Poems forever
Decorating a cake while listening to tennis
The commentator’s rabbiting on and on
about how it’s so easy for Roger, resentment
thick as butter still in a box. Yet word
from those who’ve done their homework
is how the man loves to train-how much
he relishes putting in the hours
just as magicians shuffle card after card,
countless to mere humans
but carefully all accounted for.
At hearing “luck” again, I stop
until my hands relax their clutch
on the cone from which a dozen more
peonies are to materialize. I make it look easy
to grow a garden on top of a sheet
of fondant, and that’s how it should appear:
as natural and as meant-to-be
as the spin of a ball from the sweetest spot
of a racquet whisked through the air like a wand.
- Peg Duthie
Love
By Amna Ameer
The autumn leaves,
Flickering in the sun,
The light softly,
Running over the stories,
Told by the falling trees,
Dried over the ground,
Silent sighs,
Hush over the memories,
Of how it was,
The last time,
As clear as this morning,
The pain once,
Stood oblivious,
Naked to any comfort,
It could not be hidden,
And so it became,
All the more evident,
Every passing evening,
Dying with the sunset,
The wails smelt of smoke,
And the silence lingered,
All night,
Till again the sun rose,
And the clouds gilded,
Over the sky watching over,
Falling crimson leaves,
Making time stand still,
The world moving slower,
The pain quieter,
And love more forgiving,
The sheer purity,
Of solitude,
Kept in itself,
The promise of recovery,
With every ending,
I held on to the beginning,
For what is worth,
Love is love is love.
Masks
By Hafsa Sardar
People tend to wear masks,
Some wear it for deceit,
Some wear it for self protection,
Some wear it to conceal the truth,
Some wear it to hide what the truly are,
Masks are not all worn for illusions.
A hundred winters in our hearts
By Sa’ad Nazeer
Have you ever felt friendless?
I have, it feels like a Romantic
Breaking out of Puritan prison
The freedom gained from this oppression
Goes uncelebrated
Into your countenance it creeps
Ceases the vagrant eye to wander
Smiles steal away
The Frank-Slade air appears on your face
Then feels as if we’re oppressed
By the same freedom we fought for
Frivolous eves and frivolous morns
Pass without any stirs or storms
So does one delirium
Only to come back
At the blink of a moment
The moment that makes you unassailable
The moment that tempts you to go aloof
But the moment lasts not longer
Than a single-night-blooming cereus
The need yet again oars us back
Into the uninviting bosoms-
Of our sweets and amigos.
Disrelish is a heartache;
Love is a heartache
Ah! The contrast between the two.
Compiled by SK
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