soliloquy

Your schtick is so lipsistic,

your game so lame,
you know it!

Lillies blithely strewn,
soaking,

adorn lovers betwixt covers

in the shades of bowers

and leavers aboard caskets

in uncharted silent waters.

Thistles strung high,
choking,

hesitate, then sigh 

and weave faux epistles

to nervous suitors sailing nigh.

The Ur-spirit knows of no gloom
but of its yearning flotsam,
each fragment knows of no bloom
but a figment of its own.

With what pittance
is one bought 

when all that ought to be
known is naught!

Fraught with secret foreboding
of f...utility,

undulating, accumulating
frittering, embittering
freight of our waking hours,
jetsam.

equanimity

habits of creatures

rooted in routes 

routinely trodden

by mortal feet planted

by fears of uprooting

lest any one moment dare

declare its independence

from all others.

Stamp, Stomp, Stump!

the impertinence of impermanence!

whence this odious misery

oozes, what unwell-spring?

expressing repressions,

depressing impressions,

seeping animus
from heavy condition.

lives untold

Unfolding before your very own eyes, friend
is despondent pondering
of a resplendent rendering
of marigold, manifold.

The spirit, that hollow reed,
whistles, haunting each breath...

Retina, cretina!
these gullible eyes
mistake reflected light
for reality.

Muzzled fullness
has a weight
beyond its tears.
Who knew what embankment
lay between you and enchantment?

This poison, dripping,
gripping you in deathly embrace,
tightening with each gulp
of the bottomless cup
of refills, she fills your bones
with leaden suddenness
of time.

Wraps a leaf of folly
around your forehead
and shoves you into bed.

What was it you said?

What was it you said?
that the sky is full of beetles?
that the horses ran dry?
that the poison flew the kites on a breezy day?
that your hands folded into a purse?
that the pool lay its gleaming eyes on you?
that the minister's iron works overtime?
that Lazarus went blind in one ear?
that Coachella is a bony protrusion?
that the miniseries sent an emissary?
that the gaol had a goal (girl?)
and the buoy a boy?
that magic was made of wet matchsticks?
that cream-pie was a muddy delight?
that the menagerie wore lingerie?
that whoever smoked gun was made fun of?
that life is a series of fanatical moves?
that our nature is that of candle-wax?
that we owed the party a favor?
that we weren't courageous enough?
that our dumbbells opened their eyes?
that production and revulsion were friends?
that knives connived to kill?
that wives wived too much?
that bonsai trees wore sleeves?
that cardamom sticks lay bricks?
that mallets are malleable and gullets gullible?
that people never change?
that people never change?

movers and shakers

Geology and biology

move mountains and men
But what teleology moves

men to move mountains

and mountains to move men?

Ocean floor spreads, squeezed

Sediment beds, upwards teased

The plates sliding, gliding

Riding each other

Subducting, obducting

To the depths of molten hell, 

the heights of frozen hell

Grinding ground 

On what grounds?

What madness lies down under?

Tears continents asunder.

Ridges entrenched

Spew crust, recycled

What hearth

fires the earth beneath?

Is all earthly activity 

but radioactivity?

What celestial fuel burns

to light our bodily fires?

The warm glow of a lone star,

Not far.

This fission, that fusion

Dry repetition, wet confusion

of breaking up and getting it on

Without gravity

that binds us apart,

Circling, spinning Earth

Rising, setting Sun

Wouldn’t

Beings geothermal,

metamorphosed, ascend

the cold, dark, vulcan lift

to a barren sphere, adrift.

yonder end

Summer hath a fall

leaves, mercury and all

expanding, expending the spirit

of all those who bear it

in brightness and heat,

wearing wearied feet

that shuffle and rattle,

hum and tattle

with life flowing the brim

with vigor and vim

in long campaigns

across dusty plains

on horses in battle,

men slain like cattle

bright red blood

streams aflood

only to slake
the cracks that take

in swallows in swallows,

a summer hollows

searing, bountiful

scorching, beautiful

remorseless, leaves

behind remorse, leaves.

the gift

“Six hundred Monets”.

“Five hundred? Or the bunny hop it is!”

She smiled.

“Five! You’re such a charming little boy!”

Five double-bats. Emerald twinkle. Monetary exchange. 

Marjan pressed back into the sofa and closed her eyes. Her left hand reached for the knot. Her long black tresses spread into a giant tassel. 

This won’t take long.

With a swerve, Farhad wrapped the green embroidered shawl around his shoulders and covered his head and face so only his eyes were uncovered. A strong smell of saffron shot up his nostrils. Not his favorite bit.

I must be in overdrive. That’s a shit-load of suppressant.

It was ten to seven. Outside, another day lay dying. The decrepit old star had lost another round. Licking snow off the top of mighty Damavand was tough business (let it be said, the tongue was no longer young). 

He looked out the window. The street was emptying. People were hurrying away from darkness, into darkness. Some pursued by dark figures on stilts, others still were shadowing their own stilt-walkers.

It was getting colder inside. The saffron was searing through his sinuses...

He heard a sputter! Soft white brightness flooded the room. He blinked a few times but he couldn't keep his eyes open. Warm, yellow sensations began swimming in his head.

Rotten creepers! I can’t see myself…

Majeed had just finished paying for the rabbits when his eyes caught Leila’s lavender scarf flitting between shelves in the bookstore across the street. Without a word, he tossed the fur-balls into the arms of the bug-eyed shop assistant and ran out. 

Leila turned. She looked surprised and smiled. 

He had lost his facial hair. She hadn't changed a bit.

“Three years? No, wait, four!”

“How are you? I thought you were….”

A gentle breeze brushed the scarf across her lips.

“I came back a year and a half ago. I’ve been staying with Amu in his Niyaazi apartment.” 

He told the story of how he had run out of money in Nishapur and become a vagrant for a few months before giving up.  His promised job hadn’t held out. 

She glanced at her turquoise watch.

“I’ve got to be home before dark. Idris is waiting…”, she said. Her green eyes darted across his youthful face.

“Idris! Chicken-neck Idris! That’s what we called him, didnt’ we? So it seems that he persisted…”

He gave a nervous laugh. She lowered her gaze and bit her lip.

“Did Marjan get married too?”

“No. She works at a florists’ across the Haraz. Baba doesn’t approve a bit. He hasn’t given up looking but her dreadful gift scares all of them away.”

“I can see why.”

A gust blew the scarf off her forehead for a moment. He noticed her hair was as auburn as ever.

“Some of the neighbors have been consulting peers. They think Baba is under a spell. They say the whole affair brings shame to the mahalla.”

“I’d like to visit your Baba sometime. You know I always held him in special regard.”

“Baba has a lot of affection for you too. He often mentions you.”

“He does?”

“He wishes you had stayed back in Larijan. He would have liked to have you for an apprentice.”

“Haha! With my eye for detail I would have brought down many a cursed dwelling! I wanted to  wrestle just like Behram and Aliraza, you know.”

“Idris must be hungry. I think it best if I depart before the sun goes down. I’ll tell Baba you’re in town.”

“Yes, same baksh.”

“May God protect your chosen path.”

The path to the rabbits. My fate.

“Goodbye, Leila. Let my skinny old brother be fed well tonight!”

Dusty red cherries bow down the top left corner of a large mirror in the wall. Hundreds of glittering strands form half an arched column a foot across from the mirror’s right flank. A small faded painting hangs between the mirror and the threaded half-arch. It depicts the snow-clad Roof of Khorasan across a poppy meadow on a bright summer day.

Marjan glances at her crystal watch. She looks at Farhad’s face. It is twisted in a frozen expression of terror. His eyes are open wide now. All she can see are quivering whites.

Six more minutes. 

She remembers the first time it happened.

She is seven and playing suk-suk with Ali, Mehran and Leila  one evening at her uncle’s house in Chelav. Ali blindly wanders through the stable door. Hiding from the others at first and then from strange animal noises, he cowers under one of the stalls. Ali, the master teller of ghost stories (Night Terrorist they called him), taken captive by his own gremlins. A quivering whimper catches Marjan’s ear as she hunts the eremurus-lined courtyard. As she gets closer, she hears the old boy reciting from the Ayat Al Qursi.

She decides not to announce herself. She tiptoes up from behind. A gentle tug at his shirt-tail. A soft summoning in her favorite jinn voice.  A flick of the flashlight switch! Ali turns around. There is no sign of horror or even surprise. His gray eyes are shrouded in a catatonic calm.

Hours later, Ali recounts visiting an alien land populated by tall benevolent beings made of papier-mâché. He describes places and events in such number and detail as scarcely anyone would imagine a dream (even a waking one) of three or four minutes as having spawned. The Fountain of Horseradish-Paste that he had emerged from in a stupor, sticky and coughing from its noxious vapor, that overlooked the Harbor of Red Ink with its Teapot and Saucer ships. The fantastic chase across the Gurgling Marshes the Pulpy Benevolences had given the Scurrilous Alligator-Men and The Pack of Ochre Jokers whom they rescued him from. Those swarms of bright metallic threadbare leaves  traipsing along and bouncing against tubular canopies of luminescent cobweb circumambulating the Filigree Forest in ghostly silence… 

  

Ali never completely recovers from these visions (or ceases his visitations as he sees it). This sore fact gradually frays the relationship between his and Marjan’s families till it ruptures one day. For more than a decade, his father Kaveh seeks help from sufis and occultists of various orders and reputes. One Baba Hooshyar persuades the desperate, aging barrister with a Western education to feed his adolescent son ground mixture of molted snake-skin and owl-feather. Another Attar Qalandar (The Silent One) hands him a tameemah (silently of course) filled with arcane inscriptions in Old Arabic.  Ali despairs,  weighed down by this scraggy green pendant around his delicate neck day after day, before another dervish declares the intricate calligraphy (in deathly grim intonation) as direct, fervent, cursed pleas to Iblis and Shaitan! 

As all else falls apart, so does Kaveh’s heart. He dies nearly broke and haunted by his son’s madness, obsessed with demons of a little girl’s making; a conviction he carries with him to the beyond...

It was an unusually hot Friday afternoon in Isfahan. 

Noise blared in from the window overlooking the street, slightly ajar behind the airy azure drapes made from fine muslin, patterned with golden quatrefoils that appeared darkened against the translucence of mid-day light. Below, a lorry screamed at a wayward pedestrian. Fuming, rattling diesel cars steered by fuming, rattling drivers honked at the world at large, as if to underline their insignificance in the face of inescapable oblivion. A carpet-seller stood at a corner accosting abaya-clad housewives hurrying about town, who peered sneering from under their veils at his craggy, ancient face with its toothy grin and sweet-talking mouth. The muezzin and the mullah from the Shah mosque across Naqsh-e-Jahaan square took turns, with the one’s melodious chanting of the adnan and the other’s livid haranguing of their audiences, each captive in its own way. 

Omid lifted his face from the pillow.

“Madaar, what’s the point of carrying on like this? Couldn’t we just leave like Sohail’s family?”.

“Did Mr. Asghari bother you again at school today?”.

Turning his head away, he fixed his gaze out the open courtyard window into the flower-bed of red Mohammadis .

“It doesn’t matter. He’s not the only one.”

“Look, boy. It’s not easy leaving just like that. Sohail’s father had no choice — he was marked by the Hojjas.”

“What about when we get marked? It’s only three more years before I enter university. Besides, you know what happened to Montezar’s cousins in Shiraz — they were just kids!”

Ruha’s dark eyes narrowed into a glint.

“Do you have any idea what Sohail’s Ammeh had to go through?”.

“Aren’t you suffering anyway?”.

“I’m not leaving our home, our beautiful city.  After we had you and Firoz, your father and I thought about it for a while. Then we decided it wouldn’t be any good for any of us. That’s exactly what they want — to drive us out! Besides, who’ll be left behind to carry on the word?”

“What about me?”

“You grow up a bit and you’re free to do what you like.”

“It’ll be too late, Madaar. You know it.”

Ruha stood up, gathered the linens and walked slowly towards the door. 

...to be continued

the bird that got away

Manne'-kaak sat by his favorite window smoking hookah. The gray outdoors were slowly seeping into his soul.

A thick whorl of smoke swirled from Nazir Mohammad’s chimney carrying the acrid smell of cow-dung mixed with straw burning. It wafted over the ledge of the bordering red-brick wall, whirled down the young pomegranate tree's tender branches and dipped into the old stone-well's darkness, only to re-emerge its ordure narily dampened.

MK's gaze and thoughts lifted above the smoke. One day out of so many lived appeared in his mind’s eye.

It was hazy but strangely alive. A dusk on a day like this one.

He was walking holding grandfather's hand across the kaedal. They were returning from the fish-market weaving through faceless throngs of pheran-bearers. The broad back-streets on the way home were strewn with stacks of dried firewood heaped alongside narrow runny drains. Neighborhood Musalmaan urchins with runny noses were shepherding old pumped-up bicycle tires with misshapen reeds torn from oddly-elbowed tree-twigs. Low-hanging power-lines sagged under the chorus of cackling crows and sparrows  (he would imagine them exchanging stories about their day in the city). The speckling and splotching of their deposits were blotting out entire street tiles below.

Bai-toth had bought him a brightly-colored patridge covered in soft cloth and sequined with little shiny beads for eyes. It was stuffed with what felt like grain or sawdust. Squeezing the texture between his thumb and fingers had brought new sensations.

His sister Behne must not have been born yet or was perhaps an infant still. It was almost dark outside.

Manne' leaned against the low mud wall layered under a wooden beam (that served as base to the kitchen entrance) he rested his elbows upon and beheld the toy. His lips curled into a half-smile of boyish anticipation. How long he played for he couldn’t recall for time was of a different grain then;  a boundless sea of moments.

It was then that he began his long intimation with inner warmth borne of solitude.

His senses slowly sating with impressions of the lifeless bird, his spirit was becoming still too. Gradually recovering his surroundings,  he gently pushed the toy into his favorite cache; a cavity in the mud wall that he thought resembled Bai-toth's ear canal.

One cold and sunny morning a few days later, Manne' excitedly reached into the orifice for a ritual sensation of his new companion. His fingers only wiggled blindly inside in growing panic. All they felt was a slithering column of cool heavy dank air.

Thus arrived the primal moment of loss in Manohar’s many days on this planet. The question of who or what had robbed him (and his incipient faith in permanence of objects) had not even been conceived. Not to speak of why.

He would never find out.