Three Poems
Photo: BBC
By Zieshan Mir
1
I am a hundred and fifty years old
And the walls of this room are flaky
It has been burnt down with passion at times
It has rusted with passivity. It has been severely hot in here
The kind of warmth I sweat my memories to
It has seen ice ages of the cerebral kind,
A severe numbness and a severe loss.
I have tried to take down all the mirrors
But I still look at myself and forget who I really am
At times, underneath this cloak, that is more recent
From birth to ten years and another decade then.
I try to open the doors and windows at times
I leave my words strewn across the place
I share a cup of existence with you when you come in
With the breeze, I share my loneliness with the weather
When you get up and leave to explore the other rooms.
I have a thousand years between me and the words
These paintings of the cosmos I draw at night
When you are not here to share my humid night
I wonder if the walls will tell you my story
And these pages are dusty at times like now
So I am writing one anew
So you can come back whenever you want to
And hear my heart, thousands of hours back
Or just a silent few minutes ago.
So after a hundred and fifty years go by
When I am no more sketching your image
Breathe in the scent I leave behind.
Remember me!
***
2
Wake up to the realisation that
This is it.
That we hit rocks on the way and sometimes throw one at each other,
Hoping desperately that we miss the target, but
convey the message.
Wake up to the place in our world
where nothing matters more than the missed beats
we find each other in,
The reflection of me and you
in the eyes of you and me,
The pauses we’ve between our conversations
where we don’t have to find each other again,
Wake up to the fountain we have set as our meeting point,
When we wander off for a little while to only be assured
when we look back,
We find the other perched upon our favourite skies,
beckoning us to join in the ecstasy again,
Of being us.
Wake up to the pain that is gone,
Wake up to its memory that reminds you
How madly we are in love.
***
3
Whose ground?
Where do I stand?
It’s near the burnt bridge of Jhelum
Where not rain but letters fall from above,
The limitless sky of dreams
I stand here and watch them fall
They touch the waters and it burns.
Bio:
Zieshan Mir, Kashmiri, 22, completed diploma in civil engineering. Can be reached at Zishan1656@gmail.com
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