i don't know why people think
that poetry can ever reveal the
autobiographical...

know people want to revel
in an autobiographical
custom of allowing a light
to shine upon the dim
and the dull...
  
that's not how it works though...

i hate the idea that poetry
reduces me to a status of
a child: playing a game
of hide & seek -
but isn't it just that?

   while reading poetry, am i
not playing a game of hide & seek?

to tease with covert biographical details
hidden within bare-bone-naked
poetic attains...
  to don a niqab...
         it's almost a subconscious
conversion...
                
                       i just can't
see the inversion of donning the niqab:
given that such poetics attires
itself in more shadow than
the niqab...
               it puts on a pair of sunglasses:

and "shelters" the eyes,
        or that perfectly known loss of
ever wishing to peer into the windows
of a soul.