A Birthday Poem for Your B'day

I wish

you're born short

not tall like Chinar

that takes roots deep

and years to give shade

                                              The world is in a hurry

                                               it won't wait for you

Be born like grass

to be trampled upon

and believe

it's in your nature to be stamped on

I wish you're not born human

but a worm

spineless

and be relieved

of this burden of conscience

                                               Man with a Gun,

                                               and that's the tragedy of this world,

                                               is more poised

                                               than man with a Book

              

May you be born

with ultimate physical beauty

Do some nonsense

in front of your screen 

Become famous, viral

Don't burden yourself with wisdom

Thinking, Reading or other mundane activities

                                               Stupidity is the new wisdom

               

May you be born

filthy rich

and make others work

humiliate them

oppress

and alienate them

so that their parents 

write this poem for them

12 × 8.5 × 6

A fistful heart -

worldful of sorrows

A universe of darkness -

A flicker of your light

"Nakaami si Nakaami" / "ناکامی سی ناکامی"

Salaam un par 

jo ghar kay choolhey ka

eendhan ban gaye

aur phir

kahin na mile

Salaam un par

jo banjar zameeno mein

zarkhaiz khwaab 

ley kar utar gaye

Salaam un par

jo muhabbat ka zehr pi kar bhi

na Messiha ban sake

na Suqrat

Salaam un par

jo wadi e ilm mein

kitaboon key shajr tale bhi

saans na ley paye

Salaam un par

jo saansoo ka phandha liye

zindagi ki 

kachi chat se bhi

naa latak paye

Salaam un Salaamo par

jo faqt

Sada e noha ban kar reh gayein 

سلام اُن پر

جو گھر کے چولہے کا

ایندھن بن گئے

اور پھر

کہیں نہ ملے 

سلام اُن پر

جو بنجر زمینوں میں

زرخیز خواب

لے کر اتر گئے

سلام اُن پر

جو محبت کا زہر پی کر بھی

نہ مسیحا بن سکے

نہ سقراط

سلام اُن پر

جو وادی علم میں

کتابوں کے شجر تلے بھی

سانس نہ لے پائے

سلام اُن پر

جو سانسوں کا پھندا لئے

زندگی کی

کچی چھت سے بھی

نا لٹک پائے

سلام اُن سلاموں پر

جو فقط

صدائے نوحہ بن کر رہ گئیں 

Some Ruminations upon the Phrase, I Love You

HUSSERL: (I) LOVE (YOU)

A touch kissing

A kiss talking

A talk touching

A touch touching

A now

A present

A feeling

HEIDEGGER: I-LOVE-YOU

Being-in-love

The fish in the water

The water in the water

The reason why

The blue veins

flowing over your breasts

are better than any blue sky

LEVINAS: I (LOVE) YOU

I, of the womb of your heart

You are not my mother

O! Mother

You give me an I

An eye, a face and a soul

Love - the first and

the only philosophy

DERRIDA: "I" "LOVE" "YOU"

"'I love you' is always a quotation"

is a quote from a novel,

narrated by an unnamed character

remembering the beloved,

a novel by Winterson.

A coat

of memory

wrapped around a tattered stick

of words, of emotions, of feelings -

Quote -

"I" is a quote

So is "You"

"Love", a quote within a quote 

NEXT ROUND, PLEASE!

رشتوں کے اکھاڑے میں

جذبوں کی ورزش سے تھک گیا ہوں

اور تھک کر جہاں بیٹھ جاتا ہوں

ایک نیا دائیرہ وہیں سے کھینچ لیتے ہیں لوگ 

اگلے مقابلے کے لیے 

Rishton Kay akhadey mein

Jazbon ki warzish se thak gaya hoon

Aur thak kar jahan baith jata hoon

Ek naya dayira wahin se kheench lete hain log

Agle muqable Kay liye 

ARS POETICA

When I am old with sickness

in every vein,

sleeping on the fringes

of life and death.

When the visions

before the curtain of my eyes

And the dreams backstage

are nothing but

an insurmountable fog.

When my toilet etiquettes are slurry

and my existence a muck

in the diaper -

Shit, piss and the stench of life.

When Alzheimer's is cleaved

to my brain like leech

to the skin.

When I have forgotten my self,

This person -

Who was nothing but a noisy utensil

inside the grand kitchen of

relatives and family.

Who was always an aberration

within the system,

whose complexity was always

simplified, essentialized 

with a label, a judgement,

who always remained misunderstood

among his colleagues and friends.

Who was nothing

but an imbecile

performing in the academic circus,

a jester never able to complete

the assigned syllabus,

leaving students and scholars

dismayed, to the end.

One, who was never

literary enough to be

in the literary circle of contemporaries,

or worthy enough to be discussed

in magazines or journals;

A blind man who could never see

what everyone saw,

an unpublished amateur.

When he is far away

from all this civilized rattle,

please come to him (wearing

that maroon or mustard dress)

and recite the verses

that are never to be found

anywhere in the world,

that were written 

For you and only you.

Recite those to his

deaf hearing and cloudy vision,

to the demented head in your lap

and tell him -

"Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus"

THE FEAST

("A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism" - Georges Bataille)

Between carnality and love,

body is bruised.

Cigarette burns, torture wounds, scars

become light pecks, hickeys.

Passionate touches: that's what

The official document says.

It always begins with a kiss -

Our warm lips

on your soft bosom.

Soon we were nibbling,

chewing into you,

we, with all our beaks;

Some had pens, some guns,

some jabbed at you with official orders,

while some were doing their duty.

The feast lasting a century

on History's table.

Leaders, masses, army and police,

Poets, intellectuals and revolutionaries,

all drunk on your blood.

The vultures are passed as flamingos.

The blood as essential crop milk.

Your gorged-on body

is a carcass now.

Who could have thought

it can all start with a kiss, a body,

A law and a land.

A PRIMER OF LOVE

C for Clothes

Magar accha tou ye hota ki hum ek saath rehte

Bhari rehti tere kapdon se almaari humari

(Jawad Sheikh)

Clothes form an essential structure in the metaphysics of love because your beloved wears them. Just by that fact only they become signifiers of something transcendent  wavering between mystical and fetish. The cloth, the garment becomes a text, a language tailored by one adorned by someone else - a Barthesian language. Its texture is the texture of memory and desire - suddenly you remember, she wore that dress on that day when that thing happened. Somewhere in a closet hangs Rene Magritte's  Homage to Mack Sennett.

"I love your every dress

Because they do

What I wish to do"

F for Fingernail

Your fingernail grazes my lip and nicks my being. Last night the waxing crescent moon resembled your clipped fingernail. Was it destined to be apart from you because it was a part of you or it wasn't, like me.

"In love

I want to collect

All your clipped nails

As a souvenir of my excess longing" (Mubashir Karim)

Q for Question

Standing before God (who has all the answers), it is a matter of asking the right questions. Mythology and epics are riddled with questions, so is Love. I love you was a question when you said it. I inherited it as an answer and that has made all the difference. Here I am, everyday, standing before God searching for the right questions to ask. 

"To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)?

Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought. . .?" (Barthes)

T for Time (and Place)

I love you is always incomplete. I loved you in Kashmir: the past indicator and the place. Love can never escape the spatiotemporality. To be in one place at the same time is essential for you and me to fall in love. Had we been somewhere else, say Paris, we would have loved differently. There's a particular Kashmiri way of loving that only lovers in its space and time know.

"Tumhari aankhoun mein

Nami aatey hi

Srinagar mein

Baarish hojati hai

Mausam koi bhi ho

Meri Nazm bheeg jati hai"

ENDURANCE

(for Raymond Carver)

It's always good to

Visit your neighbour and

When you're there 

Observe your own house

From that neighbourly strangeness:

See people living,

Laughing and bickering,

Doing stuff inside rooms,

To keep this house from falling apart.

So that you

Hear the occasional music

Slipping through the bricks,

The smoke waving

Through the chimney.

What is true for houses,

Is true for people too!