A heavy heart can't drive very fast
And with no destination
I spent my night crawling around side streets
Looking for an excuse to be anywhere
Other than in my own company
Being an introvert does not mean you must prescribe yourself loneliness
But loneliness is the cheap old couch that I just can't sell
Loneliness is the memories-for-decoration that my home is littered with
Loneliness is my own presence not taking up enough space
To fill anything except my bed
Being alone was once a comfort
But now it swallows me whole
Spits me out onto garden city streets
To drive  until I am too tired to steer
Not look as I pass the train tracks to get home
Pull into  the parking lot and sit
My car is easier to fill than a home

Poetry is to be given away
  and never ever sold

A gift beyond what time demands
   —and wrapped in leaves of gold

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2018)

Anything can
look like a poem
and sound philosophical
simply by moving
the words on
different lines.

Am I doing it right?
Is this
really
talent?
Art?
Effort?

I think I am trying.
Really, I am
I go back and change the order
and I break lines
where it sounds right
But it does not take me long.
Not at all.

I try to be
intentional
and call it natural rhythm.
Instinct and style taking over
I alternate between
agonizing every detail
like When to Capitalize
and publishing free form poems without looking over them twice.

How is writing supposed to feel?
Should I labor?
or should it flow?
Or do I get to decide?

I think the things I talk of
mean something
at least.

But am I just
pretentious?

fooling myself into thinking that
using common poetry formats
somehow makes my work worthwhile?

The poet lives two lives.
One on the outside,
And one in their mind.

When you look in their eyes
You could see an abyss.

If you looked long enough
You could sink into it.

But most people don’t see it.

Take the time to read the words, though,
And you would know for sure.

The poet lives in two different worlds.

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

Love is Heaven
Streak of light killed me and I am no more
Let mybeauty praise you let me but adore
I am strictly in bond of pain how I can ignor
I want to take all whatever I have in store
I swam from centre of ocean to the shore
My rivals want to take revenge on every score
The way I felt about life I never felt before
You my love travel in me from pore to pore

Love always pay tribute to beauty to excel
Beauty has the abode in clean heart to dwell
This is what takes me my love under the spell
Let me be frank on the account I have to tell
Love is not a commodity to purchase or to sell
A lover is enthralled in love is in heaven not hell  

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2018 Golden Glow