Was it you, who burned a city
At my fingertips?
I’ll blame it
On the rampaging fire wildflowers
Suffocating California.
Either way, I cannot breathe.

What haunts me?
It’s you, isn’t it.
The 12-33, code 12-56,
No help is coming,
“Refusal to comply” morphs to “missing persons,” reporting
The silence.
The screech, the blip
Of a scanner, seeing red,
Like I could hear the pain
Of a few thousand shaken children
Who lost
Their mothers
To a cloud of noxious smoke.

That’s what haunts me.
Isn’t it.
Children, charred and homeless,
Roaming crumbling streets.

That’s what haunts me.

I used to conjure flames from my fingertips without a thought
And used them to scorch foreign poetry into your skin

there’s a magnetic colored wall around your soul
when guitar strings get caught like light aflame
I’m blinded as stars, extinguished, bright and transcending slowly
can’t see the false magnetic draw to you anymore
falling into the winds, beautiful revealing there
then I see, it’s not a false pull that has been
seeping me into a sky colored in tropic vast delusion
there’s a pole and my sun sets there
you were there before I knew, you’ll be there now

My heart is on fire
It is like a battle zone
A war
But every time the war ends
Everything is broken
Set alight
I am shattered
Like glass that was dropped
But wasn’t picked up
My heart is a battle field
My heart is aflame

My love wants to kiss my lips, they utter her name
In sheer love she is extending a remarkable acclaim
This lovely and wonderful gesture celebrates aflame
Love and beauty are in one frame for common flame

From time immemorial she has taken my heart ,abode
Being a poet she seems to me a love sonnet and an ode
In search of love we have opted to take a common road
My love,love is in chain of your beauty  like a-la-mode

Let us be together and to celebrate love in real harmony
Let's not whisper with wind rather communicate clearly
My love the universe has not seen such wonderful beauty
My beloved give your hand in my hand to cover journey

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2016 Golden Glow

Sky Afire

It started as a tendril snaked
And quickly caught my eye
That beckoned me to come partake
The bright majestic sky

From turquoise into indigo
And all the shades between
With molten lava spreading slow
As far as could be seen

With orange and corals juxtaposed
Against the deeper blues
And silhouetted trees in pose
Amid the great bamboos

The clouds were piled in tumbling flow
And darkened as they fell
To charcoal black, blood red aglow
At meeting with the swell

And as the skyflow met the sea
And seemed to melt within
The sea took on its vibrancy
And flow began again

And as the skyflood reached its peak
Engulfing and aflame
It seemed directly to retreat
As quickly as it came

The ashen grey began above
And slowly spread below
Till all was left in pumice drifts
Within its final glow

And now the show has ended
With the sky once more a sky
And the clouds and sea appended
For a witness such as I

3 Oct 2000