Hope

Thursday, January 5, 2012 by B.H.

Could I then just snuff out the flames –
Lest – at last my dewy eyes –
Extinguish my hopes –
Within ablaze, splendid flares –
Adorned on the candlewick

Could I then just efface your name –
Carved behind the solid black broken door –
Of my numb muse – and essence
Of crushed rose-scented liliaceous plants
Crimson-red with lacey rifts

crescent-shaped candles

Wednesday, December 28, 2011 by B.H.

By evening, (it’s when I wake up) it’s violet…all over. And BANG! The light goes out, which (ironically) makes things more beautiful. As December wears on, the weather in Islamabad is getting (un)pleasantly dry in a horribly cold way. Winters’ keen tooth bit me too, among others’. And I have been sniffing and coughing ever since. I wake up…and brush my teeth and just feel this insane urge to slap my cheeks with the aftershave. I look in the mirror and then I look away and look in the mirror again, then I look away again, feeling worse. (Did you know that the objects in mirror are always farther than they appear?) I get dressed and comb my hair. And then look in the mirror again. ‘Why don’t I look devastatingly handsome anymore?’. ‘But still something, eh!’, ‘Or maybe, too sharp?’. And so I rid my head of my anxieties and insecurities for a while. As I shake it.
Nom. Nom. Nom. Munch. Munch. Munch. Pancakes. Just one large bite on each slice does it. As though chewing the wood with iron teeth (if that’s even legit). Reaching at work. Occupying the station. Few games of Table Tennis. Two cups of my imperfect tea. Few strangers ogling as if I have come from the Mars (They can’t possibly know that, can they?). I go through the day (or should I say…night?) just like that. But last night, being a rebel that I am, I bought an icecream but just after just a few licks, few drops of drizzle ruined it but I still licked the leftover crummy slush of sweet cream and water shamelessly. I hang with usual people with unusual accents. That crack newer jokes. Talk loud. And put on big smiles. All this while, I keep on thinking if I cross someone’s mind…somewhere out there? Or just a passing thought? Something about me? Never knowing what’s happening or should I even fix this? I don’t even know what’s absent? What need to be fixed? Anything? Nothing? Or maybe everything? 
Saturday, December 24, 2011 by B.H.
A pair of sottish eyes, watching over an outline of delicate drapes swaying tardily in silence so deep that I could hear the moonlight striking on the window. Every wrinkle of that ceaseless frown casting an insufferable fragrant desire. Too frail to even go near. Distant, like fireworks. Serene. Exploding emotions, awing the world. Shrieking words on the papers that hold no meaning now. Let him be free. For once. 

Alone

Thursday, December 22, 2011 by B.H.


In the sky, the sun and the horizon reach a truce and a kind of transformation takes place that engulfs every care as soon as the call for the evening prayers is heard. And the kids who had been playing – get called in one by one…just like the birds…how they vanish into thin air just as the twilight glow of my morning engulfs everything completely. Like those kids who were made to discontinue their play, I’ve started to resent the nights too. But we need not. As lively as the day looks, as much as you enjoy a conversation with a lovely friend, it has to end at some point. Everything is notoriously variable.

Because today, I learnt that nothing bad ever happens when you are made to adjust in some seemingly boring place. And I'm left with my insecurities and anxiety that evilly stick their tongues out at me in the end…nothing ever happens if you are forced to live in another world with things you detest. Things just start looking interesting, in a slow motion though…like those autumn leaves falling through the air…like soot wiggling in the winds.

It’s not as hard as it looks to leave your favorite place and head for the difficult ones. It’s good to keep moving instead of staying there and spending your whole life going in one direction. It’s good to keep moving. And sometimes, standing there. Alone.

A rainbow is a rainbow and will always be a rainbow...

Saturday, November 26, 2011 by B.H.


I’m still a rainbow like one from two years ago… I prefer to be an original instead of trying to be like others. If I am like others, that’s only by coincidence. I’m a rainbow who’s become a bit narcissist. My day starts with alarms, Regina Spektor’s Us, it’s been four months now…though it’s not hard to wake me up even in winters when the sleep is prettier than the most soothing serenades.
I am not much of a couch potato, but I love to watch some telly on weekends, I read newspapers and I know what happens in this country, I have opinions too…but I usually refrain from making opinions and I stay quiet. I read magazines…though I am still not as fine about reading as I should be, most of my storybooks are unread but poetry books are read at least twice, I own two Holy Books, one in English. I am not really perfect when it comes to that, you know? I admit I skip prayers which I shouldn’t…but at least I try not to be a bad human being.
Among things that winters bring, I like the sweet-smelling orangeness of divine oranges, besides cappuccino coffee, crunchy leaves in the start, foggy pathways, flu affected voices and the fascinating mess in my room, it is one beautiful thing that I associate with winters, there’s a roguish mingle-mangle of sweet and sour delectability that comes with oranges. I still prefer sweet tea, water and juice especially grape juice over soda.
I am not much creative, I used to paint, and I used to write, mad stuff and never ending stories and then those stories about people who don’t exist and those about people who shouldn’t exist and…I don’t do much of both now. Oh well.
I like people who start conversations – for no reason. I always get the feeling that these people are the friendliest people on planet Earth. And sometimes, I like people who start conversations with a compliment. I like neckties…I have one for every shirt in my wardrobe. I don’t judge people by their footwear or clothes though it tells a lot which can be sometimes completely wrong.
I used to have a little feline until one unfortunate day I noticed she was gone or maybe stolen…and then mum bought a pretty baby rose-ringed parakeet and it flew away too after few weeks like they always do and I haven’t had any pet since then. I have very few friends…to be fair. They are the nicest people you’ll ever know, I keep my windows open to them even when the sun is not at a friendly angle…but I try that the light falls on them in the white silver winters and hope that it melts into delighting springs. They are people – worth dying for, people worth living for… 
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Marvel

Saturday, November 12, 2011 by B.H.
You have the same peachy face after all this time, only a bit wrinkly now. You still drink in every lifelike nonsense no matter how irrelevant. I still see the tender folly and bright violet wandflowers adorned with myriad love in your tawny-brown eyes. The same somber expressions but surprisingly cheery when you feel like it, strangely mellow on some days - especially on rainy days, glowering when you read or write, deep in thought when you listen to your favorite songs and endlessly vacant when you walk. You have subtly deepened in a manner that I have too. And it's cute how you don't try to hide your teeth anymore when you laugh. Only your blackish-brown hair has changed in color, they seem faintly light and weak. Your dresses are still more stylish than you are but not a lot of people know about that. And humor, still hard to get but then, I have the same problem too. You're unearthly, lost in your own literary world, I love the songs that you sing in your enchantingly wild voice as you play the uke. And how you smell the old, frayed pages of the books before you read them. You're you and I live in a beautiful world.

whipping boy

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by B.H.
You know how goats can be creepy to some thickos. Can they not see, how incessantly innocent looking creatures God has made them and when you go near them, they stop ruminating and pause to stare at you with their huge and vacant eyes and sweetly bleat 'how do you do sir?' sort of sounds with their honeyed voice? And how some of them smile at you and shy away? How lovely individual characters and intelligence they possess, it makes me want to hug them. I love goats even though they can be thoroughly ungrateful like this one from my neighborhood, he used to eat all day long and bleat clamorously throughout the night and I was sort of glad when they killed him and it happened just a few hours ago and now I will savour his majestic mutton notwithstanding the fact that I do not have any fond admiration for it.


Well, Eid's over, and everyone's probably got rid of their goats, cows and camels including my loser neighbour who was too lazy to find a butcher and thus gave me another sleepless night. And now when I have this golden opportunity to lie down on this softest and best invention attributed to mankind called bed, I find it hard to sleep for alien reasons. I can feel the meek pain of this dull weariness in my body but my brain is alertly functional as though the shut off button of this scummy organ is broken. So, I imagined a paradise in my head with two glorious gardens and two gilded streams of honey and tried to imagine a random love song by Elvis Presley playing in the backdrop but all I could hear was the bleating of this daft goat from my neighborhood! I wonder when will this ghost of that daft goat stop haunting and let me be calm as a child in dreamless slumber! Sigh. I can really use a wish right now...
Saturday, July 16, 2011 by B.H.



If she is –– to weave a cambric dream
On the side of a stream – in the meadow green
With no crinkles –– nor any needlecraft
Tracing a stark pattern of my felicitous grimace
And so that lady is forever mine.

If she is –– to glean in a sack of linen
The battalions of rippling scarlet harvests
And – to stir that all in the heather mixture
For me alone – on the leaf-crested ground
And so that lady is forever mine.

If she is –– to show me a purified town
Inside the piquant water or the sea chain
Washed grounds – by her so many tears
And dispersed nuggets that shed off her eyes
And so that lady is forever mine.




- B. Etch.

Learning to Fly

Monday, May 30, 2011 by B.H.

I might not go to heaven because the worldly concerns have tinged my life but when the Earth will disband, I’d just hope to get a chance to say hi to you and, I won’t feel good if I didn’t get a chance because, I would absolutely hate it. No explanations. Gandhi said, whatever you do in life – will be insignificant but it’s very important that you do it, ‘cause, no body else will. Just forget the second part. If you could imagine the deeds hidden behind the misty glass of amnesia and people would not have the time to wipe and peek through it. It’d be impossible, like looking for a red dirt grain in a desert. Lost Turkish boxwood filled with memories? So why not stop fixing this jigsaw puzzle and wake up every morning like it’s the first morning of your life and look closely at the world around you and find your place in it? And when the self-deceit becomes difficult and you feel like saying hurtful things, when you’re fed up with practicing nice and fine things; and you neither want to hold on to rites nor try to create something new to follow. It’s all part of transforming into something better, because we’re never finished, we always change, from good to better, from young to old. Every day, you experience new things that affect your thinking process or maybe it’s just me. Setting new digits in my brain as my age, turning from eighteen to nineteen, thinking that I’d be respected, planning to do new things, like…to never spare a kid calling me “Uncle” and not caring about those poor lads I’d called that years ago and especially the ones who still dislike being called one? Life should be more beautiful now that I have turned nineteen, but it’s a shame that I’m still a teenager. Well, life isn’t a cup of hot chocolate. Turning nineteen for the first time and they did not have any lucrative or scholarly birthday gifts to offer me except for one person. But then again, everything is fair like Karma. But I can squeeze the joy out of it. With all the thoughts of love and appreciation that I might never get, I can still make something nice out of it. I will always do what I have always done. Create distance and stick my tongue out to attachments because attachments are the root of all the misery in your life and it’s a liability. Instead I will just smile while watching Ben Ten on TV and playing video games with my siblings, take pleasure in trying to count the spirals of the ceiling fan, in reading newspapers in the hot summers’ noondays while listening to the heavenly melodies of my father’s choice and laughing like hyaenas at the wittiest jokes and crying like babies over smallest of things – with their blown up pinkish chubby cheeks. And remember the old days when we used to watch the shooting stars in twilight with awe. And the dusty yellow pale moon and its shimmering in the pool. And dewdrops on lilies. The musk. And the pleasure while trying to make a goat laugh on Eid-ul-Azha’s day. And the frown of a rose-ringed parakeet. Teenage infatuations and the bittersweet feelings of crimson pain. I will count my blessings and write them down for the time when I will need them. But for now, I need sleep. Lots of it.

Noon

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 by B.H.

The crow upon the block on an ardent day

There swiftly perches

And shaft of the light of a higher temperature

Kisses womanly grimace

There lives a soul in frigid hour of mind

Too dull to notice

The nap of an infant – the crowing of a babbler

Remembering a wraith

A shade lingers upon that honeyed soul

As when on noonday

And then drifts away – the another cloud too

As we love to estimate

The consistency of the variable shades

In false mathematics

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