She’s six,
She wants to play and run and with her friends freely mix,

She’s bright,
She wants to reach out to the dimly glowing tunnel of light,

She’s grateful,
She wants to be brave in the face of all that is fearfully fateful,

Imagine…

Pain, pain,

Pain that is so encrusted it eats into her tiny bones unseen,
Pain so heated it needs to be cooled with the kiss of morphine,

One lung sunken never again to flutter or rise,
The other coughs along over craggy cancer heights,

The luscious hair that was once her crown has been plucked away,
All her hair falling into the jealous grip of the dead and dying day,

There is a brain tumour that tick-tocks in the evening shadows,
In her sleep she whispers, “Tell aunty to bring me eyeshadows.”

A circle of spirals, a moonbeam,
She is one of us, what is life but a brief dream?

Then...

Here, upon this flagstone,
Through yonder portcullis,
And over the green pasture inside the castle gates,
Yea, ‘twas a time of kings,
A time of high adventure
and death’s flying arrows,
Peasants, horses, carts,
Children plucking chickens,
The noise, the dust, the heat,
This was the place,
This was the dungeon where they took
The Hooded Man,
To Nottingham’s dark cellared cells,
Over across the castle moat,
by the river green,
there grows the pride of Sherwood,
In that time of chivalry
there was honour to be won
and the comely maidens flowed with
the milk of beauty,
Modesty was theirs,
and respect too,
Dressed in garments ruby red with rare silken cloths
brought back from the Crusader Kingdoms so far away
over the waves of desert sands,
Lush velvet embroidered with the lace of the East,
This was the age of Faerie and Legend,
Nottingham’s merrie minstrels plucked gently their mandolins,
Hear this, the blissful sound of a bygone age,
An age of mist and dreams...

Now...

The skull eyed reaper marches ever onwards,
Time slashes forward without mercy...

Look you now to these ancient castle ruins,
Nothing now but cracked stones,
The old flagstones are lined with
the attack of ages,
The walls of the courtyard grimed with ivy
and rotting flowers with dead dry thorns,
Over there, the portcullis, it has been removed,
There is no more music here,
There is only the croaking silence of autumn’s solitary raven,
Robin, The Hooded Man, is now nothing more than a mute statue,
He keeps ghostly guard over his domain,
His last arrow poised for to fire
to a place where he was to be laid to final rest,
His famed silver arrow has now turned to gold
for there at the steps of the old castle
is a maiden fair and bold,
There she stands dressed in nothing
more than gold,
From head to toe,
Gold,
From back to front,
Gold,
From North to true South,
Gold,
She bares all in
Gold,
The early evening twilight catches fire
and her hair is ablaze with the rays of the fading sun,
Her body twists and curls like a panther newly released into an emerald jungle,
Gold glows and ripples over her supple curves,
She stands on tiptoes, arches back and smiles
to the sea of cameras that *click! and clack!,
The Union Jack flag she drapes coyly over her shoulder
and to the camera she blinks and wickedly winks,
Her ravenous teeth glinting sharply in the twilight,
Modesty?
There was none,
Freedom?
There was none,
Equality?
There was none,
Humiliation?
Aplenty!
Maybe not on the outside
where her youthful skin twinkled
and jousted with the sun’s light,
No, the shame was all circled up inside her,
For all along the barricades along the castle bridge
thronged men,
Their whistling tongues salivating,
Their eyes crawling over her golden skin like an army of Crusader ants,
Her beauty by these leering men prickled and probed,
Their minds raging with rabid images of twisted lust,
This living work of art,
This statue of pure molten gold which moves,
She is but a thing which men will put on a pedestal and objectify,
They will point to her and pontificate,
They will say this and say that,
They will touch her
and mould her
and hold her
until she whispers her last
and grows marble cold.

Maybe, in time, she will be silenced forevermore,
and,
like the Hooded sentinel who stands watch outside the gates,
She will be cast in burning bronze
and stand immobile for all time,
A daughter,
A sister,
A mother...
Now,
A prisoner...
Always*,
A prisoner...
That burnished gold has no meaning if it be nothing but chains,
The cruel chains of Mankind’s eternal slavery of Womankind.

Here ends the tragedy
of the Golden Girl.*



©Rangzeb Hussain

"Once...

In my hands I cradled the dream of a candle,
A candle made from the weeping wax of peace,
The frozen peace of winter did kiss the flame to life at the dawn of time,
A time when life glowing was first born,

He was born on a night where even wolves hushed in solitude,
The solitude of a winter’s sparkling moon,
In the moon's ink a book was spun rich and old,
Old it was,

As old as the child of a dying nightingale,
A nightingale born from the symphonic blood of a Saviour,
A Saviour pure as softly sprinkled snow,
The snow in glory harking,

Harking the flute made from the ice of sublime love,
A love eternal,
Life eternal for all humankind,
This same humankind is now distracted and blind,

We are blind to the silent solace of winter and no longer seek the divine,
Our divine King of Kings it is His song that we forget to sing,
Please sing once more and hark the angels of heaven.

In heaven there was once upon a time...
There was a time,
A time of hope,
Of hope and of mercy.

Mercy and love too,
Love,
Love,
     Love..."*



©Rangzeb Hussain

In the weeping eye of a lacerated star
there swims the nymphs of my tarnished desire,
In the cocoon of their space time helix
I blindly buried the dashed hopes of yesteryear,
Skulls with universes stitched in gleaming craniums
are richer than the puppet pauper who resides inside of me.

Is it really this, after all does it come to this my love so sad?
I did wrap the secret fabric of the universe into a plastic bag
for nothing more than a discarded sigh,
In these rooms where once talked my unspoken words
was the very ledge of my dreams where I precariously perched,
I crushed my dreams lovingly so tenderly did they evaporate through my palms.

She for who I would lay down the waltzing rhapsody
of a newly created galaxy,
Oh, how my lady did so fairly dazzle me with her lyrical quality,
My darling dear, energetic and kind, full of mirth and tenacity,
Silent is her scream across the black oceans of emotionless space,
Into the vast mountains of the moon must I now go for my life to contemplate.

- End of Fragment One -



©Rangzeb Hussain

It flies and lies,
Leaving a carpet of the purest white,

Patterns delicately woven by a Master Craftsman.

Bringer of Joy and Laughter,
Play, Forgive and Forget.



©Rangzeb Hussain

"May your day of delight
be filled with the ravishing rays of light,
May your radiant eyes dance and glide
across the nightly moonlight,
On this day and forevermore may your dreams burn bright."*



©Rangzeb Hussain

"Listen and weep
at
what we lost..."*

Somewhere in the deep green jungles
of South-East Asia
we freely
sold our soul,
hacked our humanity,
corrupted our compassion...

We buried the Truth
in that emerald paradise.

We are the dead
that walk with bankrupted souls,
we napalmed innocence
and in body bags stitched souls
and catacombed them
in the graveyard of
deceit
&
putrefying
decades of decay.




©Rangzeb Hussain

Once, two lived under the shade of friendship,
They needed only to see into each other's eyes
For in them swam the pearls that were written
In their hearts.

From these glittering jewels of trust
A bond was born,
These two floated upon the carpet of memory,
Their lives travelling along the same colourful patterns.

She, pretty and funny and loving,
He, shy and deep and lyrical,
Music was theirs, and Poetry and Art too,
Both were to the ***** of love drawn.

Ideas were exchanged,
Thoughts expressed and treasured,
In time the
Two
Became
One.



©Rangzeb Hussain

Outside the weeping windowpane...

The eyes!

Bloodshot, boiling and bleeding hot...

Veined in Samhain's pagan pain...

Wet with death's desperate desire...

The eyes!

Coiled round and round...

Dripping poison in Halloween's haunted season...

Yellowed, piercing and in evil forever rejoicing...

The eyes!

Inside!

The eyes are inside!

I have no more dusty dark places to hide...

For the eyes are...

Mine! Mine! Mine!



©Rangzeb Hussain

Across the frozen tundra
of the vast Northland
I have seen my lonely soul
walk arm-in-arm
with a maiden made of the purest coated ice.*



©Rangzeb Hussain

Feed the famine of your Love
Not with Anger
Nor with War,
Treat it with innocent Truth
And ladle it with Compassion,
Remove the fat of Intolerance
And cleanse away oily Greed,
Cut out the coiled intestine of Hate
And discard the bones of Envy,
Sprinkle on some sweet Charity
And garnish the dish with Kindness,
Heat it with Respect
And bake it with universal Knowledge,
Only then will it birth a tender and aromatic Peace.



©Rangzeb Hussain

The rain strikes the sharp jagged window panes
As she huddles in a corner of the darkening room hurting full of shame,
The probing fingers of early evening frost play a game of chess
And invade the unprotected battlements of her frail body with success.

Outside,
The lightning bares its hideous teeth with savage intent
And the wind sings a song without hope.

The storm gathers its troop for the carnage of fright
That it has lustfully planned for this nightmarish night,
People can be heard running outside on the wet pavements,
Humans hunting for shelters beneath gravestones.

Inside,
The decaying boards of the room reek
With insidious desires.

She can sense the lower depths of pollution
That surround her but nobody will ever execute a solution,
This child of mankind will be shrouded in a grim reality
Which is preached as a sincere morality.

*Within,
Even though her soul is sore,
She will never be vanquished by these feeble man made forces.

The dead-eyed beast of war is barking here,
He has torn through all things sweet and dear,
Terror drips from his claws and wide open jaws,
His senseless hate grips the village of the poor.

The dark days have flocked in full of fearful screams
And the nights chill the soul with dread dreams,
The tents rip and tear into a quicksand of despair,
There is nothing here but children weeping with fear.

Their universal faith sings of purity and simplicity,
Their spires and towers were spun in the city-of-cities,
Now in the dust of long forgotten deserts they die,
Their histories, and all their voices, now buried under lies.

Homeless, these children of ancient kings and emperors,
Forgotten and gone from the pages of perished empires,
Orphans now,
*Help them now…

Gunshots pierce the silence of the yawning night,
In the subterranean abyss of the subway
A young life ebbs into the filth strewn sewer,
It is a girl, fair and beautiful with black locks,
Her violator pockets the still smoking weapon and zips up,
He spits, looks over his shoulder and lights a cigarette,
He inhales deeply and in his nostrils he can taste her sweet perfume,
The memory orchestrates a smile
Which once again compels him to look down at her still warm body,
Upon her dress and glistening legs the blood is beginning to congeal,
Her eyes are sightless but they mirror his image in the dead sockets,
He takes another lungful of her succulent youth
And then slithers and melts into the anonymous jaws of the city,
His ***** are still encrusted with hunger
And the night is yet young and tender,
His teeth glint by the light of the neon signs.



©Rangzeb Hussain

"Don't break anyone's heart
Be it the heart of your Mother,
Sister,
Brother
or Lover,
Remember well the turning of the globe,
For that day will come when you too
will weep the hot tears of a
forlorn heart."

In the land of the deaf
Those who can hear are blind
And those who try to speak have no voice



©Rangzeb Hussain

Courage?  

It does not lie at the end of a rifle
Nor does it explode with a grenade or a pistol,

It does not march with platoons
Nor does it rise with the wrath of nations,

It does not spit or rage
Nor does it whip in hate,

It does not attack the old
Nor does it cage the young or infirm,

It does not torture
Nor does it trap the breath of dissent,

  Courage?  *

It sings upon the lips of children
Who fear no uniformed evil,

It beats at the heart of truth’s valley
Where a beleaguered generation waits for hope,

It is the flower bursting forth in the fertile earth of the homeless
Whose schools are bulldozed into dry desert dust,

It fights and floats from the fists of Freedom’s orphaned children,
In their wide open palms they free the heart of courage,

Courage cannot be caught nor in any barrack taught,
Courage is the food that fuels Liberty’s true fire.

“I’m unhappy and can’t cope.”
Unhappy is an orphan in a land without water, without mercy, without hope.

“I’m fat, ugly and slow”.
You’re more beautiful than the peacock who sang in Eden before the Fall.

“Who will marry me now?”
Don’t be a slave to social pressure. In time you will seed, plant and plough.

“I’m getting old and my body is changing shape.”
Wisdom, experience, memories and stories old only come with age and grace.

“I feel worthless and ashamed.”
You are more precious than a spotless butterfly escaping time’s ticking frame.

“How come everybody else looks happy?”
Their smiles may hide broken lives. Think twice before you point and get snappy.

“I have no friends who are true.”
First learn to love the enemy who lives in the heart, body and soul of you.

“My dreams and plans always fail.”
Build them wings and faithfully pray even if it takes you till Judgment Day.

“Why am I always left behind?”
Remove the fear of losing and express the slow burning desires inside your mind.

“My prayers go unanswered, I only get tears.”
Some of the greatest gifts come to you in the form of unanswered prayers.

“Life is such a bore and a drag.”
Tell that to a dying man who’s now screaming for life to come racing back.

“I don’t want your pity or advice.”*
I open my palms and offer you the dice of life without condition or price.

“It’s a surprise…
Come here my sweet angel.”

She shyly steps over to him
And in his palms places her gentle hands,

“Come my doll,
Let me place this blindfold upon you.”

He ties a blindfold across her downcast eyes
and tapes her surprised lips.

“Now, sweet angel of the Lord,
Hold out your right hand to receive your gift.”

She does…

There is a sharp swish!
His knife slices through her first finger of trust.

“Want an education, eh?”
Her forefinger will never again index another book.

“Want a career, eh?”
Her signature finger is cut to the bone,

“Want to improve yourself, eh?”
He hacks off her trembling little finger.

“Want to discover yourself, eh?”
He peels off the identity from her thumb.

Her trust, her love, her dreams,
They lie there scrawled in the ink of her blood.

But in time there is a vow made,
She promises to learn to write again.

Her left hand will right the attack upon her rights,
She will resurrect and join the cracks in her dreams.

Mother, my mother,
You did shield me from the hot winds and weather,
Gone now are my dolls,
My playthings taken by a distant troll,
Forever lost in the garden,
No one now to pick them, memories harden.

Father, my father,
My swings of peace grow ever darker,
Where be those happy times now?
The furrows are strewn with empty rows,
And time ticks by and by and bye,
I hear sorrow screeching in the autumn skies.

Brothers, my brothers,
I now leave my childhood haunts forever,
My ring gripped in fingers sore with blisters,
Today I understand the need for brothers and sisters,
The time is now not long,
Gone, all gone.

Marriage, my marriage,
It comes not in a carriage,
In a gilded cage it comes,
Run, run away, run,
My graceful master of a thousand faces,
I will be his slave to ride and race.

Mother, my mother…*



©Rangzeb Hussain

The webs of time begin to unwind,
Milky Way universe of darkness,
Blackest night with a billion eyes,
I seek one grain of sand
To show you
That it cannot be done
‘Ere a million years have trickled
Drop
by
drop
bye.

Destiny rides a mare darker than white,
Tragedy is the name of the mace,
I am struck by the force of ferocity,
Offspring of glorious Mother History proudly parade
Before the victorious Time Lords,
In the reflection of an eye
I have seen a golden cage which holds
A weeping nightingale,
Her purple tears rain silently onto the dry rivers of time,
Drop
by
drop
bye.

In the time of bones
Will wires entwine with metal flesh,
It will be in the years
When the universe will digest time
And spew backwards into the past,
Fear it
This storm form the sands of time,
Drop
by
drop
bye.

Mysterious mistress mine might not you reveal all to me?
The secrets of your seductive silvery silken
Velvet creation
Explodes
Through the time tunnels,
I see the face of light approaching towards me
With outstretched fingers (or are they claws?),
Water (or is it poisonous slime?) drips from the wet body,
Drop
by
drop
bye.

I watch old Father Time drag his wizened
Body across the deserts of life,
His mistress the Second
Crawls on her stomach,
She painfully travels over the savage landscape of rocks,
Dry thorns, arid sand dunes, without even saliva
To balm her swollen tongue and chapped lips
(But I must tell all, for in truth, she had blood from her
Cracked lips to soothe her thirsty tongue).
Under the shade of the boiling sun
Each Second melts to give dry births to form
Minutes which carry the children of the Hour
Who grow up in Days
To marry Weeks which results in the creation of Months
Which eventually leads to the growth of Years,
This cycle eventually reaches a finale with the
Birth of Death,
The family of Time, watchmakers all,
From dawn to dusk
Chimes of Death do tick,
Drop
by
drop

Bye...



©Rangzeb Hussain

“Look here,” said the old man with some serious concern,
“Take these books and from them learn.”

“Why?” asked the boy as he halted and turned,
“Far better it is for these boring books to bin and burn.”

“My dear boy,” said the old man,
“with this band of books you can one day proudly learn to stand.”

“Stand?” the boy was confused and kicked a discarded tin pan,
“Upon my legs I do already walk and stand on this here so solid land.”

“But what will you do,” continued the old man,
“on that day when you sink into some slippery slimy quicksand?”

“What mean you by this quickly sinking quicksand?” retorted the boy,
“I am well and truly bored and must go away to play with my store of new toys.”

“Wait, look and see,” the old man held up a hand and pointed to the distant sea,
“By quicksand I mean all your problems on yonder misty horizons yet to be.”

“Problems on distant horizons so far away?” the boy stopped and at the ocean stared,
“I see no problems nor do I care.”

“A job, a house, a nice wife and much more besides,” the old man rested by a pool,
“For all this and much more you will need books and go to school.”

“Hmm, no fun is there to be had at school,” the boy sat down and lazily drowned the day,
“I want to sail and play, play and more play.”

“Listen, my bright boy, lay down that toy,” said the old man looking at the sad boy,
“Books, schools and golden rules are the very source for much pleasure and joy.”

“Really?” the boy was intrigued and his interest piqued,
“Can I have all my dreams and hopes at school realized? Please, can I have a peek?”

“Yes, and there’s much more besides,” the old man dusted himself and smiled,
“Come child, let us now to school glide. On this exciting trial walk your very first mile.”

“Lessons, teachers and knowledge lead to college,” the boy sang the words with happy delight,
“To study, read and write with the wings of a bird then will I freely fly like a kite.”



©Rangzeb Hussain

The night winds sing,
the chorus rings through
the dead hour of the valley.
Hear it, the music of the wolf’s pain.

Against the backdrop of the new moon,
high on an icy blue rocky ridge
with the pine trees stabbing the black sky,
there shivers the weeping wolf.

This day he has lost
two precious things...

Hunters came bearing muskets,
bayonets and torches.
They rampaged through the wood
shooting everything that moved.
The air hung heavy with the stink
of the musket shot.

The wolf’s mate,
a beauty amongst beauties,
had been suckling her pup
when a hunter’s sabre silently sliced
through her fur
and cleaved her silky shoulder.

Death silenced her
and snatched away her pup.

"...and there will be a time,
yes, dearest heart,
there will be a time,
there will be a time for those sad eyes,
those eyes...
now so free flowing with the nectar deeply drawn
from the well of your secret soul,
these tears will refresh your inner being,
you will smile again sweet angel,
hush, sleep now
and dream upon the wingless sailing stars,
the Lord of the seven heavens has thus spoken..."*



©Rangzeb Hussain

Hot,
Humid,
Awake,
Sweating,
My body unshackled
from the smothering confines of nightly fabric,
I lie exposed and unveiled
to the peeping eyes of the ****** night,
The throne of my forested desire
throbs with a pulsating fire,
My body yearns,
It turns here
and there
twisting the silky bed sheets,
I reach for the pillow
and
press the soft coldness
to my feverish face,
My love for

you

will never ever ebb,
I want you here
to calm my stormy sensuality,
I am no longer the captain of my libido laden ship,
The wanton crew of my stirring soul is tossed
upon ***** seas,
My sails seep with love's liquid lechery
and my fleshy mast is gorged and passionately perspires,
It stiffly smoulders and itches and rises upright
and the tip drips with aromatic moonlight,
Let me rapidly stroke
and come with all pistons pumping into your curvaceous Chinese port,
Oh, my husky darling, throw wide open your harbour's shapely thighs,
Let me plunge my craving anchor deeply,
Oh! so wet and sweetly,
Let the sultry fireworks of our carnality unify and our universes combine,
Bliss! Oh, how I do so much dream of you,

Yet...

My tongue is parched,
My ***** lips are dry,
My throat hungrily burns,
Oh! caress me, lick me, kiss me to life,
Offer to me the hypnotic narcotic of your honey
and let me **** upon your delicate dates
moistened with the milky nectar of paradise,
The air of your smooth touch alone
would cool my licentious temperature,
In the dawn I would surely rise
to face the new day
with a wicked smile making merry upon my chaste face.



©Rangzeb Hussain

"Remember Me,

I will remember you..."



(from The Quran, 2:152).

The autumn leaves scatter,
Are the seasons any better?
Man is in total confusion,
He is the root cause of all intrusion,

Destruction of all the Earth's noble habitats and kingdoms,
Mutilation of nature, wasted, depleted, doom looms
for the animal Mankind
who is rampant, ignorant and blind.

"War is adventure, come boys, see
the world, join up, deliver death, disease,
famine, destroy to your heart's content, let the example be set,
We live for Today because Tomorrow nobody collects the debt."

Nobody?

The Ever Eternal Watcher
keeps a book of all the evil men do you bloodstained butcher,
I have seen your name at the very top of the list: M - A - N,
You are well and truly ******.



©Rangzeb Hussain

"Let the world know I weep
for the souls
that lie at the heart
of the raven's claws...

Upon the wings of this night
a wolf's moon will howl
the enchanting songs
torn from the vice of love's doom..."



©Rangzeb Hussain

My rooted feet are caked in blood brown mud
yet my head gazes upon the wonders of the rainbow sky,
I offer up my prayers with thorny crowned palms
and wait as the seasons savagely storm those who have died,
The years of hate have arrived all very calm,
Behind them lie the gliding galleons of well oiled gold.

O hear my pain of wingless hope,
Gales blast me,
Hail crushes,
Tears deeply drawn from the depths of a dead headstone
are soon licked dry by the Sun’s passionate caresses,
My land burns and drowns in War’s choking smoke.

Red as the early song of dawn’s new dew
is my dream this music of black swans bleeding chants of healing,
My petals shiver and away they float leaving me bare and exposed,
Here I am then, pure as the day I was recklessly seeded,
My life balanced upon the kiss of a crushed nightingale’s hopes,
Hearts of diamond stones my graveyard beyond yonder due.

Where be the desire of Valentine which once tore into St. Sebastian
upon the scorched red Roman rust behind the Coliseum’s hated gates?
No rose dares grow there,
Trojan Cassandra looked to the sightless fates
and see how mercilessly they dealt her,
My roots forever ****** to be fertilized upon coffined carcasses.



©Rangzeb Hussain

Full moon...
A lantern hanging upon the gallows,
The pendulum of life swings the hymn of death,

Something...

There is something...

Something is prowling upon the moor’s dead shore...

In the shroud of the ghostly fog it quietly creeps,
It lurks hunched to the muddy ground,
It stalks with a rage soaked in the sweat of evil,

It knows...

It knows you...

It lusts for you...

Claws, jagged yellow bone,
Eyes, slits dripping with molten fire,
Stench, a graveyard of freshly severed sin,

It comes...

Here it comes...

Look here! It’s right here!



©Rangzeb Hussain

The doctors all assured them that it was nothing,
They scribbled notes and called it pneumonia,

Sent the family here and there,
Take this and drink that,

Only it was not that at all,
No, it was much more than that,

Cancer, that was the fuse that had been lit,
Silent, merciless, ruthless, it bit through her,

It punctured her young life,
She battled with courage older than her six years,

Sana…

She will never now be kissed or betrayed by love’s arrow,
No more will she explore the bittersweet taste of life,

She shall not be tanned by the sun’s warm music,
Nor will her fingers roll a snowball in the fall of winter,

Hail, wind, rain and shine,
Water, air, fire and ice,

Hush! She sleeps now,
And dreams upon dreams which we who live have never dreamed,

Sana…

Your life was a song written in the hymn book of nursery rhymes,
You left us richer for having known you.