Boom! Takoo!
Smoke choked the lungs of the clouds;
bullets dashed, fleshes ripped,
crimson blood dripped & flawed the black tars on the highway.
Our feet marched underneath the belly of the dust;
gory music filled the hollow wind;
sinking sands gulped the shoes of young boys;
the eyes of men sniffed the powder of floating peppers.
Gun wounds & gone home — Who will sing ghazal to the eardrums of the women in Gaza when their husbands have gone on eternal voyages?
Lands teared into pores,
Homes, shattered; bones, crushed,
Fire sets its camp on mild meadows.
How does a petrichor smell bloody?
Tempting to elegiac wails?
Taste acrid and coldly scented?
Tell some boys not to play on the terrace
when their parents are taking a tour — to the promised land, where they can find the mats that suit their hearts.Tell the girls not to swirl their waists — to the tunes of the rash bullets.
I wish to narrate these to my children,
but my fractured spines won’t let me be.
I wish to tell them there was once a home of peace that flowed with honey & love.
