Why can't we have meaningless talk
the way people have meaningless ***-
you would crash over me into a
river of un-scathing emptiness
and leave marks on my skin-
stories that this was where
you started to tear at
the seams
effortlessly
like the silkness
of your sorrows on my floor.

You would become a sultry verse
in this anthology of every day
lodged between the rush and
vacancy of broken hearts
and anguished limbs.

You would radiate the heat
of your angry, angry heart onto
the cold deadness of mine,
and we could burn and melt
all at the same time.

Meaninglessly you would leave
me out of breath,
gather your clothes
and go home.

Live like an unappreciated stranger
in your own house.

Become the careless talk at family dinners
about the disappointing child
and pretend like it was all a joke
and slowly lose yourself with every
echo of drunken laughter.

Look into the eyes of someone you love
and realize how you can't feel anything
other than dread.

Become the lustful thoughts of someone
you can't love
and watch them cut themselves
into pieces for you, when
in the end
all you can say is a pitiful "thank you,
but I'd rather be a lonely wreck
drifting across the sea."

Ask yourself to be found
in a map with no direction
and with nothing but your
faulty heart to guide you away
from home.

Pretend like the music
disappears into the background
of the screenplay your life has become
and the screen slowly turning black.

Find the dread
in your own heartbeat.

Take off your clothes
and see how you sewed every misgiving
into your skin like a story you
never want forgotten
and marvel at how bad your stitching is-
can't even hold yourself together.

Hear the sound of the rain
and wonder why
the grey clouds of your heart
never go away with the same.

It was not in the road
that took me there
but the way my heart
always remained the same
rushing through college corridors,
open dissection tables,
woodwork poetry breathren.

Indestructible construction
of these cerebral plates
left me the mind of a surgeon
and the heart of a poet.

In the cold operating room
they cut open his chest-
blood gushing out and I could
see why sometimes a little hurt
could cause a lot of noise.
Ventricle, atrium.
A nick that ricocheted,
a word that spelled
goodbye.

There was a rhythm in his heart
and for once I could feel
synchronicity was never so beautiful;
almost teary-eyed
I could find those verses
lost between the veins,
quietude pumping out slowly.

Lost in the mistranslation
of his chest
till the nurse said

"Doctor, your patient's dying"

///

If I see it under a lens
It seems ripples,
that might be made with sand and clay
And it grew gray
but it left several footprints

If I see it from a simple distance
It feels like a vigorous stream,
that might be shown a time with full of tide  
and they tell it's a painting  
that can say a fairy tale

///
@ Musfiq us shaleheen

~~

*Once, I was a hard sand stone
Neither had I made a tune nor a tone
I had broken after a strong shock wave
From a waterfall, I had fallen into a pothole but could not settle

After I was moving with a long stream as a rolling stone
Now I have no edge but only passing a phase
A few days ago, I discovered myself as a grain of sand
And day by day, I have been drowning beneath the ocean

~~

@ Musfiq us shaleheen

I heard we
ran out of papers
so you ran up
around the walls
of this house-
thoughts scribbling
on them like the paint
we could not decide upon;
like a troubled mentalist
looking for solace
the sound of your pen
against the walls-
how they went from
flowing to screeching-
hands now bleeding
blue
heart; you reached the
porch where you underlined
your first steps and her last;
the bedroom a serenade
between the sheets some-
times a lie tucked away
underneath;
there are fractured stories
in the woodwork finally
seeping out.
You are making the
ceiling cry in the eulogic living room; the kitchen
is a mess of lonely dinners.
You left the library for the last.
This was where you began a
passion never ending
fantasy; open up
the curtains.
The world will one day
listen to the way
a little scribble went
to a house
and came back
a masterpiece.

I hope you see yourself in the things that I do,
I hope you see my eyes staring back at you.

Don't think for a moment that I didn't put you there,
Don't think for a moment that I don't care.

Because I do.
I do.
I do.
I do.
Words you never said to me, words she always said to you.

I hope one day you hear my name,
And watch my art scream my pain.
I hope you see my story told,
Finally free, your words getting old.

I have written you down, I have moved you through my feet,
I have sung you out loud, and I have saved you a seat.

So please, come and watch my display,
My performance of grief, I am the author of this play.
This dance, this art that holds your name,
I hope that you see you too, because I do the same.