Arrival


Upon my arrival, I whisper-walked
Erasing my steps like a broom
I avoided bottlenecks and having my back to the door


Soft voices and sweet
Made me cringe
So did people who had no smell.


What was I,  they wanted to know,
Such a delicate and precariously balanced thing,
Doing at the Crossroads?  


Even the smallest and most inconsequential among us,
Could knock you apart
with a soft, experimental tap.  


I’m sure that when they were children
They broke all their toys.
And I’m a living doll.


Perhaps I should, but I don’t want
To creak open the hinges of their faces.
There are things worse than skulls and brains.


Such as humorless laughter.
Indifference. Intentions.
And voids.


What you must realize,
What you need to comprehend.
Is that.

At times like this,
A girl would give anything
To be ugly.

I find cannibalism intriguing
2. Bee stings
3. I haven't heard that speech that every boy needs
           to hear to be a man

4. The love that bottlenecks in your throat when someone dies
5. I have to be heavily medicated
                to enjoy my life
       and it feels like cheating

6. A tube of toothpaste, all squeezed out
7. Raising a second generation in my hometown
                It's this place
         That keeps me down

8. Jack the Ripper shows
               when I'm home alone
9. I've read every Sherlock Holmes
           and I am jones-
       ing for another
                   story to make me think

10. Same God, different names
11. Is language to blame
                  for misunderstandings
           or is it just human failings
Faith is a frail
       old woman
              feeding her 1,000 cats
     1,000 separate bowls of milk

12. The class of 2009
13. When I drive home at night
            I pretend to be someone else
       singing along with the radio

14. Ghosts of friends that walk right through you
15. Maybe the past never really happened?
     Maybe I was someone else back then?
16. Men
            Who leave me and fly off to
             Never never land
      Boys, not men
            Who don't want to grow up yet
            and probably never will

17. Ladybugs

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Tired
Brain spits words in fits and starts
The internal running commentary misfiring badly
Ideas stuck in bottlenecks
Traffic backed up and down the on-ramps
Leading off the congested thoughtways
Tired
Stormwater overflow pours out of blocked drains
Sidling up the gutters of fallen leaves
And other assorted detritus of modern existence
Spewing out over footpaths and under cars
And over the tops of the boots of downtrodden dawn treaders
Tired
Mountain pass impassable under it’s mercurial precipitate mask
Features only glimpsed in snatches
Like looking through a white picket fence while running
Thought trees bunching up around the middle
Warping under the sun and the scrutiny of others
Tired
Collapsing under the weight of the wave function
Subatomic particles currently in a state of nonexistence
Abandoned altogether by the Higgs, thoughts vibrate and dissipate
In extraordinary frequency and noise
Drowned out by the audible hum of the big bang
Tired
As if running a marathon in treacle
Start with a whimper then dribble to a halt
Running barefoot on salt flats
Or over pillows in stilettos
More time spent on face than feet
Tired
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more
The court jester prances for the Big Queen *****
And her merry King of Fools with his band of merry drunkards
Quickly losing the point of it all
As words start tumbling down in random order
Staccato signal messages like binary or Morse code
Information overload threatens to upend the boatload
Like the military dumping refugees into the harbour
Buckle up armour and wait for the onslaught
Of somnatic visions, twisted psychedelic impressions
Land mine concussions in the fevered dreams of veterans
Who witnessed limb torn from limb
In the name of something nobody remembers
Lose their tempers and start a war on home turf
Jungles petrified into concrete monstrosities that blot out the sun
From the flowers that feed in the cracks of the pavement
Everywhere bereavement and none shall take leave
From the cold, impassive logic of Death
Who comes knocking as you read this
Wired
No chance of sleep now
This is why one shouldn’t write poetry late at night

there is a universe inside your chest
infinitely expanding
though infinitesimally slow
at times
boundaries stretch, breathe
though confusing at times
destruction feeds growth,
dichotomous paradox forms whole,
stars implode, give way to supernovas,
give way to planets filled with lava and snow
there, inside, a universe
constantly churning,
the incessant spin of all burning
that births light and shadow

here I stand on the precipice.
here, in an amorphous dusk and dawn,
unclear if day or night
is about to kiss the horizon
unsure if I should call to moon or sun
or neither,
or    you.
here in limbo, arching my spine to
sneak under the guardrail of loving
here, instinctually shoving myself
into bottlenecks and genie lamps
oh, how my gypsy soul wants to run,
yet feels so enchanted it stays, here
on the precipice,
itching to gain entrance
into the universe brimming
inside of you

there
there, inside your chest
there I said it.     and I'll say it again,
and I'll say it even louder:
I confess! I'm enchanted!
I'm enamored, enthralled, enraptured,
I want my heart
to know your heart,
I want to dive chest-first into your outer space galaxy nest
an astronaut without a helmet,
I want to explore, awestruck
never trying to label, box, or understand - simply experience
your universe

there, I finally said it
I'm finally starting
to write the poems I'm afraid of,
the ones I don't want to say out loud
I'm starting to write out shadows and solar flares and floods,
starting to let my heart bleed out of my pen, cause
what the hell am I hiding from?
what are we all so scared of?
we were ****** into this strange world
blind and wet,
groping in the darkness for heaven
meant to rip ourselves open again, again
meant to feel with the depth and tempest of oceans
meant to risk and be fools and fall to meet rose-hued ends

I just want to make love with the light
of a thousand candles, a million stars, and the moon turned on
and panting
silver dripping from her tongue,
dizzy with the heat of solar undulations,
stripping down to the heart of the matter
down to the simple truth of it all:
I was born to feel,
and my god, you...
you make me feel universes
you make me feel thunder and lightning and bedroom churches and power surges
you make me feel sunrise stillness
and it makes me fall silent.
so here I am, writing the poems I'm afraid of
and sending them out, messages
in bottles, adrift
in the endless oceans of your universe

I've been told we replace the majority of our cells every ten years and that each person has at least two true fears.

I met you on New Year's when I was nine over flutes of white wine and my mistake was that I didn't take it as a sign because you weren't sold under shoes tied to a power line. My mother warned me against flammable sticks of cancer because they can turn my cells amber and I'd wager she's glad I didn't go down that path but instead chose to place my mouth on those of a boy's from down south.

I'm afraid the skin on my hips will never forget the feel of your lips because ten years is plenty of time to fall back on old addictions and you were never removed my heart's list of tourist attractions.

My mother warned me against hedging my bets on bottlenecks but after your side effects I wish I had just found happiness after each bottle's madness.

I'm afraid the skin on my hips will forget the feel of your lips because I need a constant reminder of why without you my life will be better.

Ten years is plenty of time to fall back on old addictions but I take comfort in the fact that I won't be exactly the same person.

The doctor asks me why I'm here
That's a little open ended, isn't it?
I wish I were as quick, but I think
Too long and explain my case in full
Without any embellishment, I came
Because my back hurts like a mother
Pushing, can't move my leg and now
Painfully both enter and exit bed He
Nods as if he knows, he wants to know
The extensive list of all my meds, three
One, that gets me to the cold side of balance
One, that redistributes fat, hips and *******
One, that bottlenecks testosterone tighter
Than either full ***. Gender reassignment?
He asks so I say yep. Duck Dynasty is on the
TV, in the corner above the room. The papers
Want to know if I'm claustrophobic, I check no.
That is before my first MRI. Before I'm loaded
Feet first. Now I know myself better, too.
The room is hot as he shares the results, bald
Headed sweat drips down a muscular man
Shy of forty, you've ruptured your disks. Three.
One on top of one on top of another. I guess
That in the end I just got too fat, that any extra
Burden collapsed my spine. I swear I do my best,
Avoid any extra psychological stress, but right
Now everyone is dying

I left the entire world for you and you left me alone
You my be like a hard stone but my beloved I own
You with all your problems and hindrances known
Please give me an impression of a lover overthrown

Let us talk about our life and its bottlenecks to know
Let me take you to my heart with my blood to flow
A day in our life will come to make us grow and glow
Love passions are not considered all is based on show

In this world of hypocrites rivals get chances to play
But love has its own color of light to present,portray
If you love me for life we can wait and just gladly stay
Under all circumstances my sweetheart i love to pray

May God give your beauty the eternal glare to spread
My love give me some streaks to be alive and not dead
Beauty brings happiness to life it is understood and said
I want to live under your tresses with your cheeks, red

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2017 Golden Glow

something about a little street and pigeons

past the road crossed by

pigeons driven by fear

of hurrying commuters

or hunger for fast food

bags

is the last shop



It's forever open door sentried

by wine soaked owner

unsteady on the

edge



pavement and narrow

road bottlenecks so

that with some relief

customers hurry by



Yet. So like the

books he sells

there is no world

until the page is

turned



that door frames

a world of change

that a simple word

unlocks



instead people curse

the pigeons

and worry

about clocks

shouting

departure times

Can we really escape this?
I’m on a mission to slow down time
My exertion acts like an anchor
But I’m tossed around by distraction
the waves are helping me forget the
the ocean I sit above

I still drift, the land out of reach of my hand
the innocence of youth,
sits under the tuck of
trauma, boredom, drama,
and the heaviness of a comfortable routine
that sits open, like an early grave

my route, I take specific lanes,
shortcuts, the best way, by feel, to avoid slows,
delays, bottlenecks
to get to the five locations of my Sydney life
in the most unmemorable way

lately my disappointment has forced
me to look at things more intensely
the rolling of history,
my heartbeat urgent - drifting
under water -
a strange undiscovered creature
hiding in the trench

the year jet skis past me
and gives me the finger

I am good at finding the lazy solution,
which, at work, gives me ability
to streamline process,
but lately I have become resentful
of the ruling order -

I have looked to love for so long
to shift my focus, three month stints,
to become more caught, more running,
more collapsing on the couch, in the quick night
to turn over quickly into my bed

I think we have a different sort of problem now...
One which has probably always plagued us,
Sometimes its embrace has held hold of us for so long
Realities were changed
The concept of "the other"
A simple idea, that you are not like me
A mechanism of the smallest
Most unevolved parts of our brains
Yet without which we could not "be"
The sense that
I am
The sense that
you are not what I call "me"
The basest recognition that we are different
How simple an idea - independent consciousness
That even genetically identical twins
Can recognize themselves from each other
"The other"
We've weaponized this basic perceptual function
Since the very dawn of our species
And through complexities of
Environment
Genetic bottlenecks
Genocides
We are all "I" now
Nearly 9 billion "I"s
All seeking an ability to be "we"
That is the basic function of civilization
To define "me" among the "we" and split our burden of work
For the greater survival of the "us"
But "us" is so much weaker than "we"
"Us" desperate in our divisions still seeking to be "I"
In a complex infrastructure that "me" can be a part of "we"...
This is how humanity is gas-lit and misled
Told to always be seeking, and never to be sought,
And if the "I" of a "me" is charismatic enough...
"We" let them lead "we" and in doing so
define an "us"
For now
Civilization must be governed
but "we" continue to give away all of our "I"s
to be "me" among the "we"
In theory to push "us" to progress
It's why terrorism has the wrong name
Each ruling faction in history
Was a "terrorist" to someone else
- to have made someone afraid
"Terrorism" seems to declare that the objective
Is nothing more than fear - so reductive
A sentiment to dehumanize their "us"
and label their "we" - "them"
To make their "we" less than our "us"
I prefer Organized Non-Unified State Actors (ONUS)
"Terrorism" sounds like an individual act
Coordinated by a conspiracy of individual acts
Robbing "their" identities of recognition
- which is probably what it all is ultimately about to begin with
"They" do not fit the fold of the agreements of the many civilized "we"s and want to be their own "us"
But there is no room, resource,
There is no time
Food
Water
"We" have already identified, occupied, and commodified
Every resource for an unaligned "us"
"You" must be "we" for your share and to survive
"Their" methods are poorly rationalized, but very intelligent
Bad intellect and severe commitment
"We" dream of conspiracy to make "our" "us" look capable
But their "us" is organized and capable
If "we" ever want to end terrorism
"we" need to call it what it is
Revolution with no vacancy
Organized groups of disuinified elements taking action
It doesnt matter that the "they" may not reach "their" goals
- "they" dont have enough "we"s on their team
"They" make "we" hurt
And shame "them" for it, ignorant to their "us"'s hurt
I am not making excuse or any compassion
for those among the universal "us"
Humanity, sapiens,
Who cannot get on board with "we"
because the most of the "we"s decided this is how it will be
And it is broken
And it is wrong
And there are many hurt
But "us" lives in a universe
finite in 'isms confined to our limited time
So as much as I or any "me" tries to recognize an ONUS
in the attempt of just being seen by "we"
It is always "the other", how are "they" unlike "me"
Not what do both "we"s share.
The world's greatest collection of "we"
Wrote arbitrary rules rules of "us" in this time
That "they" isn't yet a "we" for all
"we" are not yet "us"... too many "we"
too many poisoned by "me"
and worse
entitled by "I"
When "we" do we dont need lables anymore
Race, theology, gender - ways to describe "the other"
That will be a beautiful day
When the sun rises on a dead rock
Condemned to death by fire in unyeilding climate change
And then further pushed to annihilation by nuclear winter
Robert Frost was right
The world will end in Fire and Ice

Love Recruit
My sweetheart let us define love boundaries
You have to help me how to explore beauty
Let you be just the gracious beloved please
Let me be in search independent and free
I can only understand if you willingly cooperate
So that I should have all flavor and all taste
You encourage and I will just clearly initiaite
I do realize that you are so pure and so chaste
Allow me to open all bottlenecks to proceed
To be a little bit more and more wild in pursuit
As they say a friend in need is friend indeed
Please be more open to train the love recruit
Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2017 Golden Glow