I place a gun to my temple,
My dreams lie trampled,
My mosque everyday burned and mocked,
My church fired with brimstone and rocks,
My synagogue scarred and tarred,
My eyes see through the false plastic masks,
My body my simple shrine,
My blood red as winter’s wine,
My head wears no crown and I am all alone,
I pull the trigger and kneel at God’s eternal throne.

The eve of my death shall be my coronation,
For although I lived and breathed it was but a lament,
I hid it well,

No one knew,

For pain did not upon my face draw its battle lines,
This garden of earth’s simple delights I found barren,
I go now to a place where the soul never hungers,

Now I know,

This was always the dream of my final resting place,
Under a beam of a cold weeping moon,
There I shall sleep my discarded life into the roots of a dead rose,

*This is home...

A husband without his wife is a desert without an oasis,

A man without a woman’s shadow is a man without a trace,

A marriage without passion is a rainbow without colour,

A child without a mother is a seed without a flower,

A home without a family is a ship without an anchor,

A beauty without grace is a diamond without a glow,

A mirror without a face is a ghost without a name,

A breath without a prayer is a life without hope,

A body without a soul is a well without water,

A search without faith is a hollow shell without the Creator,

A lover without the Beloved is a life without meaning,

A question without sense is an answer without understanding,

A hunger without reason is a famine without deliverance,

A palace without people is a king without a crown,

A country without peace is a cancer without a cure,

A sentence without mercy is a law without justice,

A nation without a dream is a song without a melody,

A singer without a voice is a bird without wings,

A painting without colour is black without white,

A night without sleep is a room without light,

A day without end is work without play,

A circle without a line is a shape without form,

A life without laughter is death without life.


©Rangzeb Hussain

On that dread day,
when innocent babes in arms
were torn screaming from the ******* of their mothers,
when the old and infirm were lined up
and had their spines snapped by high velocity bullets,
when the refugee camps ran red
with the slippery blood of voiceless victims,
when the sky itself wept and wailed,
on that dread day a nation bargained away
and lost its precious soul.
Peace and love died on that dread day.


©Rangzeb Hussain

I have seen our garden after Eden,
I have felt the change in the climate,
I have tasted the warm summer rain,
I have ploughed your perfumed harvest upon a moonlit evening.

I still rummage through the memory of autumn,
I still yearn to **** out the crease in your silken garments,
I still feel your heartbeat fluttering in the breeze of the hummingbird’s wings,
I still irrigate my life with your tears that will forever sting.

I can taste your fragrance in the seeds of spring,
I can close my eyes and pollinate my mind with your dreams,
I can reach out and plant a kiss on the silhouette of your fingertips,
I can still see the faint trace of your fertile footprint.

I want to thaw out the winter from my weeping bones,
I want to cast aside the sad saturated memory stones,
I want to hear the melody that we wrote with our warm souls,
I want to be where you are in the land where cold souls grow old.


©Rangzeb Hussain