Three Poems
Painting: Hermann Nitsch
By Junaid Ashraf
Artificial suns of freedom
With the antimony of hopelessness in your eyes
Why shall this colourful world not appear dark?
But then what springs of joy
Shall burst in these soot stained chimney like eyes
When everyone in his heart carries a hell?
The sun would never set for them and
The sun does not set over the prisons of nation-states
And darkness refuses to die.
They promised civilizing mission
And bringing light to the jungle, they burned our homes.
They fill the air of the planet with their poisonous farts
Thinking their intestines are a perfume factory.
In our beloved ‘free’ nation ready to bite are the enemies
Hiding behind the bunkers of smiling faces.
‘Those valleys of thought have snakes,’ they scare us.
Not knowing shepherds carry the staff of Moses in their fists
For the moon of Truth is visible on the hills of beauty of the soul
When a thousand splendid artificial suns of freedom cloud our skies!
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Famine of Peace
When Joseph was caged in the prison of Egypt,
The King saw the dream that seven weak cows
Were eating seven strong cows.
Joseph said a famine was going to strike Egypt.
In our times, strong cows have been feeding
On the weak cows for centuries.
And when the Gaurakshaks,
The protectors of the cows in India lynch Muslims,
And false Santa clauses of hate, Baghdadis of ISIS,
And genocidal mobs and false monks of Burma bleed humanity
It isn’t religion, the opium of the masses,
But capitalism blindfolding human perversion
Through the darkness of ignorance in the seas of blood.
With the help of ‘religious’ Gaurakshaks,
The protectors of the strong cows.
A famine of peace is bound to strike earth.
***
Je Suis Reason
Why did condemnations start to blossom like spring buds
After the Christchurch attack?
And sympathies began to float like love songs in the rainy season?
All killed were Muslims!
Why was the attack so brutal?
Because it was not carried out by armies of the states?
Or because the armies don’t put a camera on while hunting?
Or because the real screams were heard on the sofas worldwide,
And not the twisted stories of pain packed in a few kb of internet data?
Or because he didn’t attack the mosque with an F-16?
Or because it was not carried out in Palestine or Kashmir?
Why is the Abbotabad man not a terrorist
Trying to get hold of the saviour of freedom
For the sake of 72 heavenly wide-eyed hooris?
Half the life of a Muslim is spent in suffering
As the victim of the terrorism and the other half
In explaining to the world that he is not a terrorist!
Bio:
Junaid Ashraf is a student from Kashmir. He has done his post-graduate studies in economics. He is currently pursuing his masters in English literature. He has written opinion pieces, fiction and poetry for various newspapers and literary magazines. Research, writing poetry and fiction are his main interests. He can be reached at junaidashraf2025@gmail.com
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One Response to “Three Poems”
Nice! Specially ‘half the life of a Muslim……
………he is not a terrorist’. Poetry within a poetry,even a true judge can not utter in sympathy.
Carry on,miles to go…….,..