tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45397524038249423292024-03-08T04:01:01.076-05:00What I think, see, and live is all to share with youShafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-58192994274660935112015-10-29T15:52:00.000-04:002015-10-29T16:00:06.816-04:00Into the night<br />
The night<br />
unfolded its silky silence,<br />
unrolled its pleasant warmth.<br />
In the confluence of moments,<br />
we sat.<br />
<br />
Leaning into the night,<br />
you say,<br />
"These are my fears.<br />
Tonight,<br />
I'm not burdened by them.<br />
And, these are my dreams.<br />
Tonight,<br />
I'm not bound by them.<br />
<br />
You have fire in your eyes.<br />
You have patience upon your lips.<br />
<br />
Unbound by your dreams,<br />
unburdened by your fears,<br />
you reach into the heart of the night.<br />
And you claim it as your own.<br />
<br />
<br />
I witness a nightflower's triumphant bloom.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-36144282954706859282015-05-23T11:23:00.000-04:002015-05-25T13:30:02.475-04:00A flower dies tonight<br />
Summer is in bloom. Memories come back in wafts of floral fragrance in the cool evening air. Clouds cover the scorching sun and I sit down to write this to you. A letter I will never send.<br />
<br />
I picked a gardenia, held it gently before I put it in water. Perhaps only to kill it slowly. Gardenias were your favorite.<br />
<br />
The white of surrender, the scents of intrigue. The blooms of peace. This letter never read. Your memory, for now, stays fresh in water.<br />
<br />
The scent of gardenia dissipates through the night.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-13399121159627873472015-05-16T13:45:00.000-04:002015-07-05T15:08:43.215-04:00The Myth of Atlas<br />
The weight of the world<br />
on my shoulders.<br />
I want to tell the story again.<br />
----<br />
<br />
1.<br />
<br />
I want to tell your story.<br />
I want to live your story,<br />
your dreams.<br />
I want to feel your sorrow,<br />
see your stars.<br />
<br />
I want to tell the story<br />
as if it's a wildfire<br />
spreading across our plains,<br />
and becomes a legend on the horizon.<br />
<br />
I want to tell the legend<br />
until the legend is vast,<br />
until we forget it was our story,<br />
until we believe its mythical powers.<br />
<br />
I believe our stories are mythical.<br />
I believe all stories are mythical.<br />
I want to tell the myth,<br />
the story again.<br />
<br />
2.<br />
<br />
I kneel on the right,<br />
bracing my left,<br />
shoulders flat,<br />
head bowed--<br />
expentant;<br />
Atlas the giant<br />
reborn<br />
to bear the story of<br />
your world<br />
in silent witness.<br />
<br />
A poet's gift.<br />
Atlas's curse.<br />
We tell the story.<br />
Again.<br />
<br />
3.<br />
<br />
Atlas is a poet.<br />
<br />
A poet sees the pain,<br />
seizes the hurt,<br />
feels the weight of it<br />
crushing,<br />
and carries it on her bent back<br />
to the end of time.<br />
<br />
Atlas carries the world,<br />
holding it,<br />
feeling it,<br />
loving it,<br />
breathing it in,<br />
as if it is his own.<br />
<br />
The giant he is,<br />
he carries with his brute force<br />
and caresses with his deftest touch unfelt,<br />
all the joys and sorrows<br />
of the world.<br />
<br />
Atlas<br />
on his broad shoulders,<br />
unending strength,<br />
carries what others cannot.<br />
Atlas is my brother.<br />
<br />
Atlas is a poet.<br />
<br />
4.<br />
<br />
I stand witness<br />
to our times.<br />
<br />
This house of<br />
life and change,<br />
this playfield of<br />
passion and fire,<br />
this temple of<br />
sanctity and sacrifices,<br />
this garden of<br />
blooms and thorns,--<br />
yearn to be<br />
witnessed<br />
and be told to times and generations<br />
not yet passed.<br />
I stand witness to<br />
this world<br />
where cries of suffering<br />
empties one of empathy,<br />
where mourning of cultures<br />
deceased<br />
is in chorus with<br />
triumphant marches of new revolutions.<br />
<br />
Someone must remember and hold on.<br />
<br />
Someone must feel every pang,<br />
must sing every note,<br />
and must see the vivid colors<br />
of fire burning the woman in Kabul<br />
and the fire of passion<br />
in two lovers' burning kisses,<br />
and witness them,<br />
be tormented by them,<br />
be taken up by the tidal surge,<br />
must surrender to them<br />
and feel the truth in them.<br />
<br />
If a story isn't heard,<br />
how can it be retold?<br />
Who would lament for the splendors of Babylon,<br />
if none witnessed<br />
that it was<br />
looted, gutted and burnt to the ground?<br />
<br />
5.<br />
<br />
The wonders of the world<br />
wondrous,<br />
the little wildflowers<br />
wondrous,<br />
the light of the setting sun,<br />
--a noose,<br />
getting tighter around<br />
her swanly neck<br />
-- that is wondrous;<br />
the golden dawn shining<br />
on the hopeless drunk<br />
lying in his filth,<br />
that is wondrous,<br />
moonlight encircling the shadows<br />
of friends,<br />
that is wondrous.<br />
<br />
And wonder is nothing<br />
if not witnessed.<br />
Wonder loses its myth<br />
if no one bears the burden of<br />
its beauty.<br />
<br />
6.<br />
<br />
To hold on to the world,<br />
to love its sad beauty,<br />
to witness it throb with life,<br />
to believe in its myth,<br />
to carry it to the next people,<br />
and to retell it as it all happened--<br />
coated in the power of myth:<br />
if that isn't the heaviest burden,<br />
Atlas's broad shoulders wait to know<br />
what mightier challenge there is.<br />
<br />
I witness this burden.<br />
Atlas is my brother.<br />
The poet searches for the myth.<br />
<br />
I want to tell the story again.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-53315258879707971932015-05-16T13:11:00.001-04:002015-05-29T11:27:35.779-04:00Ephemeral<br />
It has been<br />
seasons<br />
since these lips drank the sweetness<br />
of an ardent kiss.<br />
Oh, the pleasant warmth!<br />
<br />
<br />
And, now you come<br />
in Apollo's chariot,<br />
with all your green exuberance<br />
adorned with the splendor of spring.<br />
<br />
<br />
Spring is a fleeting joy,<br />
nestled between barren winter<br />
and searing summer.<br />
<br />
These kisses of a new lover,<br />
this courtship dance,<br />
this new spring<br />
washes away<br />
memory of the heart<br />
laying fallow<br />
and prepares it for sowing<br />
the seeds of a summer love.<br />
<br />
The romance of all this is<br />
in its fleeting nature.<br />
It doesn't ever last<br />
very long.<br />
<br />
Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-19175112774777113522015-03-22T11:37:00.001-04:002015-05-16T13:06:29.933-04:00Spring I<br />
<br />
Spring is a time<br />
for renewal.<br />
New growth,<br />
new flowers,<br />
new dreams<br />
take from the rainbow<br />
and paint<br />
with Van Gogh's brushes.<br />
<br />
Spring is a time<br />
for remembrance.<br />
New buds break through<br />
the shells of old;<br />
and new love<br />
envelop<br />
the hollow of old.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-57509340741814341152015-03-22T11:15:00.001-04:002015-03-22T11:30:58.488-04:00Untitled<br />
A poem read a thousand times<br />
colors in<br />
new imagination<br />
as though<br />
I see you in this new light,<br />
not having seen you<br />
in seasons before.<br />
<br />
Salve is,<br />
the poem<br />
does not<br />
shy away<br />
from<br />
this new imagining.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-22264546796720178732014-10-12T11:32:00.002-04:002014-10-12T20:24:48.530-04:00Wine from Rumi's bottle<br />
Falling in love is much like<br />
reading Rumi's poems.<br />
<br />
Never ask if this is the best<br />
poem this night,<br />
but ask if the poem<br />
speaks to you.<br />
<br />
Ask if the bottle<br />
from which you drink<br />
is a gift,<br />
and not if that bottle is the best<br />
you could buy at the last call<br />
of the Vintner.<br />
<br />
The Vintner wishes you to<br />
taste the wine,<br />
feel it in your tongue,<br />
infuse the sweet aroma in your breath;<br />
and neither to own<br />
nor to enslave the wine.<br />
<br />
The wine you want to own<br />
may not ever be truly yours.<br />
But, at the end of the night,<br />
the bottle that<br />
holds you gently at a kiss's distance<br />
wishes of your lips.<br />
Only at that hour<br />
the two of you become one,<br />
for you become the lover, keeper, and dreamer<br />
of the bottle.<br />
<br />
Falling in love is much like<br />
reading Rumi's poems.<br />
If you're wishing for a different poem,<br />
you keep on wishing.<br />
Because gathering close to the heart<br />
what is yours,<br />
and not asking if it is the<br />
best you can gather is the secret of love.<br />
<br />
Open the bottle.<br />
Breathe in your lover's breath.<br />
Drink the Red.<br />
Kiss the lips.<br />
Read of Rumi.<br />
Or the glow of the morning sun<br />
can never caress your naked flesh.<br />
Or the silver of the fullest moon<br />
can never shine on your naked soul.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Dedicated to Michelle Castleberry and Matt DeGennaro. The muse for this poem is a secret who I keep deep in my bottle. And of course, Rumi.<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-15486959357467553442014-10-12T10:53:00.000-04:002015-01-28T13:59:22.414-05:00One man's freedom, another's fright<br />
Your post adolescent<br />
manly fingers<br />
under pressure<br />
from your demanding<br />
arm strength<br />
hold this thirsty blade<br />
at my neck.<br />
<br />
My post modern<br />
deadly fingers<br />
quiver from my<br />
technological might,<br />
holding these aerial sentinels<br />
at your head.<br />
<br />
Not that we will<br />
break off this staring match;<br />
but if we did,<br />
we may just be able to go home<br />
to our domesticity<br />
where your mother may<br />
make me a hearthen flatbread,<br />
and where my son may hold your hand<br />
in urging to play swords with him.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
A poem commissioned by David Lockman.Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-58466911934986773582014-09-28T22:08:00.000-04:002014-09-29T18:40:23.258-04:00Verses on wisdom<br />
Wise among us is he<br />
who sings joyously of life and its promises.<br />
<br />
Wiser among us is he<br />
who has seen the valley of desolation<br />
and yet has risen from it<br />
singing of hope.<br />
<br />
Wisest among us is he<br />
who sits deep in the valley of<br />
desolation, amid Sorrow,<br />
and sings life's song<br />
to Sorrow itself,<br />
so that there too can be joy<br />
in the heart of Sorrow.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-12728225748037046722014-09-27T20:16:00.001-04:002014-09-28T22:17:12.426-04:00What the mountains teach me<br />
In the truth of their friendship,<br />
the mountains told me that<br />
Wind erodes,<br />
at no fault of her own.<br />
It is in her nature.<br />
<br />
And they foretold<br />
that you'd corrode me.<br />
Though I've learned from the mountains,<br />
how hard it is to corrode away<br />
gently!<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-41554945225601644352014-09-27T20:14:00.001-04:002014-09-28T22:21:05.881-04:00An invitation<br />
If you come for my funeral,<br />
remember this poem with you.<br />
<br />
You'll gather with others,<br />
by the river, in the forest,<br />
where I once was<br />
and where you will let go of me,<br />
like ashen emotions in the downwind.<br />
<br />
You'll have known only parts of me,<br />
like others gathered,<br />
although your effort was to know me;<br />
because that's all I've known of myself.<br />
<br />
You'll have loved me for the friend I was<br />
and you'll meet ones whose enemy I would've been;<br />
and all gathered may agree that<br />
I might've been a worthy enemy<br />
as much as a worthless friend.<br />
<br />
You'll come with a bouquet of memories.<br />
And may yet, in my living days left,<br />
I give you something that you'll cherish then.<br />
But knowing the barren field I'm now,<br />
I foresee that<br />
your bouquet will be of<br />
dark dead roses.<br />
<br />
That will be, though, something;<br />
for "many a man has been given less."<br />
When you come to mark my passing,<br />
please know that regardless of what<br />
you'll have left of me,<br />
I've tried to give the most I could.<br />
A poor man, I was given little to give away.<br />
And so, when you come to give me away,<br />
I wish for it to be<br />
only<br />
a soft spoken farewell,<br />
a quiet smile.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-50933913310191307972014-09-27T20:06:00.000-04:002014-10-01T15:20:18.597-04:00Nesting<br />
We were walking to<br />
nowhere.<br />
There happened to be a tree<br />
with a squirrel<br />
we passed by.<br />
Outside was this<br />
anticipation for fall and<br />
the promise of winter.<br />
<br />
You, me, and the squirrel knew<br />
if there was ever a time<br />
to build a nest,<br />
to seek refuge from merciless cold<br />
wind buffeting us,<br />
this was the time.<br />
<br />
In its eager mouth<br />
and busy claws,<br />
the squirrel gathered twigs.<br />
Each twig, a triumphant flag<br />
hoisted in the wind,<br />
not regretting, but celebrating the wind:<br />
the squirrel put them precisely<br />
together.<br />
<br />
I imagine you put your twigs<br />
precisely together,<br />
building a nest that only have room for<br />
one.<br />
<br />
Next fall,<br />
far apart,<br />
we'll still watch squirrels build their nests;<br />
perhaps a gulf,<br />
perhaps a continent between us<br />
that we'll not mention out of kindness.<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-22034016500877089692014-09-21T12:14:00.002-04:002015-02-04T13:41:14.817-05:00In sorrow of Victor<br />
The first flowers of spring<br />
wish for breaking winter's shackle.<br />
I, then, step outside<br />
for a lonely walk,<br />
wishing for your touch,<br />
much as the spring's warmth<br />
surrounds me.<br />
I want to sing of you<br />
as the warblers sing of spring.<br />
Unlike theirs,<br />
my song remains unsung.<br />
<br />
<u><br /></u>
The first colors of fall<br />
brings respite from summer's burn.<br />
The cool air and the blue sky<br />
framed by rainbow leaves<br />
make me wish of your vibrance.<br />
Inside me,<br />
the drought of summer singes<br />
and the drab of winter reigns.<br />
Walking in the hues of fall,<br />
I, a blank canvas,<br />
wish of your colors.<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
You surround me,<br />
not touching.<br />
You paint around me,<br />
not coloring.<br />
I walk towards you<br />
in the fall,<br />
in the spring,<br />
with tears dark,<br />
and a mourning song unsung.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------<br />
<br />
Inspiration came from <a href="http://www.frenchtoday.com/french-poetry-reading/poem-demain-des-l-aube-hugo" target="_blank">this</a>. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-22255557422493447102014-08-24T14:26:00.000-04:002014-08-24T15:58:01.389-04:00Untitled<br />
A bud,<br />
timid,<br />
breaks open into the world,<br />
curious if the sun will shine today.<br />
From the depths of dormancy,<br />
to rise,<br />
requires an audacity,<br />
immeasurable boldness,<br />
treasured only in vulnerability.<br />
<br />
The poem,<br />
from the depth of my emotions,<br />
comes to wonder,<br />
if the shine of your acceptance<br />
will be the reward;<br />
wondering,<br />
not knowing,<br />
brave and timid all the same.<br />
<br />
Every instance<br />
of a bud breaking,<br />
a poem speaking,<br />
a hand seeking another<br />
is an instance<br />
when beauty is self-sufficient<br />
in vulnerability and needs nothing else.Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-36565594847143584382014-08-24T14:06:00.002-04:002014-08-24T16:53:42.847-04:00Pasts of us<br />
Oh, how the world moves!<br />
And we move with it.<br />
A dance of light,<br />
a tune of time,<br />
a step forward--<br />
we move in synchrony.<br />
<br />
Shadows of us<br />
remain in place<br />
in the moment<br />
while the rest of our beings dance on.<br />
<br />
Some strange light,<br />
some melancholy tune,<br />
a faded photo,<br />
the moment at dusk<br />
pull us back gently;<br />
as if to remind<br />
we also were.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-48191602569220923512014-08-24T14:03:00.000-04:002014-09-01T22:06:18.710-04:00Psalm 2, from the Book<br />
I rise in rebellion.<br />
From you,<br />
my heavenly god,<br />
I proclaim my freedom.<br />
I forsake your kingdom<br />
because I'm the king of mine<br />
and the subjects are souls that long for me,<br />
as I am a longing subject in theirs.<br />
<br />
Our divinity comes from<br />
singing our joys in chorus<br />
and crying of our pains in gratitude.<br />
<br />
No smite of your lightning rod<br />
bestows righteousness in us.<br />
Kings and queens of this kingdom<br />
find righteousness in compassion<br />
and in blasphemous inclusion.<br />
<br />
You and your petulant pouting,<br />
you and your whimsical smiting,<br />
you and your arbitrary kindness,<br />
we forego in this kingdom.<br />
<br />
We are Seraphim's spectre<br />
and we proclaim our freedom.Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-5838115869783552962014-08-22T15:24:00.000-04:002014-08-24T14:32:58.747-04:00Dementia<br />
A photograph<br />
of my mother smiling<br />
and holding a child<br />
used to comfort me from its perch on the wall.<br />
<br />
A monochrome,<br />
it used to tell me<br />
that even when I couldn't love<br />
knowingly,<br />
I was loved.<br />
<br />
And though I didn't remember<br />
the moment of that photo,<br />
that moment was etched away<br />
in my mother's heart<br />
along with thousand others.<br />
<br />
It was comfort knowing<br />
the past that is me<br />
was loved and remembered.<br />
<br />
I'm close to my mother.<br />
I smile to her and<br />
I smile with her.<br />
Somehow still<br />
that woman on the wall<br />
is more my mother<br />
and the child more her son than<br />
we are now.<br />
<br />
My mother forgets.<br />
To hold us close.<br />
To care for us.<br />
To sing us a song.<br />
My father called and said,<br />
"your mother forgets everything."<br />
<br />
With every wisp of memory<br />
lost in the puzzle of my mother's brain,<br />
I lose every bit of me:<br />
every bit of me that I couldn't remember,<br />
every bit of me that I might remember,<br />
every bit that I was comforted to have<br />
safe in my mother's keep.<br />
<br />
Now,<br />
everyday my mother forgets<br />
and I wake up a little less of her son.<br />
A little less of her scent<br />
embraces me.<br />
<br />
That photo on the wall shifts.<br />
It slowly decays.<br />
The woman on the photo remembers<br />
to smile,<br />
but not who the child in her arm is.<br />
And some days she remembers that<br />
she is<br />
and she is being held and carried<br />
by a middle aged man.<br />
But who he is,<br />
we can't remember.<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-61792943024577573132014-08-21T10:57:00.001-04:002014-09-23T12:02:14.765-04:00Dhoop<br />
<i>Prologue</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Dhoop is the name of the incense<br />
they burn at the divine pedestals<br />
in hindu houses.<br />
<br />
When I was little,<br />
not old or powerful enough<br />
and not sacred enough,<br />
I looked on from the gateways of the houses<br />
into the rituals,<br />
feeling the waft of sacredness<br />
the air carried to me.<br />
----<br />
<br />
Bold I am,<br />
timid I am,<br />
brave I am,<br />
scared I am;<br />
I watch you glow like a firefly,<br />
worried to reach for you<br />
if you fly away.<br />
<br />
I reach.<br />
I retract.<br />
I dream.<br />
I wake up.<br />
I thirst.<br />
I thirst.<br />
Turbulence is an understatement for this.<br />
<br />
The elegance of your presence<br />
cuts me, cuts me.<br />
<br />
So I seek sanctuary<br />
in the smell of Dhoop,<br />
and turn into this boy I once was,<br />
not worried about being turned away,<br />
standing at the doorway,<br />
taking in the fragrance,<br />
like there's no tomorrow.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-46466682528260754472014-08-21T10:51:00.000-04:002014-08-28T13:49:16.576-04:00The storm and me<br />
This twilight,<br />
as I was running,<br />
I saw a dark storm passing.<br />
Massive the storm,<br />
spanning the horizons,<br />
I chased after it.<br />
<br />
Hearing the thunder<br />
in my footsteps<br />
and in breath of my flared nostrils,<br />
the storm felt challenged,<br />
and chased after me.<br />
<br />
From field to field,<br />
forest to forest,<br />
barrenness to lushness,<br />
we danced after the other.<br />
<br />
Then the storm lifted me up and whispered<br />
"why do you seek oblivion?"<br />
I said, "I seek,<br />
because I know no other<br />
expression of the fury inside me,<br />
but you.<br />
Because in you,<br />
I find harmony with the storm within.<br />
You sing the song<br />
I yearn to sing."<br />
<br />
Seeing that my unrest was his<br />
and his rage was mine,<br />
cocooning me in serpentine lightning,<br />
the storm let me in.<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-43618988207000869202014-07-22T15:26:00.001-04:002014-07-22T15:26:26.860-04:00I accept<br />
This not a poem,<br />
but it be truer than truest.<br />
<br />
I accept on my feeble shoulders<br />
that be broader than broadest,<br />
all your burden<br />
that you bless me with.<br />
<br />
I ask nothing in return.Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-88392486224425011652014-07-16T01:39:00.000-04:002014-07-16T23:38:13.455-04:00A Gypsy's Letter & My Once Love<br />
These are two poems that're posted on my trip-back-home-blog that speak of a self forlorn for its identity and/or a forgotten place/love. Written this past winter during, obviously, my trip back to my roots.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://shafkatfindshome.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-gypsys-letter.html">A Gypsy's Letter</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://shafkatfindshome.blogspot.com/2014/01/once-my-city-my-love.html">My Once Love</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-31790277832111461402014-07-16T01:37:00.000-04:002014-07-19T15:45:05.005-04:00My morbid passion<br />
"I cannot but see the beauty in all;<br />
because I'm a seer or beauty,<br />
a lover of truth."-- said the poet.<br />
<br />
<br />
"I cannot but drink of the darkness in all;<br />
because I'm a seeker of hurt,<br />
a singer of sorrow." -- laughed the madman within.<br />
<br />
-----<br />
<br />
Dedicated to Kahlil GibranShafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-37389683794442774602014-07-16T01:33:00.002-04:002014-07-16T10:48:03.217-04:00Untitled<br />
A mighty oak<br />
sprawls upward<br />
spreading dreams<br />
of growth and greenness.<br />
It gives the world its breath<br />
in hopes that the world would<br />
care for the many dreams<br />
it spreads in its acorns.<br />
<br />
When you pick up an acorn<br />
from seasons last:<br />
Be Gentle;<br />
because you cradle<br />
the corpse of a dream.<br />
<br />
<br />Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-6663840528355074412014-07-06T01:13:00.000-04:002014-07-06T10:54:38.144-04:00Flowers from last night<br />
Fallen flowers<br />
in the cool warmth of the morning<br />
reminisce the sweet embrace of the night last.<br />
<br />
Fallen flowers<br />
in the sullen stillness of the morning<br />
lament the possibilities of what could never be.<br />
<br />
Fallen flowers,<br />
like our souls spent,<br />
lay in the tart craving of visions past,<br />
in willing surrender to the harmony<br />
lost.Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4539752403824942329.post-53033018881981671632014-06-11T11:08:00.000-04:002014-06-13T15:37:50.386-04:00Untitled<br />
Far away sounds ring<br />
in my bones.<br />
Colors, once black and grey,<br />
multi-hued now,<br />
dazzle my eyes.<br />
Lonely winds once<br />
raise a storm today.<br />
<br />
Whose dreams color my imagination?<br />
<br />
After seasons of drought,<br />
thirsty I was,<br />
rain has come.<br />
Spring has come.<br />
You have come.<br />
<br />
Far away sounds sing<br />
in my bones.<br />
They sing, "Come away.<br />
Come! Come!"Shafkat Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14845017452239593735noreply@blogger.com0