Poem- Shame

A violet turned inside out,

the petals are wasting away.

Even the wind refuses to discard

the remains of a wounded heart.

A tin peddler came late last night.

He offered me a replacement-

I broke down.

I turned him away.

There is paper everywhere,

little pieces with strange scribbles

from strangers I've seen on thousands of miles

of a lonely train journey that began

somewhere outside time.

Lemons, cream and tears...

Come to me, I call out

to no one I know.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Poem- Red

A history of love,

of lust?

What a mirage!

A distorted mirror.

Throw red paint

on walls newly white,

I shall swim

to the end of earth.

The magician's trick

has worked-

the heart is now

ugly and steel.

Keep it away, far away

from me,

I shall ask

the night owl for wisdom.

But will he listen?

Or will he just return

an empty stare?

Zaina Anwar 2010

Literary (and hilarious) Quote

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again"

-Oscar Wilde

'Shashkin' by the celebrated Turkish virtuoso flautist, Omar Faruk Tekbilek

Poem- A Walk in the Rain

A walk in the rain.

I am lost in the moment,

enjoying the earth-scented breeze

spraying tiny liquid pearls,

light as snowflakes against my skin.

She shuffles along,

frenzied gaze to the ground

and lips slightly parted,

caught in a desperate struggle

against a muddled mind.

She cannot feel the silence

nor the tension,

of birds perched still

as stones on slippery branches,

hidden behind thick curtains of leaves,

endlessly dripping moisture.

She cannot see the clouds

hanging low

over undulating hills,

moving ever so slowly

since heavily pregnant

with monsoon vapor.

She cannot see or hear

anything other

than the violence

of her own thoughts.

I know she wants to talk.

Eventually, her words

like a pack of greedy hounds

force themselves

upon my consciousness.

I try to resist but they win,

as they always do.

And so, another cycle

of complaints dragged out

from her bottomless well

of petty grievances,

opens itself

to swallow me.

And my meditation is interrupted,

yet again.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Living history...

Last night I met a wonderful woman who carried the aura of a bygone age. Her grey hair was gracefully coiled in a bun at the nape of her neck while a single gold bangle glittered on her fragile wrist. Draped in an elegant cotton sari, she told me stories about her childhood in Calcutta. A sheen of nostalgia glimmered in her eyes as she unveiled a monsoon memory, of how she and her cousins used to gather around the family table, playing an improvised tabla and singing until their voices were hoarse. After the drumming session, they would send someone down to the nearby khoka* for some hot, steaming tea and delicious jalebis* soaked in syrup sweeter than honey. "Those were the good times", she said. I marveled at their capacity for 'having fun' in an age when indispensable modern entertainers such as television and computers were absent. And then the realization hit me- we were the ones who had forgotten.

We are the ones who are lost in a digital world, drowning in meaningless images arrested in random motion, pointless, going nowhere. Just a part of a society of spectacles, as Debord prophesied.

She talked about the bloody partition of India and the ideological paradox in her own family. Her grandfather was strongly opposed to it whereas her father was in favor of an independent Pakistan. It personifies the dichotomy which has taken root in the minds of thousands of people as they watch this country being swallowed by corruption and poverty. Her voice was strained with a deep sadness as she talked about present day Pakistan. She wondered whether all the slaughter and mass migration in 1947 was worth it. She was mourning the death of dreams so artfully erased that they are not even a part of my generation's memory.

I enjoyed listening to her. It was as if I had stepped into a different world. I like learning history as it was actually lived by people who were right there, caught in the midst of great events that have decided our course for us. Because, you see, having been influenced by the powerful legacy of Edward Said, I do not trust the oriental narratives laid out in intimidating tomes compiled thousands of miles away from a given culture. To me, they are just so many anemic words marked by a long list of credentials and a lifetime spent sniffing dust in the hallways of colonial academia.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Khoka: a road side stand selling tea and snacks

Jalebi: a type of sweetmeat popular in South Asia.

Where did they go?

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Poem- Courage

The women are sitting in a circle.

They are beating their breasts

with hennaed fists.

They are chanting and wailing for her.

"She is mourning the birth

of a stillborn child.

Her womb emptied too soon...

The child could not last,

the child had to die."

Over and over again they cry.

Their frightful refrain pierces the night air

until the sky itself recoils

in absolute fear.

"Leave her be!" her mother screams,

"My daughter has an iron soul.

Her heart beats to the clash

of her ancestors' mighty swords."

"She will wrap herself in the folds

of a long and weary night,

she will plead her case in the court

of a just and noble moon."

Hearing this the daughter,

as if jolted out of a long stupor,

looks towards her mother

and smiles.

Thereupon, with her head held high,

she turns and walks away

into the dark forest beyond.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Poetic passage- Unable to Connect

Sometimes, the silence between us is so thick I could slice it easily with a knife. All these years, the crow at my window has taught me wiser things. Her head is always buried in print; words are flesh and blood to her. They are firmly rooted in history, she says. They are inscribed in immortal ink upon the constantly unfolding scroll of existence. She makes it sound poetic. People on the other hand, are transient, almost vaporous beings. Their gestures are illusory, their eyes deceptive and their tongues controlled by dreams, hidden behind a vast, impenetrable screen of unbearable darkness. So she sits back and observes. She watches them from a safe, guilt free distance, like an inquisitive neighbour peeking through a door half open, never daring to walk through..

She cannot make the connection between words and the people who utter them.

Zaina Anwar 2010

What the Moors left behind...

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(all images are from Sevilla, Spain)

Poem- It Makes No Sense

Don't tell me it's not a crazy world

When women stringed in heavy pearls

And priceless furs to which the dead smell

Of flayed animal heat still clings,

Slide out of hotels huge and foreign spiced

With glittering floors and cucumbers sliced

In odd shapes, labor of sweat and blood,

To sell through hot, steaming kitchens and lure

Exquisite taste buds nurtured by leafing

Through the right magazines, cameras flashing

To capture a beautiful morsel entering

A costly mouth, red-lipped in layers hiding

Tiny winter cracks and expelling

Fumes from breath freshener bottles displaying

The heraldic arms of a corporation labeled

In loud golden letters.

Don't tell me it's not a crazy world

When across the street from one such hotel,

A wrinkled man lies by the side of the road

Missing a leg in a land mine carrying a load

Of cooking oil and flour for the family's bread.

His clothes are filthy with the peculiar smell

Of need and endlessly streaming sweat

With boots rugged and barely hanging together,

Hammered in places with rusty nails.

By the road he lies come heaven or hail,

Begging for food his body daily craves

While frenzied lice crawling through his matted hair

Enact a circus to keep the people away,

Who recoil on instinct as they pass him by,

Wishing that the council would have him displaced-

He is spoiling their perfect landscape.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Quote

"Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."

-Edward Said

Tunisian blue..

All photographs are from Trek Earth

Poem- Remembrance

The moon is feeling generous tonight,

I don't need a lamp.

Even the wind stands still in awe

of the orb's nocturnal radiance.

I am in the grip of his memory tonight,

give me your cup of fragrant wine.

This is the night I shall dance

to love's sweet refrain,

this is the night I shall mourn

my beloved's rose-scented tears.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Who is she, I wonder..

I haven't been able to figure out where this girl is from (I strongly suspect Morocco). She's beautiful isn't she! Look at those eyes..

(photo source)

The Voice of Yemen

One of my favorite bands: Al Yaman

Based in Prague with Yemeni lead singer, Ashwaq Abdulla Kulaib (pictured above) who has an incredible voice. The Yemeni dialect is heavier than other dialects in Arabic and I think that makes her songs more powerful. They have just released their latest album, Insanniya (meaning: humanity).

Poem- The Attendant

In a room with antiseptic walls,

amid wires like tangled roots

of her heart keeping time

with his pulse, she sits

like a queen bee dethroned.

Leaning her head

against the window pane,

a chance lifting of her gaze reveals

a pigeon with a glistening ring

of feathers pink and azure hued

around its regal neck.

This moment brings a gleam

of tender hope to a spirit subdued

by the sombre air of a hospital ward

and eerie signals from machines

measuring her love in digital beats

of a barely functioning heart.

For days she has dealt

with men in scrubs,

and starched bedsheets too:

snow white and smelling

strongly of disinfectant

smoothed over a mattress designed

to prevent bed sores.

She has tried to understand

medical aliases of volumes of fluids

pushed into the mesh of languid veins

pulsing quietly beneath

his broken skin:

a magenta map of myriad bruises.

Day and night she has kept

a silent vigil by his bed,

uttering prayers she is shocked

to recall after so many years

of placid intimacy with her man,

now lying unconscious

and timidly breathing

into a plastic oxygen mask.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Poem- Ephemeron

It happened so quickly,

the way her love shattered

into a thousand fragments,

each a tiny mirror reflecting

a magnificent sunburst,

blinding her soured vision forever.

And all she had done

was ask him,

ask him in a quiver,

'Did you fuck her?'

to which he lied,

the bastard slipped,

so that the truth hit her.

She knew it was over.

Zaina Anwar 2010

(This poem has also appeared on Censored Poets)

Short Untitled piece..

They say, wake up

and grab your destiny!

I say it's illogical,

impossible!

For in order to get hold of something

you need to know what it is

that you are running after.

How many people

know where the destination lies?

Master Photographer: Jacob Riis

One of the Four Pedlars Who Slept in the Cellar of 11 Ludlow Street Rear, c. 1892

Home of an Italian Ragpicker, c. 1888

Five Cents Lodging, Bayard Street, c. 1889

Police Station Lodger, A Plank for a Bed, c. 1890

Women's Lodging Room in the West 27th Street Station, c.1892

(All images are from Masters of Photography)

Literary Quote

"Always be a poet, even in prose."

-Charles Baudelaire

Morocco again, of course...

photo source

Poem- She will wait

She is like a stone,

a nameless pebble washed ashore

as she sits by the window waiting,

abandoned by the waves,

burning in the sun,

for him who walked away,

one bright August day

leaving behind nothing

but rain and black tears.

Since then,

many seasons have changed.

The coconut tree in the yard

has shed its cumbrous seed

and the native birds have fled

to distant, more lustrous lands.

Everything around her palpitates

with life and love

but her heart-

a stone tablet engraved

with his name keeps a watch

like a dutiful sentry.

She will wait

for many years to come

in an unspoken pact

with the walls echoing

her cold silence.

Her gaze will always be drawn

to the path where she can still see

the dust raised by his feet

as he walked away

that bright August day,

leaving behind nothing

but a thousand frozen winters

of her broken heart.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Poem- My friend, the Crow (a black comedy)

I have befriended a crow.

He is sleek and ebony feathered,

with powerful wings

and a beak slightly bent

midway,

along its burnished length.

Every morning he resumes,

after a night of careless wandering,

his old perch, a twisted branch

that loses a twig every day

and is almost leafless now-

my crow does not like leafy branches.

He removes them one by one,

grasping and pulling

with his strong pointed beak,

sometimes giving them away

to other birds who seek

such embellishments

for the domestic hearth.

My crow has chosen

not to take a spouse-

free from nuptial commitments,

he delights in independence.

With a proud upward tilt

of his kingly head he observes

the other colonial males

planning incessantly

the next hunting trip

or worrying constantly

over their temperamental brood.

When at times he feels

the desire to mate

(he is a crow after all!),

he makes his way

to the neighboring tree,

and prepares himself

for a night of revelry

with females unattached

and cawing with desire.

And when the rustling begins

as if a blast has occurred

within the canopy,

the rest of the males

seethe in envy

and regrets they'd rather

keep to themselves.

Indeed, my crow

is a true bohemian,

but he's been out of sorts lately,

(and I shudder to think)

a bit cracked maybe-

at times I have seen him,

hurling unmentionable invectives

at the moon.

"Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions"- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Zaina Anwar 2010

Poem- It Comes Again

It comes unseen,

cloaked in unbearable gloom-

I am blinded.

It spreads like cancer,

eating away the seed-

I am consumed.

Waves draw me in,

an irate sea has its way-

I am submerged.

They say, why not?

selfish in their selflessness-

I am silenced.

Zaina Anwar 2010

A bit of news...

Two of my poems, The Way Neruda Wrote and My Mother's Hands have been published in Black Cat Poems, a beautiful poetry magazine that describes itself as an 'online library of poems'. If you want, you can read them here and explore the site as well.

Cheers.