Dubai Days manuscript

A rusty cigarette case and a faded photo in a
baroque silver frame.
Your grandfather -
An officer in the Prussian army. Double-barrel
name.
Aquiline profile, smoky eyes, pencil moustache,
Oil-slicked hair rent
Asunder with a comb.
Died where he was sent.

All the children vanish in the end.
And God sends his regards.







All the Heroes Lay Slain



Apr 18


The enamel has worn off your teeth

And the novelty off every fad.

You're done wrestling with fools and cads,

Hustling with schizophrenics and amnesiacs.

The glimmering hopes of yesteryear

Are now lacklustre at best.
Your search for answers to yourself

From furthest east to west

Were in vain.

All the heroes lay slain.

All the roads lay blocked.

All the mysteries lay locked.







All the King's Men



Oct 17


The honoured and humbled

Wamble through the war zone

Of the kingdom that has tumbled.

Your feet should not stumble.

No need to flinch an inch

Because the cavalry can't kill the already dead.


There's a gash from which the blood drips.

He doesn't feel it.

There's a cancer that spreads like a spider’s web
within.

He doesn't see it.
There are broken bones where his limbs have been
dislocated from their sockets after each successive
blow.

He doesn't mind it

Any more.

Before

The powdery, plush butterflies flit among the
gutters,

In the wind after the delitescent war

Without end, a white flag flutters.

The white noise of inner dialogue is incessant.

The brissance

Has turned the city state into shards and rubble

And charred flesh blisters and bubbles.
There's a barghest on the turret of the citadel
tweedling the king's steed

With his sepulchral reed.



The casualties limp away like lepers.

They clutch beggar bowls

Panhandling life

For emotional sustenance
To dulcify

The visceral carnage

And feed the emotional indigence.



There's a king standing at the door decked in burlap
cloak and tin crown.
The courtiers have gaslighted him

And ground the sceptre down.

The jesters have invited him into the court to jeer
at.

The peacocks in the palace grounds have been
butchered and splayed.

The vultures claw at their innards with a frenzied
blaze,
Tearing sinew and flesh with gnarled talons and
hooked beaks.



The stars have dimmed their lights

And the moon has turned its face away in shame.

The sun doesn't rise any more
To light the path to the king's door.









All Things Come to Pass



Dec 17


All things come to pass;

The colossal stars,

The towering mighty oak and gossamer pamper
grass,

Fallen empires and those which stand,
The humble ant and the arrogance of Man ...







All Your Misgivings Melt Away




June 17




What are you looking for?

Someday you'll know.


Thunder rolls

And the shore roars in the dusky distance.




Where have you been and where are you going to?

Maybe you'll be getting there


And never arrive.


The journey is your destination.

Precipitation;

Raindrops crawl like silver spiders down window
panes.



May all your misgivings melt away.

I remember you walking down that road one cloudy
day.

And God will be God


After all your misgivings give way

To clearer skies


And brighter days

And then you walk through the crowds that death
has undone,


And feel the sun

Tickle and caress your skin

And a winsome smile


Shows

How glad you are to be alive.







Always Getting There but Never Arriving



3rd Sep 18


A state funeral or shallow grave,

Makes no difference.

It’s all the same.

I left as I came;

Alone.


Don’t sigh

At the headstone marked “Here lies...”

I am not there.

Those are mere bones.



The path less travelled is the only one worth
treading

And you’ve been walking on

For a long time.



You’ve always been getting there but never quite
arriving.
You’ve been gone a long, long time

And with the four winds

Blown across the seven seas

In search of a land and a home

Where you can roam free.







An Offering

By KaleeM rajA


12th Oct 18



The usual caterwaul of the afternoon call-to-prayer
droned on a blazing day in Mamzar. Stumbling
over the sand, Ahmed gripped onto the handle
of the sky-blue icebox. The glass bottles and ice
cubes rumbled as they were tossed about inside. In
serene silence, in the boulevard
along the promenade, the fronds of the palm trees
waved as if to welcome Ahmed to his weekly
Shangri-La. He instantly changed into the swimsuit
under one of the thatched, cone-shaped canopies
that dotted Mamzar Beach. A middle-aged Indian
man in standard-issue, transport uniform sat
on the neighbouring table looking dolefully
into the distance where the sky met the sea.



The perspiration gathered on Ahmed's
brow. The hot sand grains were beginning to
pinch the palms of his feet. He flung open the lid



of the ice box. A colourful array of fizzy drinks in
tin cans and glass bottles was nestled among the bed
of ice cubes. The silver bottle opener tore
off the fluted lid of a coco cola bottle with a
satisfying hiss.



Here was peace. All the angst-ridden
days labouring for his bread at the attorney’s office
blew away like willows in the ocean breeze. How
much his heart thrilled at the sight of a broad beach
of platinum sand lapped at by turquoise
waves. The sky, a cloudless black of
azure. The crabs scurrying between the rocks
of the lagoons. The wrens striding on twiggy legs
by the low tides where rubbery fish lips popped up
hiccuping for breath. Nothing troubled him here.


He raised the bottle and gulped down the last of the
coke and cast it into the gaping mouth of a bin. He
walked along the shore with the warm waters
of the tide washing gently against his bare feet.
In the distance, children squealed with joy as fathers
splashed around them with playful lunges. Ahmed's
eyes fell upon a sprawling sandcastle. There were
turrets and watch towers, and the walls were
decorated with delicately-hued seashells.



He walked past the Indian gentleman who had not
moved nor changed the direction of his gaze.
Perhaps he was on his break. But he looked
absorbed in deep, dark thought.

Jet skis roared past whipping the sea into a flurry of
white fizz. Ahmed remembered when he had ridden
in his uncle Abu's speed boat as a child. What
simple joys there were in those days. Those naive
days where life and laughter seemed not to come at
a hefty price, but as standard. Adulthood seemed
somehow to be a scandalous scam.



Along the beach there were perhaps only a handful
of bathers. A buxom white woman with straw-
yellow hair and a lobster-red tan. She was laying on
her front with her bra undone, her body pressed on
her udder-like breasts. The sight caught Ahmed by
surprise, and a faint sense of disgust. It's not the
kind of sight he was used to in the Muslim Arab
countries he had sojourned in.



The wind picked up and crows glissaded
over the canopies with it. Further along
by the toddler's play area, a family of Filipinos were
picnicking on the verdant lawn upon a red blanket.
But it was 40 degrees and there was no shelter
there. Hardly conditions for a picnic. This was not
England in spring after all. It was more



like the height of summer in hell. Just as his mind
turned to Hades and Cerbes, a tiny Russell Terrier
went scampering past after the crows that settled
menacingly near the Filipino picnic.



Ahmed cast his eye back on the walk he had just
done along the shore. In the wet sand, his footprints
darted off into the distance. Just as he had snapped a
photograph of them, a wave hurled itself on the trail
and the footprints were erased under the swathe of
water. He gazed a while at the now vanished
footprints. Perhaps this was like the fate of every
empire and civilisation across the aeons. Beyond
10,000 years, no trace is left of them. Then
when the bowels of the earth occasionally
regurgitate the occasional surviving relic of those
civilisations, we are left clutching a baffling object
that explains nothing of our origins; it only
bewilders and mystifies. The pyramids remain an
enigma. The Sphinx has stubbornly not yielded its
mysteries nor revealed its age after all these
millennia. We have no idea of the folk that once
teemed with brio in lost civilisations like Ur or
Mohenjo Daro. Like the waves, time wipes them
off the face of the earth every 10,000 years or so,
forevermore.

The Arab sun began to hang low in the sky and
temperatures began their steady decline.
Through the boulevard of trees
along the promenade wall, Ahmed walked back to
his canopy. Upon arriving, Ahmed saw
again the Indian gentleman. He had still not moved.
He seemed rather listless and sunk in pensive
thought. Perhaps he was perturbed about some work
matters. Such men are treated as vassals in countries
such as these. Perhaps there was trouble back home.
Perhaps he realised the futility of
resisting the system in which he found himself
shackled. Ahmed felt a spasm of pity for him. He
opened up the ice box and grabbed a bottle
by the neck, popped off the lid with the opener and
trampled through the sand toward the man.


"Would you like a drink?", he muttered slightly
timidly.

The man looked like he had been woken from a
trance, slightly dazed and perplexed.

He forced a weak smile. Ahmed looked straight into
his chestnut eyes and saw a strained, quiet
desperation. It was a look he was more than familiar
with.

Ahmed held out his arm and
proffered the condensation-wet bottle of
effervescent pop.

The man muttered an awkward thankyou and
slowly grasped the bottle in his hand.







Ant Bites and Paper Tiger Cuts



6th Apr 19


Ant bites and paper tiger cuts

Never killed a man.

It is their ground upon which you stand.

You are a germ in the Ant Empire.

10,000 different ant species with godly super
powers

And their legions are 10,000 trillion

To your feeble 7 billion.

Beware of things you consider a pest

Lest you be reminded of who best thrives.

Anthills and beehives

And shoals of fish
And entire societies under bits of wood

Should be left alone

If they cannot be understood.



Atlantis

19th Sep 18


Yesterday’s history

Is today’s legend

And tomorrow’s myth.

Time splits us

From the distant past.

We lock the stable doors

After the Trojan horses have bolted.
Atlantis has sunk and its monuments and remnants

Reduced to dust.

Soft tissue has ossified

And bone has petrified.

The all-seeing eye

Sees all

And says nothing,
The Sphinx holds its regal silence

Leaving us to ponder mysteries

Lost to the murky mists of time.