farukahmedroni
56/M/London, United Kingdom
Faruk Ahmed Roni is a Bangladeshi-born poet and writer based in the UK, known for his powerful and evocative poetry in both Bengali and English. His work explores themes of identity, love, and cultural heritage, often reflecting the diasporic experience.
Velvet Darkness
Each day, countless times
I pass through the forest where time breathes,
crossing the thin border of existence.
The unrelated trees, standing in mute rows,
begin to feel familiar, almost kin;
within their austere grace
I encounter myself again,
wandering inside the residual darkness
left behind by betrayed virtue.
My griefs are like birds
permanently stationed beside a window,
motionless,
Their wings entwined with time’s indifference.
The world accelerates away from me;
I remain solitary.
At times, lightning fractures the sky,
and the bones within me shudder,
as though this were the moment
The self must undergo conversion.
When the stars go out
in the next dawn,
I will run into darkness
at the speed of light.
Everything I have will be left here
the body of tenderness,
burned down to scorched charcoal,
still faintly warm.
This life, galloping like a wild horse,
will stop,
in a single breath.
Copyright@farukahmedroni
Dec 13, 2025
Dec 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM UTC
They wake before the mist lifts
In bamboo huts nailed to the spine of hills,
children with feet toughened by stone,
learning to climb before they can read.
The school
a distant building
where the teacher comes twice a week,
or not at all.
Lessons written in a language
That does not speak their names.
A girl hums an old tune
as she carries water from a stream
her grandmother says is sacred.
Now the water tastes of metal.
They do not ask why
They are used to not being answered.
At the clinic,
a mother waits with a fevered child.
She counts the cracks on the wall
instead of medicines.
The nurse says,
“We are out of stock.”
As if health is a seasonal crop.
Once they owned the forest
Like breath owns the body.
Now,
papers come with stamps and numbers,
men in uniforms
draw invisible lines through ancestral soil,
and call it development.
At night, they gather
not to protest,
But to remember.
Around the fire,
The elders whisper stories
that the government does not achieve.
They are not asking for your mercy.
They are asking for memory.
Recognition.
The right to name their pain.
They are not gone.
They are not voiceless.
They are still singing
In a tongue that echoes through trees
You no longer hear.
Copyright@farukahmedroni
Dec 13, 2025
Dec 13, 2025 at 4:26 PM UTC
I wear the hours like iron chains,
Time, a weight, each breath restrains.
A silent war behind my eyes,
Where no one hears the muted cries.
I earn, I cook, I donate, I serve
Yet ask myself: Am I still alive?
I roam the sphere, but a dusty bin,
A world without a self within.
They see the plate, not hands that bled,
They take the coin, not how it’s fed.
I’m not praised, even am scorned still,
A man, not a man, just bent to will.
No throne, no crown, no voice to speak,
My power drained, my body weak.
The rules are theirs, the rights assigned
My freedom left, my soul unassigned.
They shape the tale, they write the part,
And carve their names across my heart.
I’m just a role, a tool, a game,
A nameless face without a name.
But deep inside, where fire remains,
Where broken bones still feel their chains,
A whisper stirs beneath the pain:
“I am a man, not just your gain.”
One day, this quiet storm will rise,
The sun will burn these shadowed skies.
And though today I wear their cost,
I am not gone. I am not yet lost.
@farukahmedroni
Dec 13, 2025
Dec 13, 2025 at 4:23 PM UTC
Kushiara Still Sings
Left my childhood river,
Yet Kushiara flows beneath my every thought
not this grey Thames, dressed in glass and silence,
but the one lined with palms, voices, and time.
Once, I crossed it with Mithil, my first trembling love,
our fingers brushing like wind over water,
while the boatman sang “Majhi Baiya Jao re…”
And the sky turned gold above our heads.
His song still drifts through my memory like smoke
soft, sorrowful, full of dust and devotion.
Here, the river bus howls its iron tune,
and Uber boats slice the silence with no soul.
The dusk doesn’t kiss me here,
no banyan arms to wrap my longing,
no river path to follow the footprints of youth.
Only steel shadows, and reflections of a future
I never asked for.
I cannot go back
but sometimes, if I close my eyes just right,
Kushiara still sings, and so does she.
– Kushiara*. A River in Bangladesh.
Dec 13, 2025
Dec 13, 2025 at 4:05 PM UTC