As the prayer flags sway and wave in the breeze
The poppies blossom
With their forbidden fruit.
The doctors say that that
Forbidden fruit is the oldest pain relief
I say love, kindness and compassion are the oldest forms of pain relief.
The flower is only a beautiful and
Yet obnoxious ****.
Which offers no enlightenment but misery and suffering.

Don’t let it make sense
make it all senseless
the unicorn dances
as the ***** speaks
the true journey
of human soul
and through your blood crawls.

Don’t let it take over
just make it your companion
in the solitary night
where you alone are the champion
of your soul
and ***** sings song
for you alone.

Let it wander in the streets
don’t give it a meaning
just like poetry
or like everything that exists
while ***** sings for you
***** song.

Clouds of smoke,
ashes aloof stand
within your hand
let them all dance
while you in jungle sang
***** song
don’t make sense at all.

© Ali Ashraf

In the black, humid tunnels of clouded vision
where pipers are paid to hush calamity
and the souls of skeletons adhere to forbidden
pushing whispers of thought's public opinion.

The alluring alley of cowardly escapades
alters narrow minds and their sinuous route
like bipolar magnets fluxing compass charades,
coordinates spin during times of solitude.

To dampen the thunder in mental basements
brewing like home-kit craft beers,
the lightning strikes and fear laments
after an ****** of resentment.

Smoke filled dens of drifting ***** scent,
Imagined worlds dancing behind the eyes
of the laying men.
Heads fall back and pupils roll to face brow,
revealing a cloudy unseeing white.

What lies behind the eyes of laid men
that makes them respond to the sweet song of
lotus flower time and again?
Are they taken to that Mediterranean isle visited by
Odysseus in his journey, the idle isle where time lazily flows
and sunrise and sunset have no meaning at all?

If I was bunk mate to Odysseus on his mission home
and our boat met sand on this secluded cove,
would I see it for what it was?
After tasting my first sweet lotus petal, offered
to me by beauty divine, could I resist a second kiss?

Would I have bravely boarded the ship away,
eyes hard and mind set on my destination,
or would I have planted feet firmly to sand
and wave as the brave ones sailed away to face
the ever abundant misery of reality?

Thoughts of you perch on the branches of my mind,

Like a humming bird that’s found the perfect tree to build its nest.

Harmless in its quest,

Until more branches sprout in wake of you.

More branches for you to perch,

To sing your beautiful songs without a care.

Until the weight of these endless thoughts,

Is too much burden to bear.



My nights are riddled with dreams,

Recurring every night that they have  become nightmares.

My mind is like a prisoner,

In chains of memories of your face.

My heart trembles at the mention of your name.

Your touch is like a tranquilizer for my soul,

And like a clueless lamb,

I trust the ***** of your kiss to lead me home.



Thoughts of you are like acid baths.

They burn.

But for that fleeting second when it excites,

The skin of my thoughts,

My heart forever yearns.

Pain is an addiction this heart has chosen to bear.

Through and through, when this dubious business is done,

This heart would’ve seen it all.

Alas, I have the foreboding my countenance,

Is too fragile to see the end.



I should know better,

But it’s as though my mind has wandered,

Too far from the shores of reason.

You’re bad for me,

But there’s nothing I won’t give up,

Just for fleeting moments in your arms.

So my sweet darling, say it.
Call me poison, just once more
And inject your sickly bitter honey drips
Into the butter softness that will stop your breath

For a while

And here I am, chasing my dragon again
A martyr, at the hands of a God
Or is it the other way around?
For you couldn’t even look at my face

That last time

Yet I couldn’t say goodbye
And I think you knew
I’d be back, waiting for a clenched fist at my throat
Craving to feel, nothing and everything

Once again.

Waiting for the word, the question.

‘Mademoiselle?’


“Religion is the ***** of the people”
- Karl Marx

Lace my waist
Until I can no longer breathe
My sweet darling
Your fevered skin burns
As sweet as the most sickly candy

And I hold my bones

And you softly, gently,
**** me a little more
Each time that your ***** blue lips
Graze my porcelain skin
And you stop breathing

Just for a while

And the snow drips in my throat
Even then,
I feel nothing.
Your narcotic dove, a hand on her neck
And her soul remains

Empty