Dubai Days manuscript

Beat it



Aug 18


Are you ready?

As ready as you’ll ever be kid.

Whose got all this money we are all out to get?

I’m glad you asked.

We need to get to a road hop.

I’m glad you’re not superstitious.
No black cats where we are going.

Get me Conrad.

My heart of darkness bids it.

I shan’t drink cheap champagne.

My delicate constitution forbids it.

That’s a lot of money.

This new-fangled jazz music
Sure gets me giddy.

Tell me, do you have any acquaintances here
ma’am.



Chance would be a fine thing.

Bring your valet. There are cases to tend to.

Don’t be a fool man, she’s a gold digger.
So that’s why I was paid in cash.

Beat it. I ain’t got all day for this nonsense.







Birthdays as Meaningless Milestones

By kaleeM rajA


Mar 18



How much the years teach which the days never
know.

We grow into the skins we are so quick to shed.

In our beds,
The dreams we dreamt

And the hopes we kept,

Were bubble and froth

That fritter and fizzle out at every bend.

In the end,

Life

Is what happens to you
as you motionless stand

In between the frenzied making of other plans.

This is a detail from a painting by the Nigerian
expressionist abstract artist Yusuf Seidu Okus.

To learn more about his exhibitions and to purchase
his work, please visit
http://artbyyusufokus.blogspot.com/







Bold Strokes



10th Feb 19


All your intuitions

Were wrong

And that’s ok.

Did the ladders turn into snakes?

You’re unsurprised.

What is living, if not keeping alive?
Go back

Into your self

And left on the shelf,

You’ll find, was a blessing in disguise.

Hold on.

There’s a smoulder

And then
A flame licks

And then a blaze.

Before you walk away,

Think.

Everything but the kitchen sink

And you’ve outgrown your skin.
The door opens

Both ways.

These streets were where you grew a little older

And in assured age, you’ve grown bolder.

The rat race can be trapped

And you’ve never fallen for the trappings

Of power, money and vain glory.
A man today reminded you to pray

For their redemption,

Not your salvation.

Kneel and bow your head.

Is that the time?

Draw the drapes

And go gently to bed
Because you’re head

Needs to roam.







Breaking the Bread


13th Jan 19


Morocco by spring was a breathless spectacle. After
the snow melted on the foothills of the Atlas
Mountains, the abundant crisp waters nourished the
peaty soil so thoroughly, that overnight the land of
Ifrane was magically transformed into a floriferous
wonderland.

Bright fuchsia pink petals filled the air like confetti
and every branch drooped with bulbous, vermillion
pomegranates, crisp-green grapes and golden
mangoes. The grass on the pine-green meadows was
startlingly verdant. The silver brooks gurgled past
clusters of dilated flowers with dizzying colours and
intoxicating aromas.

The night had passed in grim silence, with her,
milling around, pretending everything was fine. She
poured the soup mechanically and I cut the stodgy
bread peppered with thyme and sesame seeds which
I had bought that morning from a genial old Berber
woman adorned in fading face tattoos.

The professor had called to check in on me and wish
me luck with my new venture. How he had become
wizened these last few years and bent double with

age. She would always be waspish when the
professor teased her about her father and
remembered how churlish he was as a school boy;
very little sign of his later pre-eminence.

As we sat and ate, the spaniel scampered about
seeking attention. In our private angst, we both
ignored him. We knew that at some point the silence
would need to be broken like a dam. Nothing is so
insurmountable as a woman scorned; or rather her
ego spurned.

Whetted edges are dulled by age and use and we had
used and reused the war of attrition to ad nauseum to
sustain our whittled bond for the last 20 years. I
broke more bread and passed it to her, without a
glance.









Bring Forth What is Within You



22nd Sep 18


If you don’t bring forth what is within you,

What you don’t bring forth will destroy you.

The inequities cloy you.

The faeces-splattered cage

Surrounded by crawling, clawing animals

Fills you
With disgust.

You just

Can’t abide it,

Hide it

Any more.

You can’t live in this chronic state

Of regret.
Being lashed

With the barbed wire

Of veiled contempt

No longer hurts,

It just bores you.

It implores you
To bring forth

All that is within you.







Brutus and the Bull



22nd Aug 18


I’m moving on.

Solon said

You can never

Step in the same waters

Of a river

Twice.


Indignation.

Indignation and a crown of thorns.

How comes your angels grew horns?

Were you born this way

Or did your demons slay you?

Did your baser self betray you?
And you?...

Brutus?

A bull slowly falls in the pit

Tincturing the hot sand red

As the crowds cheer and jeer
And holler.

The horror

Of a defenceless animal

Bleeding to death

Who never asked

For a battle.







Chess



Apr 18


Women don't pound their chests

And roar and wrestle and spew overt hate.

They play chess.

Entrapment. Checkmate.

Get you in a tangled mess.







Child Labour


2nd Oct 18


The sunlight trickles

Down the shaft

Of Burj Khalifa
As my car glides past

Downtown Dubai,

7 am,
The morning rush to the place

Which pays for the bread
Upon our table.

The Burj

Sparkles
As we revolve around it.

There’s a glimmer
And a warm glow

To this architectural dagger

Pointed at the sky
That is both alluring

And menacing

In equal
Heat-exhausted breath.

We want to give the rat race

A wide berth
But are marooned

In its bays.

Child labour
When we should be out to play.







Colours



7th Oct 18


The embers of the red sun go out

And the lilac sky sprouts

Wisps of woollen pink.

The world is tinctured bronze.

Her devil eyes

Flash emerald green
And you’re too feeble

To free yourself

From her dark spell.





Composed Chaos

25th Nov 18


What more is there to abide?
The bride
Draped in white silk and veil
Lies under leonine paw.
My filial love is flawed.
The prodigal son
Is lost upon arrival,
No man knows a nomad’s soul
Until he has wandered the land alone
Upon parched ground and drought-dried thorn and
thicket
On battered feet and scuffed soles.
It is a pity
When a man cannot trust
The flesh he was born in.
The epilogues are never as winsome as the
epilogues
That open the yarn with jaunty fanfare.
The dialogue with children
Is always ratified to the point of being clinical.
They need to know
The warriors of past renown
And the heroes of old.
Dip a sippit of your cynicism
In the milk of human kindness.
Take of the sop,

Maybe it will stop your ignorance in its tracks.
The warthogs and street dogs serry around you in
frenzied clouds of dirt.
The span of the land
Dwindles as the sea takes back what it yielded.
The ages ravish everything.
Nothing is spared.
The neutron stars and the procession of the equinox
know
The order of their violence.
The destruction scatters the cosmic seeds.
And God needs no audience.
Nor still sanctimonious worship.