Trying not to ponder over what comes to pass outdoors... In the absence of these boundaries...
Poems forever
By William Butler Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings...
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?"
By Naufal Alavi
Eyeing these windowless walls
Unable to fathom this peculiar sensation
The unnerving feeling of harmlessness
Numbing, as if capsules of lithium
I identify my last resort ultimately
Trying not to ponder over what comes to pass outdoors
In the absence of these boundaries
The unimaginable mischief
These insinuations make me petrified
As I envision myself collapsing the moment I step out
Shot by some exterminator who wanders
Or abducted by some captor unseen?
Each pace forward accompanies an intimidation
The world infested with ruthless parasites
No means of getting through
When they spread the ailment of incorrigibility
Didn't take long for me to realize, nonetheless
The worthlessness of immobility
How the motionless leaves of the fall
Suffer no other fate but corrosion
This defacement of the world seems immutable
And so does my choice of walking through it
For only the martyr in this world
Writes heaven in his own fortune
By Abid Agha
A soft, tender touch,
the way you cupped the
sunflower’s petals,
as though guarding secrets
of the earth.
Blossoming fully in late spring,
a mesmerizing spill of mahogany
and gold,
unfolding slowly beneath
the first light.
Stories hidden in their
veins grew bright,
soft as golden silk, soothing
to the sight,
drinking in the warmth of your hand.
And even after they fell,
they curled like whispers in the air,
bending back toward the memory
of your touch.
By Mahnoor Ghous
I wonder why, I wonder how,
I became this bitter and sour.
It’s hard to believe
What I have become.
This is not me,
So rude, so blunt.
I used to be so kind, so gentle,
When did I turn foul and cruel?
Nothing happens without reason,
If I have changed, there must be a cause.
Ask yourself what brought this on,
You changed me, once and for all.
All your lies, all your actions,
You caused this pain, left me to burn,
And never cared what I would become.
Now here you stand, right before me,
Looking at the aftermath of your brutality,
Pretending you know nothing.
This heart you broke,
Once? Twice? No, more than I can count.
It used to be delicate, soft as snow,
But each time I pieced it together
It grew harder,
Until it turned into stone.
Yes, I have changed, and I know it.
I feel stronger than ever before.
