Poems forever
No man is an island
By John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Excerpted from Donne’s “Meditation 17”
Moors in our hearts
By Suhd Nazeer
Attic. Far from the madding crowd.
silence sedates sundries and all.
A disgraced honeybee hovers over
the window box while the hummingbirds
dance out of proportion, their shadows
mocking them well on the walls inside.
-music stirs from sleep-
A mademoiselle, in bathrobe,
is playing ‘thy warm embrace’
in D minor on her piano, drowned
and drowsed, her face mascaraed,
scatters of letters rest upon the wooden floor,
her romantic blouse kept sprawling
on her bed, eating its heart out for her.
She just played on and on,
vacantly gazing at the glazed frost
veiling the window pane.
In the attic across, akin to hers,
A silhouette was playing Mozart’s requiem.
Cleaning Colors from Memory
By Haseeb Sultann
My first memory of the colour green is my carpet
and of the colour white is of the paint on the windows.
I always thought I was walking in a sea when I learned to walk.
Not knowing that the colours white and green would mean
I would have to adjust to knowing my blood’s clean.
As I grew up with the green of the leaves turning brown
And the white of the clouds covered in grey
I didn’t feel clean anymore.
There was no clean air to breathe
no clean feelings to feel
no clean soul to be.
I don’t feel so pure.
The oceans’ reality is dividing me,
As I amÊunderstanding the breaking of humanity
White only exists as a background now
technology, and in LED screens.
So will you
Help me find the naive understanding of
what white and green used to be?
Pure white.
Pure green.
Pure me.
I need you
By Sunia Tanweer
At that point when
One’s too numb to feel
Anymore.
When the heart aches
But you know that
The ones around are all snakes,
Ready to poison your soul.
You say that you love humans,
Am I not human enough for you?
You say that you have a helping hand,
But you never hear me when I feel blue?
Say, will you be there when I need you?
Compiled by SK
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