Dubai Days manuscript

Gone


23rd Sep 18

Death
Is a rearrangement of the world.
We go as we came; alone.
And now that he has gone,
You must struggle through the wreckage
And put what pieces are left
Back together again
Into a new shape.
New form,
New function.
A new heaven,
And a new earth.
A rainbow over the rubble.
Our lives are mere soap bubbles.
What lies between
The two bookends
Of our existence:
Birth and death,
Are apt to be moulded
And subject to change
And choice
And preference.
But our births and deaths
Demand complete deference.
Like stubborn debts,
They will not change
And treat our woes with indifference.

We go as we came;
Alone.































Here Lies the Past Where the Departed Rest in
Peace


Jul 18



In Dibba,

In the cruel summer Arab heat,

The ruins of a fort of a long-lost past look forlorn.

The mountains look down in shame and shake their
rocky heads.
The monuments of all our dead heroes have
crumbled to their knees

Like coastal shanty towns washed away by
tempestuous seas.

And the motionless bodies of the poor are mere
dead flies in a tub of putrid urine.


Torn on the inside, things rupture, blister and bleed.

When greed surpasses our need

And nothing is ever good enough,

Things fracture and structures fall apart

And the cracks start to show -



Have been showing

For all these years

While you’ve been outgrowing every beggar’s garb
And wearing shards of glass in your eyes.

The glint of diamond tears on battered skin

Shatters the facade.

All the lies that you told

Are preserved like gold and crawl with cockroaches
gorging on decay
And despair folds into the ashes of hope.



You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.

I nix your motions with mixed emotions.

I am the anathema of everything you stand for.

Is this new money spent on old rope?

A new road
Into the ruins of the past.

And what was your part in it?

What lies behind the truth you could not face?



And your face is a mask

Worn so long it is grafted onto your skin.

Why is your sin and salvation, your success and
status, your standing and pride so much more
important than mine?

Why am I not allowed the same unalienable rights
as you,

Sound and sights as you,

Last rites and wills as you.
Do you suppose you are the beings of a higher
god?

When was this decided and by whom?

Where lies the line

Between human and humane for you?

What is the truth of all these machinations and
defeats, conceits and deceits?


The wedge of a speed boat

Slices through the azure sea

Like a tailor’s scissors through a sheet of silk,

Frothing up white spume

And a trail of fading ripples



That gape into centuries long gone, long forgotten.

What are these riddles

You call human nature?
These follies and foibles

That colour fables and folklore.

The colonial exploits of your forefathers bore

With glee

Have evolved like a virulent disease

Into modern day exploitation of new nations, new
serfs and new slaves.

To stave off your own damnation,

I urge you to end this scourge

Upon humanity

That you wreak.

I speak

Not because I have to
But because I dare to.



On the island of goats



You spoke of your anger

Of the inequities of life as you have known it.

I no longer desire. I have forgone it.
They will go when I go and not until then.



The war games we play produce no victors, only
victims.

There was no one laughing all the way to the bank,
only fools cartwheeling into their caskets.

No cats who got the cream, just corpses rotting in
their crypts.

Psychological Armageddon,

Total visceral annihilation and wreathes

That withered after a week.

Why do our love games always end in bouts of
violence?

Why do our conversations always end in barren
silence?

What is there left for me to cherish or berate

When your humanity came too little too late?

And often not at all.





























Hitler’s Dog



18th Dec 18


The line between virtue and sin

Is blurred.

Hitler’s dog thought well of him.

The proffered

Choice of weapon

Against the self
Results in the same outcome.