Your Smile. . .

I wish to drink poison today
From your life-giving lips
'Cause nothing gives rest
To a besotted heart
Than words riding on
A beloved’s moist breath.

But you choose silence,
Smile –
Throw in
A riddle or two,
Knotting
This heart in multitudes.

…And I sit here
Untying each knot
Into a poem for you. :-)

© Dan Husain
July 7, 2005

Stolen Moments

She:

His breath rests on this face
Words falling intermittently on the ear
He kisses softly on the cheek,
I struggle to save the moment forever.

He:

She looks stealthily at me
I sit engrossed though aware
She smiles quietly and leaves,
Ignorant that I have treasured the moment with her.

©Dan Husain
Memories from some other time…

The Bride

She opens her bleary eyes.
Henna colored hopes carousing on her palms
As they softly brush aside
The bewitching locks of her hair
From her insouciant cheeks.
My gaze charmed.

The vampish curves of her lips
A prelude to fantasy -
The Elysium.
Slit open into a smile that
Smacks my fortune as if
Draping them in her colors.

She stretches her arms
Beckoning,
Seeking the simmering me;
The space between them -
A refuge where our love
Perpetually wishes to dissolve.

© Dan Husain
March 23, 2005

I Vacillate. . .

I vacillate…
Between hope and despair
Between sanity and desire
Between love and anguish
Between truth and myth
Between pain and ephemeral transcendence
Between salvation and purgation
Between now and eternity
Between thee and my destiny

© Dan Husain

Infidelity

You pull down the jalousie -
A metaphor for your jealousy
As it filters through
Your doe like eyes, your gaping mouth,
The lissome strokes
Of your hand brushing
Against my face.
I pull you in an embrace
Perhaps telling you in my own way
Let it take place, let it take place
This doesn’t in any way
Encroach on our love’s space.

©Dan Husain
May 26, 2003

Salim Joshua at A Soirée. . .

I

So we must end the conversation now.
It has hung long
From the Rembrandts and the Rousseaus
(cheap imitations
mounted on dreams
sundry & parvenu)
That your silent walls adorn.
But you wish to speak
About the trivialities that tweak
Your propriety, your idea
Of what the world is, of what it should be.
I feign interest
(how may I tell you
I am part of the world that you hate).


II

They sit at the bar.
Everyone has assumed a role,
Everyone is a character.
London is no more a fad,
New York may still pass.
“So I was at this glistening
Office of wall glass
On the 67th floor of Chrysler
At Lexington Avenue”
And then throw in the punch –
The Exotica! –
Of how you spent the weekend
Scuba diving in Aruba,
Lounging, smoking pot
At Luna Lodge in Costa Rica.
The boys are agog.
They’re too eager to fill you in
About their training stints in Düsseldorf.


III

We sneak into a quiet corner.
The evening trails as a wispy fragrance
On your wine laden lips.
I wish to drink the moistness,
Feel your heat against my breath.
My hands rustling against your breasts
But suddenly you break free,
“Wait! Let me see
where my darling husband is?”


IV

We sit with our bellies full,
Courgette and prawn dolloped with soufflé,
And break in idle chatter, pitter-patter
Sprinkling names –
The photo shoots with Condoleeza Rice,
(or is it Condella – someone coughs!)
The stiff upper-lipped editors at Knopf,
The haute couture,
The avant-garde,
The ‘here’ and ‘now’,
The ‘whys’ and ‘how’,
The ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’,
The ‘must do’ and ‘have musts’
The discerning eyebrows,
Dancing flamenco
With waspish tongues:
Shreds of half-understood conversations
Heard at someplace else –
That may ease this evening of discontent.

But in our hearts, as the arguments roll
We become detached more and more.

© Dan Husain
July 14, 2005

When We're Dead. . .

When we’re dead
Strange people crawl into our intimate spaces.
I see the aunt who spewed venom
Washing utensils in a kitchen
Where once we chopped coriander and cucumber
With other assorted vegetables
For a salad that I fussed and you fretted upon
But in the end we did relish eating it
Over a meal of courgette and prawn.

And there is this uncle,
Weeping profusely next to my mother,
Who always thought I am good for nothing;
A wastrel who lived off his parent’s deeds.
He once said he had a job for me –
A sales executive in a respectful company –
But we knew in his motives he is suspect;
He only intends to oblige, to humiliate.

Oh! There is this beautiful cousin,
Who once was besotted with me,
Washing her lovely daughter’s nappies
In a bathroom where once I washed
Our little girl’s clothes and yours too
When you lay nursing after a painful birth giving.
And as I rinsed them dry
You smiled through the slit of light
That fell across the bed,
Your lithe body, your blessed face.

And there they sit, my friends,
Huddled around my forlorn father
Who only shakes his head and sighs –
If he had to die
Why did he take his life?
Why didn’t he also perish
In the same car accident
That snatched his wife and lovely kid?

© Dan Husain
May 5, 2005

PS: This poem was written after an extended tragedy in my family. An uncle of mine lost his wife and daughter in a car accident and then 20 days later committed suicide. I wrote this poem on his day of funeral. This is my humble tribute to the lovely family of Shakeel Abidi, Deeba Abidi and Sara Abidi (She was only 16).

Breakdown

So she says she is hurt
Tossed up and thrown
By flippant waves
Of my carefree words
At jagged stones
That her perception constructs.

So I wonder throat parched
In early hours of a thawing March
Didn't she see peeping, beckoning
Between the lines, behind the words
My love for her,
My indifference for others?

© Dan Husain
March 25, 2005

Betrayal

Drowning in silence
The moment shrieks
At the gnawing violence
Of this mind’s deceit
But the eyes reveal
What the lips conceal -
A promise broken
And a melancholic defeat.

© Dan Husain

Upside Down

A few months back I was sitting in a hospital lounge and I picked up a magazine, The Week, to while my time. The magazine had an article on existence of God and detailed some chemist or physicist, Dr. Unwin's work on God's existence. Dr. Unwin used Bayes theorem and the concept of conditional probability to prove God's existence. He began with the premise that the chance God exists is 50:50. Then he threw in more information and revised his a priori probabilities. The iterative process continued till he exhausted his set of information. The end result was that the probability that God exists is 2/3.

I picked it up from there and wrote this.

Upside Down

Upside down
Like a sage’s tale
Spun in a Darwinian yarn
We receive life’s wisdom-
One day there is God,
The other nothing.

In a sprawling precinct of a mosque
From the member to the mehrab
I see strange bedfellows-
Descartes conforming Islam.
But between the matter and the myth
Between the sword and the scythe
God waivers like a quark;
Like a twist in a tale
Poignant, humorous, stark

I turn a page
There is ‘Paradise Lost’ in its verses
I turn another
God struts in probability’s realm with Bayes.
A million tongues sprout here
With a million words on their tips
But I have heard of a chemist
Who works backwards to reach forward.
He says the chance that God exists is 2/3
(Surely a smaller fraction than 9/11)
And unwittingly he is named Dr. Unwin.

©Murtaza Danish Husain
August 7, 2004
Revised February 22, 2005

I had the option to use the english words for arabic words member (pulpit) and mehrab (arch) but I retained the arabic ones purely for the phonetic effect. Similarly, I am not sure whether Dr. Unwin is a physicist or a chemist but I have retained chemist because it conveys subtle drama.

Darkness. . .

So the orange sun
Of our once heady love
Has slid past
The gray arch
Of our everyday horizon.

And now a vacuous sky
Screeches at me
Like an anguished cry
Of a beast slain
By a butcher’s machete.

I turn my back
On the graying memories
And let the dusk
Settle in cavernous chimneys
Bellowing smoke
Like funeral pyres
Of the day
That has just met its end.

Softly the darkness shrouds
Trampling twigs and leaves
That you fondly buried
In your diary of poetry
And good deeds.

But I draw blood from eyes
Seek redemption for
Sunken hollowed cheeks
As I stare at the reflection
That the mirror throws –
A body of a poet;
A soul of a whore.

© Dan Husain
June 17, 2005

Confabulations

There are days
When I see afloat
In your iridescent eyes
Many hued happiness
Teasing me,
Beckoning me
To paint
The rest of my days
With it.

I am wondering,
Still musing
When you gently knock me,
“Why?
Are you drowned in my eyes?”
I emit a coy laugh –
Wish I wasn’t
Carrying the burden
Of being wise.

And hence we go from here
To bougainvillea-laden street,
Orange morning,
Silver bleached beach,
Alfresco caf้e
In Parisian neighborhood
Where we, carefree, laugh till
Time stands still.

ฉ Dan Husain
May 10, 2005

Bazaar. . .

In the bazaar of conscience
We sell vestiges of notions
That we held close to our breasts
When home was mother’s lap
Or humped spaces on crooked boughs
And bliss two candies worth
Or a splash in village ponds.

But now we have sold
Our dove-eyed souls
And like a majestic eagle peck –
Blasé to the emanating odor –
The dead pigeon’s flesh; and when bloated
We leave the rest for others
In nature’s design to feast upon.

© Dan Husain
April 19, 2005

The Trivia of A Brooding Mind - The Complete Series

I
The Trivia…

Perched on a mountain top
With icy winds
Against brazen cheeks
And a writhing river
Amidst mottled green
Life perhaps is a spectacle
And a handful of perspectives
That we bequeath
Our hearts’ each twist.

II
The Brooding…

In the middle of
A dreary afternoon
I woke with a start.
My throat dry
Bruised with a thousand sighs
With voices within
Like a million cries –
Enough! I plug my ears
I wish to hear
Your euphonious voice
Before I slide into sleep again.

III
Falling Apart…

Lost somewhere
In our efforts
To carve
Our separate worlds
Is perhaps
That nascent feeling
We lovingly nurtured
To drape
Our days with.

IV
A Spanner in The Works…

It was just a face
No more than a pattern
An entity in space
Of many seen in a tavern
That waits its end
At the corner of a shabby street -
Morose, moribund -
Epitomizing mediocrity's defeat.
And though it reflected much,
It said nothing.
An average man's fate is such;
It's sealed before the morn begins.

V
A Scene at A Café…
Epilogue

I place my hands on yours.
You quietly withdraw: unsure.
Our silence engulfs
A million wishes unsaid.
I wish to say
But you place your fingers
On my pouting lips –
“Don’t ask!
I have no answers.”
But when did I seek an answer,
I only pose the question –

What is life
If not
A glimmer of love
In your gaping eyes?

© Dan Husain
April 22, 2005

Union. . .

Like dust
Rising in whorls
To an iridescent sky
My words reach your lips
Seeking refuge in
A beloved’s smile.
You drink from them,
Your thirst satisfied.
I look above –
Nimbus clouds in
A summer sky.

© Dan Husain
April 21, 2005

Portrait...

Scratched beyond recognition
At the margin of today's paper
That lies soulless
On your coffee table -
As we talk unsure, hushed
Our voices sliding into pauses abrupt -
Is perhaps my face
That you so fondly drew
Knowing it's me on the phone for you.

© Dan Husain
April 13, 2005

A Poet's Dilemma

Drunken metaphors
Cavorting to strange rhythms,
Hauling sackfuls
Of allegory, even cliché
Pilfered from a Bedouin’s caravan,
Spice-laden, my words,
But their aroma
is lost to a critic's blocked nose.

© Dan Husain
March 30, 2005

Earthquake...

In the faint tremors
Of your quivering lips
My world tumbles
As it seeks them for a kiss

© Dan Husain
March 16, 2005

Rendezvous…

They’ve just met
And he is already lost
In the wafting aroma
Of her mesmerizing plots
Of a life spent together -
Lazing, weening
Through an Eliotesque afternoon
Or a Parisian evening.

They’ve just met
And he has already travelled
Through soulful lanes,
Self-reflecting alleys,
The landscapes that her
Words weave –
From the giddy heights of Mt. Sinai
To the meandering Ghats of Kashi.

They’ve just met
And he has already
Measured his life in slots.
So much for a rendezvous
That trips between
The real and déjà vu –
A confession in his soul’s Mecca
Or a pilgrimage to her charm-laden Jerusalem.

© Dan Husain
March 17, 2005

Afternoons & Jacaranda Smell

Latticed windows & thatched roof
Partly shroud a room full
Of conversations. We stretch our legs.
Our tongues wag, our heads sag,
Dust laden tales spring
From our minds’ recesses.
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick
Drearily the afternoon clock ticks
Our heads swell
With jacaranda smell
As we’re sucked in -
Sucked in -
Our tales’ loose ends.

And thus we escape from
Escape from

Latticed windows & thatched roof
Partly shrouding a room full
Of conversations. Where we stretch our legs.
Let our tongues wag, our heads sag.
Dust laden tales springing
From our minds’ recesses.
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick
Merrily the afternoon clock ticks
Our heads swell
With jacaranda smell
And we happily stay
In the loose ends of our tales.

©Dan Husain
May 26, 2003