmindful iris
Can compose such colors,
Can call on the unseen
To seek resolution.

The paper is still white.
Skies knock at glass windows.
Vision blinks, then dwindles.
This blindness is too bright.

9th Muharram 1428
29th January 2007.