The jinns: a man looks

in the mirror and he sees --


the back of his head.

The rain always comes when you least expect it.
Like a drunken car - crashing into a busy restaurant
Or
It'll tap your shoulder from behind and whisper
"We were always with you"

So
I always have to be ready to run,
remove myself from me
like a shirt on fire.
Then hide,
between the sheets,
in a tasteless cup of tea from a ****** restaurant
or in a toilet stall.
In somewhere where the limit of my reality
are within an arm's reach
where there are no holes for shadows to creep in.

But
Are there such places?
Can anyone carry such a world on their back
like refrigerator,
open the door when you want to 
hide and hide.

I am always in heavy rain
or in a heavy drought
without a spring with blossoming flowers 
and birds chirping
(I don't even remember what the flowers look like)
When there's barely a moment of calm
I'm starting to feel black
Like a drop of black ink


I stand before my strangeness
It is worn on my forehead like a red 
streak that cannot be erased.
In the city square or the buses or trains
waves upon waves of people
in a sea of human voices,
all of them know something I don't know
They are all in a secret society
Where do their rivers of love flow?
When will their volcanoes of hatred erupt?
Seas of brotherhood, storms of violence
None of my items are on my map

My map full of feelings I copied from books
I am walking along that map without understanding 
Like dancing according to the illustrations of a book
(while everyone watches)
 
(I think) I am not a human
None of them wants to talk to me
Maybe it's because of the red spot on my forehead
Or maybe because I can't dance and they know it
Then it starts to rain

I can feel my face melting
(I always had a fear of what my face was doing 
when sitting in front of others)
I want to hide from the rain.
I struggle to close my eye which is broken 
off of me and looking at me

The rain is getting heavier and 
it is melting the concrete towers of the city
That rain is not beautiful
as much as in other people's poems
(Nothing is as beautiful as it is in poetry)
 
Maybe others are lying
Because to them
the rain is so beautiful that 
they are doing everything to avoid it.

wild crowds—quiet towns
—empty as a sky
you sway like death herself.
the scent lingers where you
—no more do.

overflowing vacancy;
so known—unknown.
and wild crowds go wilder
and you—the town—roar.

overflowing silence
I’d hear you whole
if you’d stay—if you’d stay
if only you’d stay.

we could be so many things
and we chose this strangeness
wild crowds—wilder go
quiet towns—even more so

you, I
unchanged—
two impatient oceans
—still.

Couplets
by Jaun Elia
translations by Michael R. Burch

I am strange—so strange
that I self-destructed and don't regret it.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The wound is deep—companions, friends—embrace me!
What, did you not even bother to stay?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My nature is so strange
that today I felt relieved when you didn't arrive.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night and day I awaited myself;
now you return me to myself.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Greeting me this cordially,
have you so easily erased my memory?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your lips have provided thousands of answers;
so what is the point of complaining now?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Perhaps I haven't fallen in love with anyone,
but at least I convinced them!
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The city of mystics has become bizarre:
everyone is wary of majesty, have you heard?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: Jaun, Elia, couplets, Urdu, translation, nature, strange, strangeness, love, memory, mrburdu

Deep inside
The demons she hides
Can't deny them
Compacting my emotions into a gem
Tossing it to the sea
Will I ever be free?

I have love
But it's not enough
I thought it would be
But they won't let me be
It's only dragging me further down
But I don't want to let him down

He's too sweet
Too kind
What a find

Still
I am here
Unchanged
Deranged still
Un-resting
What have I become?

While I sit here
Wondering what has become of me
They try to "get help" for me
But I'm not taking the bait
I'm not going away
I'm not leaving my world behind

So confused
Lost in myself
Afraid of everything
Running blind
In a forest so dark and unknown
So familiar
But I can't see

Just bring me out
Take my hand
I know not why
I can't just deny
This strangeness
Chilling my bones

I love, and I love
But I lose

I love, and I love
But I lose...
I always lose...

- Jay M
May 10th, 2019

Here we lie, tangled in
Each other, yet apart

My eyes focus, I track across
Your face, this room, these clothes
So known and yet as blurred
As the graphics on your shirt

I count your eyelashes
As though they are rosary beads,
And try to find you hidden
In their shells

I see you, but don't know you.
Bittersweet memories
Crash and break around me;
I lose you in their depths

Two pairs of lips in a blind dance
I barely follow.
Disgust and want fight over me,
Love lost in waves of apathy

Hormonal needs are met by hands
Ill-conceived kisses greet them-
Breath is caught too quickly
And my desperate searching fails.

Your mask grimaces. You smile,
I’m blank, and pale and still.
My mind and soul are smothered
By dark polluted thoughts

And when it's over, it's not finished;
You study my face for clues
While I trace the etchings of my skin
And yearn for clean release

It's not you, it's me.

It's not you, and it's not me either,
This room is not your room.
I drift, unanchored, unresponsive
Too tired to understand

So I silently indulge
You in complicity
And although our bodies join
We both miss our connection

My mind has turned the one I love
Into a stranger.

I stare at my four walls
If there was a speech bubble where would it fall?
Sometimes I think I am cartoon character on TV.
Waiting for the script to become the real me
Sometimes the world steals my ideas
Sometimes I can't grasp reality from my fears
Tears form to loneliness of which we were born
It's the storm of the monologue which yearns to escape us
The people who berate us, hate us probably are jealous
Of our strangeness.

He laughed a little, but
His eyes left
Already forgotten
What I'd said
As I slipped from the room.

Waved, gingering hair, it did,
Likely to miss me on
That busy head.
Surrounded by the thick dark
That feels like swimming.

In truth, I enjoyed our chat,
However short he made it,
But I couldn't forget
Those quivering eyes
And the way they settled
As I left.

It wasn't only me,
Many others try
Miners all the lot of us
But sculptors carve the rock better
And by now

All he is is stone.

How should I say this
I'm a bit strange?
Nope, not a bit
To be exact.
Just entirely strange.
But the strange is my nature.
The weird is my home.
Insanity is my sanity.

I once drew a woman
Destined to be strange
Her eyebrows flipped over
Her lips in her brain

An ear on her nose
And one on her chin
It's strange to think, but for all my effort
Her strangeness came out more beautiful than all my other drawings.

So I kept drawing her,
Years on when I couldn't stop
Addicted to seeing her on the pages
Addicted to her simple strange ways.

She became my muse
And I thought of her in all my work
Every word written down
Was a new name I gave to her

Every picture I carved out of ink and paper
Was another strange change of her face
She took me over and
She's the kind of girl who can't leave me.

That strange make believe girl.