Breath
(c) Famida Basheer
A breath is all it takes
to toss the clouds out of a mind's eye.
One is a believer..One is a kafir
The strains of dispute are tinged
with the unholier sections of a holy book.
In an enlightened world the knowing eye is suspicious
of any religion that would decry another
That would hold a bias against all those that disbelieve.
There is no place for reason in a doctrine
dominated by its own dogmas.
So the world crawls with disbelievers..
That is every single person who does not believe
in the other's belief system..
Crawl crawl crawl
infidels, Kafirs and abominations unto The Lord..
The ones that stand up straight
are the ones who accept themselves
enough to not be part of a group.
Is there a word for them?
Walk Away
(c) famida basheer
Walk away into the other room.Walk away.
What will I fnd there except a void
full of all that is not the previous room.
A better void because it is
not filled with all that will cause me
to react to a clueless voice.
That will keep my mind from meandering
in search of a reason
for the unreasonable. I pick up a magazine
look hard at the pictures without
really seeing anything at all.
Thus blinded I stare.
Blinking back dry eyes
that have long spent their reservoir.
If I were a dam
I would be written about.
Children would play in my dry sands
Older folk would talk of the good ole days
when it was so full of monsoon water.
How they lived off the massive fish of those waters
and grew their paddy there
and washed their babies on its banks
and went rowing on a sunday afternoon
in a home made boat of coconut wood.
I focus hard on the magazine ..
its pictures show starving
Indian children .They make excellent copy
in western magazines.Slum Dogs
some bright Britisher dared to call them that.
His movie was nominated ten times. He won eight ..
Nobody protested enough.
And India was thrilled that the white man
bequeathed her an Oscar.. nay two!!
Celebration time!
There are women in India everywhere
who will smile as they feed a stranger's children.
Come they will say. Eat. Thank you
for receiving this food that I give you with my love.
Thank you for toting up points of goodness for me
so I will pass on comfortably
into another heaven when I die.
Thank you for being impoverished
so I can be rich with heavenly blessings.
Thank you for strenghthening the promise.
Thank you for emboldening me
to keep my eyes very wet!
Feathers
(c) Famida Basheer
One was for swirling the breezes
One for counting slivers of insect breath
that wavered under bird wing;
but mainly one was to use as a quill
to fashion dots on butterfly things
Simply because wings must fly
and feathers must shed.
Simply because.
But one more lay silent
among a bed of dreams
where the mare of night was white.
white as bird feather
lost in its own starkness
perturbed at the immortality
of angel wing.
Wet Sleeves
(c) Famida Basheer
and I count the ocean
and I subtract a wave here and there.
and the taste of the song is salt
and the dark wet sleeves of a city flap around me.
And I long for an odour that will remind me
of the long dead arms of my father and my mother.
They were good people my father and my mother
good till the last breath
good as in good and not as in notbad.
In a far away place they call heaven
they look at each other and never see me.
Look at each other
and none else but each other
and never see me.
She Wrote
(c) Famida Basheer
She wrote
throwing words away that were
lightened with slivers of the silver of summer fish
that were blackened with edges of a startled evening
that distributed its illusions
among textures of possibility
She wrote
for no reason else than to return to herself
to settle in the lukewarmth of contentment
that shared itself with her own withins
to return her to the notions that introduced her to
her startling self ; embroidered with the suddenness
of her own comprehensions; her own misconceptions.
She wrote
and while she did that, she knew herself.
Raaaound
(c) Famida Basheer
The world is raaaooooound!
Not really.. elliptical maybe;
but never mind.If I should write
a poem about it, I would write it round..
a circular poem..
without beginning or end,
circling upon itself. Its imagery
all swirling tiny circles.Its lines
beginning and ending on themselves.
The whole poem a clean round cycle
that would make the reader grapple
to find where it starts;
like the beginning
of a roll of cellotape;
and never know when it ends;
like childhood.
Ouroborus chewing on its own Greek tail.
Today
(c) Famida Basheer
Today.At Dawn. As I walked along a cobbled street
I smelled the remnant powers
of jasmine in the air
even as the scents of other smells
were jostling to fill the day;
were nodding their dew ridden stems
bending a brand new sky towards
burlap horizons crowded with possibilities.
Today. At dawn. As I walked along a cobbled street
I followed my thoughts like a dog
that could not find its way home
even as smaller thoughts ran along its belly
like fleas that burrowed and covered themselves with fur
and disappeared from themselves.
Today, I thought deeply of a tomorrow
and created soft mind pictures
which are as untrue as any imagination.
Tomorrow, I think I will think of today.
