Rain is the ‘Qasid’ of lord
That falls on the ‘chhat’ of every house
To tell them that ‘Nemat’ has been distributed equally
Amongst everyone
But the landlord of my city fears
That sun may rise from our jawline
And rainbow might be casted on the green walls of our house
They say like charges repel each other
So vibGyor can’t be synonymous to our smiles
But what if mirage appears wearing a ‘Burqa’ today
And tells people that
Unlike charges attract each other?
I am not the lover of mirage
I am a poet
And my crown doesn’t shine with diamonds and platinum
But with the pool of tears in my heart
That has been stranded there for so long
That it has become an ocean of ink
With which I paint eyelids over eyelids everyday
But is removed and washed like makeup every night
Maybe the nib of my pen is delicate
Like the blink of an eye
And the road to reality is too meshy
like the threads in my father’s skull cap
But don’t call me the enemy of rain
I am just an imprisoned poem
With a soul of peacock
Eager to stretch my wings and dance in the rain
Without thinking of the aftermath
Can wound ever refuse the caress of an ointment?
My poetry was born in July
But since future of mud puddles
In the streets of the ‘mohalla’ In which we live
Looked brighter than our dreams
And power cut lasts longer
Than the word ‘rights’ in our mind
Winter became its favorite season
My poetry doesn’t pluck flowers from the garden
Rather collect them from the cemetery of people
Whose only fault was ‘being a Muslim’
And now she doesn’t know what to do with all these bouquets
So I gift them to you
To each one of you
In hope that one day
When my child goes to school
He won’t come back like a withered ‘kali’
Wrapped in a shroud of fear
That one day when I wear black
And my brother wears white
We wouldn’t be declared
Murderers of colours
That one day when our dreams see a full moon
And our hearts fly higher Than ‘Oqaab’
Then it wouldn’t be bulldozed to ‘Eid ka chand’
My poetry grows from the seed of fear
That resides closer to us
Than the 'shahrag' of our body
It has changed the composition of our blood
Our body now contains 80% of water
The same water that sky reflects
And you say 'darr ka koi rang nahi hota'
(Fear doesn't have any colour)
So tell me then
What colour do you see When you look up to the sky?