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I am a quiet, silent man,
Dwelling deep within myself.
What I long to say aloud,
I pour into a letter’s shell.

She, playful, fleeting like the breeze,
All that I express in words,
She replied with a single image,
And spoke with her eyes unheard.

How beautiful those nights once were,
What magic lived in those old days!
Today again, my heart desires
To send you a letter… always.

But this time, through an artist's hand,
This letter shall reach your grace.
Some words of the heart remain unsaid,
That only colors can embrace.

To the painter I make one humble plea
When you read my letter’s line,
Sketch her soul upon the page,
And let her truest face shine.

Let us see
If my words still hold the weight
Of truth, of ache, of silent grace.
And if she, when the artist paints,
Still wears that same beloved face...
Or was it all just well-performed
a role she played through posed displays?
Some actors do receive lifetime achievement awards, others just leave behind unforgettable roles in someone’s memory.
5d · 9
Haiku #2
The world sleeps so still,  
peaceful in its ignorance  
screams fall like petals...
The painful screams of bombed, dying children...Palestinians!
7d · 226
Haiku
Like the last time, love
Pour water in palms for me
For the last time please
Like the last time for last time...
it was  
             a fine spring  
          day, and we thought  
        to take a walk in nature  
      barefoot on the grass, it felt  
     so refreshing, such a lovely day  
         it was for us, but we crushed  
             and killed tens of  
                  windflowers...  
                    |||| ­ 
                    ||||  
                    ||||
Don’t crush beauty in the name of joy.
May 29
If I Could...
O
that if I could,
I would:

Hide the moon
and the sun
in my fists.

No more lights
in nights.
No more rays
in days.

Why should the world
remain alight
when my soul
and heart
are drowned in dark?
To those
who abandon the very souls
they once vowed
to die for

hear this...

Even a flower,
plucked and dead
in your careless hand,
will gift you
its fragrance.

It does not curse.
It does not withhold.
It bleeds beauty
for the one
who tore it
from its roots.

So too
do the truest hearts,
they bloom
for their betrayers,
and love
even as they wither.
Gifts of the broken
May 29
So Strangely
So strangely
have you stuck to my life,
you, who have gone.

Why is everything
of my life
attached to you?

Like you are
the darkness
of my nights,

and stars,
and the moon...
they must be lightless
if I don’t
think of you.
Is it really strange, stranger?
May 25
Hourglass
O, that time
     were an hourglass.
   Each moment with you,
     a grain of sand,

       falling, rising,
        down and up,
         up and down.

          Relived.
          Refilled.

          I wish,
     that would be my life.
Why did you break my hourglass?
dark night
a cabin deep in the jungle
raindrops whispering
on leaves
on the rooftop
on everything
soft steady like an old lullaby
and I’m sitting here
by the dim light
yellow and flickering
writing a poem
about you
for you
because you are near
not here
but near
somewhere in the sleeping village
and that’s enough tonight

by morning
you’ll come
you always do
you’ll open that wooden door
it will creak just right
like a story beginning again
your footsteps will press into the wet fragrant soil
and I’ll hear them
before I see you
and I’ll know
without looking
it’s you

how timeless it feels
how classic
this quiet expectant night
like a paused breath
like the world waiting too

is this a poem I write
or is it one
time is writing through us
without asking

maybe we are not the writers
maybe we are the lines
being drawn
slowly
tenderly
by the brush of this moment
a painting
time never finishes

and maybe
that’s the beauty of it
She used to bring the mornings...
May 23 · 53
Law of Dust
Why are we drawn
to lust,
to the hunger of flesh,
to devour food
as if the body remembers
a hunger older than time?

Because we are soil!
And we desire
grain,
flesh,
which too rise
from soil.

Like calls to like.
Atoms seek atoms.

The universe obeys
its own silent gravity.

Our lust,
and longings
die
when we return
to the dust
we came from.
But even then,
it’s not over.

Our atoms will scatter
into soil,
into seeds,
into skins.

And somewhere,
in someone,
they will long
again.
Not with our name,
but with our echo.

Maybe, the bodies you see
are echoes,
of echoes,
of echoes...
of echoes…

..
.
Dust remembers the shape of longing...
May 22 · 201
Yes, You Loved me Too!
Two tender eyes
witnessed our love, my love:
a black velvet night
and a red, trembling rose.

The night, alas,
whirled past the galaxy,
then dissolved
in heaven’s warm embrace.
I remember...
why don’t you?

O rose! My red rose,
the envoy of longing,
the whisper of my heart,
gifted into your palms.
Neck so proud, head held high,
you plucked her down,
petal by petal,
with your playful, wicked fingers
as you looked through me.

And now you ask,
Love? What love?
Ah, if only my life
could turn to a pilgrimage,
wandering in search
of that night we lost.

Let me breathe my soul
into the withered bloom,
so night and rose return,
and bear their silent witness:
yes, you loved me too.
Some nights still smell like that rose, perhaps, even silence remembers what you pretend to forget.
May 21 · 83
Let Them Go!
Don’t  
         blame him.  
        Don’t blame  
      her.
Not for the  
     betrayal, not for  
   walking      away.  

       The heart,  
          is  
     a world of  
     changing weather.  

           And  
         people?  
        They dress  
    for the storm  
          they  
          feel.  

      You were  
        summer,  
     they felt cold.  

      You were sun,  
   they longed for shade.  

         Don’t  
       blame them.  

      Even skies  
      can’t hold  
  one season forever.
Some people's hearts change, like weather.
your love too  
          some days sealed in vaults  
         weighed like gold  
       other days  
     tossed like worthless coins  
   into the dust of memory  
  was it love  
or just a note
meant to expire
They made your gold a coin for the gutter.
May 18 · 416
Don't Call me Light!
You lied with grace.
I bowed with love.

You took my fire,
left me ash.

I saw your face,
and lost my faith.

You left.
Still,
you called me
light.
May 17 · 92
The Tulip on the Grave
I was walking in the cemetery,
a place where death sits quietly among grass, bush and trees,
where grief is softened by green,
where the living come to forget and remember.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves.
Birdsong floated, indifferent and kind.
Graves stood in silence
some proud, built with stone too heavy for the dead,
others modest, marked by trees,
their roots winding down
into stories no one tells anymore.

Most had flowers.
Bouquets like offerings,
some fresh, some already fading.
Life pretending it can outlast death.

Then I saw it
a tulip, maroon,
its head bowed, its stem bent
not plucked,
but broken while still alive.

It hadn’t been laid there in tribute.
It was growing.
Rooted.
Alive.
And dying.

It leaned on the edge of a grave
like a mourner
who had run out of words.

Its siblings stood tall beside it,
still laughing in color,
still reaching for the sky,
unaware of their fallen one
or perhaps resigned to the order of things.

There was something tragic in its solitude.
A flower that had come to give beauty
and now was dying
on dust already claimed by death.

The irony was sharp
even the beautiful who serve the dead
must die too.

And no one brings flowers
for the flower that dies.

I stood still.
The tulip did not move.
A breeze passed, but it did not rise.
Some deaths happen quietly,
with no audience,
no cry,
just a slow fading
into the soil.

And I wondered
Is this what we are?
Not stone,
not names,
but small, nameless offerings
meant to bloom once,
to bow quietly,
and to vanish
without sound
while the world keeps walking.
May 16 · 122
I Walked Out
I lost it all
at that table, that night
dreams, hope,
maybe even a bit of myself.

But that
didn’t make me a loser.
You lose
only if you stay.

I stood up,
quiet,
broke,
but free.

I didn’t come
to chase luck
I came to face it.

And when luck
turned its back,
I turned mine too
on that room,
that game,
that lie.

I walked out
to find a better way
to win.

One not built
on cards,
but on steps
I take outside.
I aint playing it anymore...
May 10 · 226
The Way To Nowhere
Lost
not in this world,
but from it.
I walk,
one foot after the other,
toward a place
I cannot name
or maybe
there is no place
at all.

Alone,
with echoes of memories
that feel like wind
soft,
and then gone.

They call to me
the good old days
but when I turn
to look,
I see only
shadows
curling in a vacuum,
and a silence
too thick to breathe.

The past is hollow.
The future,
faceless.
And the present
just a corridor
with locked doors
and no windows.

My heart still beats,
perhaps,
but it no longer sings.
It whispers
in tired thumps,
like a bird
that forgot
why it ever flew.

I am here
yet fading,
like light
dissolving
in the arms
of night
that never comes.
May 9 · 173
My Price
Her words
were deep
like still water
that remembers storms.

My replies
were deeper,
echoes carved
from silence and soul.

She whispered,
“I wish I could buy you.”
And I,
without hesitation,
said,
“You can.”

She paused,
eyes holding the question,
“And what would your price be?”

I looked away,
toward the night sky
that never belonged to anyone,
and answered,
“My freedom!”
And she left...
May 3 · 203
The Pigeon
I was sitting on a bench,
in a quiet place , a cemetery,
but also a park
where people come to walk,
to jog, to breathe.

Then I saw it,
a pigeon flying down from a tree.
It walked softly on the ground,
its feathers glowing in the morning light.
Black wings,
white chest,
purple and black neck,
white tail,
and feet covered with white feathers.

So beautiful.
I didn’t say it out loud,
but in my heart I admired it.

And then
it looked at me.
Really looked.

And to my surprise,
it flew to me.
Landed on the bench,
right next to me.
Its claws held the metal tightly.
It stared
those red eyes moving,
like it was trying to understand me
from every angle.

It came closer.
And for a second,
I felt something between us.
Our eyes met
and stayed.

Then, quietly,
it flew away.

I don’t know what it was.

Was it God,
answering my silent thoughts?
Or the universe,
reminding me that we are all connected?

It felt like love
but not the kind we see in movies.

No hands.
No words.
Just a moment between a human and a bird.
Real.
Quiet.
Sacred.

Maybe love is like that sometimes
not between lovers,
but between souls.
No need for shape or name.
Just presence.
Apr 27 · 153
Footsteps in the Rain
I still remember
your footsteps beside me,
whispering on the asphalt,
in the rain,
in the hollow of dark nights,
beneath the weary glow
of city lamp poles,
upon the trembling wet pavement.

Now you have left
the rain,
the light,
and me.

Yet still I walk
through the same aching air,
the same silver rain,
the same empty streets.

Each drop that falls
is a soft echo
of your vanished footfall,
each puddle
a mirror to a memory
I cannot outrun.

O rain,
why can you wash the world clean,
but never wash
her footsteps
away from my life?
Apr 27 · 103
Kill the Santa Claus
After seeing the ruthless killings
of black, tiny, weak kids on TV,
from starvation in Africa
on Christmas Eve,
I tiptoed back to my
white son's room,
made off with the gifts I had left,
burned them,
and killed the Santa Claus.
Apr 26 · 177
Before You Sleep
I know you are impartial,
You do not take sides
Not with the oppressed,
Not with the oppressors.

You are a good human,
You do not interfere in the acts of others,
Even if they are murders
In the brightness of the day.

You are a good human being,
You do not speak of wars,
Of blood, of wounds,
Of cries, of deaths.

You wish only to spread love,
To cover your eyes,
To shield your ears,
To silence your tongue
Against the roar of evil.

But tonight, before you sleep,
Close your doors,
Shut your windows tight,
And whisper only to yourself.

Ask your heart, the one you hide,
Ask as the human you had promised to be
Everything happening around you,
Before your open eyes

The screams that break into your house,
The cries that stain your walls,
The blood that runs through your streets

Is it good, or is it bad?

If it is good,
Then sleep peacefully,
And know you are right.

If it is bad,
Then know —
You have been wrong.
Apr 21 · 249
What does a Kiss cost?
What does a kiss on a soft cheek cost?
A heart?
Laid in her palms
Is that the price?

Or a soul
Should it be
At her feet
Sacrificed?

Or maybe the time that is left
The last breath
The final sigh
In return
For a moment,
For lips to touch?

Tell me
What more should someone offer?
What more will she ask?

For the right
To rest
Two weary pilgrims
My longing lips
on the sacred land
of her cheek?
Daughters of neighbors
pierced the skin of the skies,
riding chariots of fire,
floating nine months
in the arms of weightless stars.
They whispered to the void,
grew life where even breath
has no permission to exist.

But here —
our daughters sit behind locked doors,
trapped in silence at the end of the street,
where schools are closed,
where a blackboard is a battlefield,
and a book
a forbidden fruit.

They planted seeds in space,
in the soil of galaxies,
while we—
we could not plant
a single seed of mercy
in the hearts of those who breathe
oxygen too richly to share.

O Sunita!
You carried the prayers of science
beyond the blue.
But our girls?
Their wings were broken
not by gravity
but by impatience, by fear,
by chains disguised as customs.

How long?
How long will the stars sing
while our daughters are silenced?
The earth has already taken flight,
and we—
we are still
binding the feet
of angels.

Let us give them wings too.
Let them fly—
not to escape,
but to arrive.
Let them touch the sky,
and return
with the soft, burning realization
of their own light.

Because the sky
is not for a few.
It was made
for every dream
that dares
to open its eyes.
A tribute to the brave daughters of Afghanistan, whose footsteps have been kept from the classroom doors for three long years,  yet whose dreams still rise like morning light.
Mar 2 · 41
Ecstasy
In the ecstasy of her love
I felt like a dervish
Wanting to whirl dance
And...
She came...
And came into my arms
In the melody of her whispers
Our bodies swang,
Our gaits swayed in the rhythm and
Claps of the onlooking air-waves
While our souls danced to the drums
Of our heartbeats...

— The End —