In hands hardened with
Hunger, struggle, and poverty
Of all kinds,
She clutched bundles of
Fragrant, delicate roses,
Her beauty hidden behind
A torn dupatta,
The light turned from yellow to red
The other girls by her side rushed
To crowd around cars
While she simply sat unmoving
Face turned away
While I wished I could take a picture,
Because her silent figure needed

Something more than words,
Something deeper, more colorful
Than words
To illustrate her black and white story

Can I explain this to you? Your eyes
are entrances the mouths of caves
I issue from wonderful interiors
upon a blessed sea and a fine day,
from inside these caves I look and dream.

Your hair explicable as a waterfall
in some black liquid cooled by legend
fell across my thought in a moment
became a garment I am naked without
lines drawn across through morning and evening.

And in your body each minute I died
moving your thigh could disinter me
from a grave in a distant city:
your ******* deserted by cloth, clothed in twilight
filled me with tears, sweet cups of flesh.

Yes, to touch ******* made us worlds
stars, waters, promontories, chaos
swooning in elements without form or time
come down through long seas among sea marvels
embracing like survivors in our islands.

This I think happened to us together
though now no shadow of it flickers in your hands
your eyes look down on ordinary streets
If I talk to you I might be a bird
with a message, a dead man, a photograph.

Birds are flyin' south for winter.
Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,
Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',
Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.
He says, "It's not that I like ice
Or freezin' winds and snowy ground.
It's just sometimes it's kind of nice
To be the only bird in town."

How can you forget him
If you keep seeing yourself as
A martyr?
Stop glorifying failure.
Be a **Survivor.

My heart,
Is a jigsaw puzzle composed of
Pieces of souvenirs from wherever
Life has taken me

Sunny mounts of happiness,
Dark troughs of gloom,
Blind alleys of secret memories

Punched out remains
Of the parts that I gifted to
Those special few

Uneven buds added on
To the surface, because some gave me
Pieces of their hearts too

Marks of where it was trodden on,
Scars that show its
Brave, healed face

With pins of guilt and remorse
Studding it in memory of how
It also became the cause of others' pain

That's my heart. Not so pretty,
Not perfect, not pure,
Yet it sits in my chest, beating away
Patiently, as if entirely sure
That any moment, its wait will end
Of someone who'll admiringly
Imbibe all of its stories,
Ease away all the tense knots,
View in awe all its glories

And let its inadequacies depart,
Completing them with closeness-
Smoothening their unevenness-
By merging with them,
Heart to heart

Oh he's got such flair,
That khuda khair
One can't help but just stare...
**Unabashedly

Sometimes I wonder
Why I write haikus so much
Maybe I like them.