The Shadows
Nasty maulvi’s of terror,
child dancers at Masjids
and caked flags of genocide
rise
like thick smoke from London bars
infiltrating the wide-woven streets of Kabul
with death-masks on
splintering bodies with sharp swords
leaving the debris of slain children,
brutalised mothers
in silence
yet fully ablaze.
Thick ash scatters like grey fog,
and thins in the un-hearing air.
***
A Gaze Older Than Islam
Illegal armed pigs with white agendas,
a whole market of selective demons,
extract words from Quran
to symbolize a whitewashed past
erected from mass graves of women.
Animals from a lustful kingdom
raising a flag symbolizing white God
to propagate Satan’s verses
mis/interpret you in alleyways
and indulge you in blood.
You, like a flower bud in a disastrous event
turn into ash of massacre,
suffocated by venomous fever
in a society dimmed by trotting wolves
with drama of ghost-tangled beards
that astonish the breaking dawn.
At the distanced lands of incarceration,
echoes of your quiet dreams
break every beat of my gaze,
breach every inch of my chest-
I, a torn-out hymn,
a sad laughter upon wounded lips.
Afghan woman,
honour of Afghan land,
you are more than their ill articulation,
way beyond their Hadis-e-Moft.
Your well-versed interpretation of Quran–
a gaze older than Islam,
the mesmerizing fragrance of Subhi Khurasan,
the gifter of eminent light, Maulana Rumi,
whose words are Taweez to every door.
Let them not make your fate flee from your glory,
gamble, shut you down, gift you to a bald destiny.
Let them not create misery upon a generation
whose clatter of feet the moon once lulled to sleep.
***
Dukhti Afghan
Eyes of lapis lazuli,
lips like purple-iris’ glare,
voice as soft as Quranic counsel,
more impulsive than the recited rhymes of Rubab —
at whose mercy life is permitted to exist —
hair wild as shuffling olive leaves
veiled in the headgear of scarf-crowns,
beauties long unnoticed,
half kept unseen,
either secretly or unwisely forgotten!
Gemstones now in exile,
captive of Pharaohs,
underestimated by uncivilized human-lords
unaware of the nature of turquoise —
the longer it ages, the brighter it shines —
rise up,
elegant-hearted,
gentle as spring breeze,
stronger and wiser than one-sided brain holders
who trade human skins
behind blue banners,
white banners,
green banners,
rise up to break the dragons’ bones!
This No Compass edition is supported by Multicultural Arts Victoria, as a part of the 2022 Ahead of the Curve Commissions.
