Read it Live

At the end of the day, it’s just you and me. Age and time dance hand in hand like a curious symphony, discordant with physique and texture, A wrinkle, a cramp, a creak in the neck, like old woodboards in a dilapidated house. The trouble is not over as things settle down, as the dust [...]

I know not love. I have never loved one without my self. That may mean I just might be more accursed than I think. And that, dear friends and all, is a scary thought. Does hell exist or heaven? I’ve seen enough to know we can create our own of either mode. But if they [...]

I will fall like a cut dove I will rise like a swan song I am the secret I am the mystery I am the Lamp I am the Niche I am the veil I am the hidden I contemplate myself before I celebrate myself and in doing so I live again I will float [...]

Note: Don’t worry abt the incoherence between title and story. It’s drawn from a deeply Sufi context that I do not expect most people to know. (If you’re interested, read up Ann Marie Schimmel’s And Mohammad is the Messenger) Could a love be so big that it shadows the sun that is Juliet? Could a [...]

Drops of music fall upon a water of calm longing, stilled longing, like a quivering broken quill, hovering, above a blank sheet. Who shall pat this longing on its fragmented, decayed, sore back? Multitudes of sweet sounds tiptoe behind each other like soft twilight shadows; they ripple like a bead curtain rustled into motion, thrust [...]

The idea of death is a dream you and I watch with heavy-lidded open eyes. The smoke has swirled its last now. The haze and craze have died down. The last of the bells tolled last night when we dreamt our fight and the monster died. We shall look back now with pride. We entered, [...]

Kunnn… I imagine a soft whisper wafting across the forehead of nothingness. Spaceless aeons, timeless infinities, ceaseless beginnings; it was done. An old man with a crown and a frosty beard, playing a game of chess, coughs. Kunnn. So it was. Why does one imagine nothingness to be black? I’m defined by opposites as are [...]

Have you ever known passion to pose for a picture? Surging and thrashing its head, it breaks away from the cities of the dead into a wilderness of its own make. Why do you run? Why do you thrust your face in the burning pupil of the sun, when adrenaline shoots through your system like [...]

It is done. The last song has been sung. The last rung has been strung. It is done. I will not know what I am saying; not till the half-light has been sprung. It is done. I lie. I lie. There’s an ink stain in the sky. It spreads and whips across the sun. It [...]

Does it take a man to do something doable? Do the stars do the deed or does destiny drive the drill? I do not know the dirge of the doves nor of the dew drops dangling from the dead leaf. I disappear in my dark shadow. There never was a day when death did not [...]

“The boy,” said the little girl. Her eyes still shone with tears that were more precious to me than all the stones men hold dear. Perhaps her knee flared with the scraping she had taken, for she grimaced. I rubbed some more FairyDust on the wound, and she smiled openly. “Tell me about the little [...]

Not possible, not possible… So whispered the demon one dark night, and the world did stop atop resolutions and their tangibilities. He walks every night. Every night he walks with his pockets full of loads, full of rattling, snarling loads he would chuck at every river bend if he just could. But the river flows [...]

‘Tis a story about a moment vanished not far into the past. Night time. Two people walking. The moon holds its ghostly aura to itself, but smiles benevolently down at whomever cares to smile back. Two people smiling. One of them’s wrapped in a chador. The other has hair with red streaks. They walk and [...]

No one knows about the Deity or the Devil, but Darkness crouches everywhere, fluttering dark wings. I first met MaryJane during my second year at Dane Bheem Medical School, Karachi. I had recently broken up wth my girlfriend. She was beautiful, intelligent, charming — a woman I had thought was my soul-mate, naive shit that [...]

You wouldn’t call me the father of lies if you knew me. You wouldn’t call me the accursed demon if you knew my essence. You wouldn’t dare call me God’s enemy if you knew what was in my heart. I was a lover, the stoutest, the devoutest, the most annihilated Lover there ever was. No [...]

Oh me! Oh mine. I placed my hand On her marble hand. Oh me! She cried. I dried Her tears, Like dew drops off A worn out leaf. Oh mine! I tried Soothing her so hard, But all the stars Ran away. What is there? What you or Me or mine? It is I, and [...]

It begins like a dark night in a mausoleum. At first, you venture into the dark like a kid on a dare. The outlines of things around you seem scary and threatening and big and silent, and you take the opportunity to stumble and fall and get up again. Falling seems like the right thing [...]