Muslim
Sadique, my name
a skull cap and lower above the ankles
is my identity,
who cares of the brain beneath my skull?
For them, all that matters is the cap on my head.
Aatif, my name
my body a potential bomb, terror my label
who cares of the warmth of my body?
For them, it’s just a potential bomb covered under the lower, above my ankles.
Yasin, my name
my beard, a mark of a bygone culture
who cares about a face wrapped under it?
And the innocence of adolescence on it
For them, my eyes can only beam violence
Muslim, is the common identity
that binds us together
and terror, the label.
Death Stalks On The Wall Of My Room
Bierut is burning inside the bulb in my room
Children of Gaza shot right in front of me
Grotesque posters of those killed in Afghanistan.
Blood on the walls of my room.
On my wall
In my room.
Can you see the dead Blacks lying on my floor?
I must wear my spectacles to see
So I pick mine
Only to see the world burning in my room,
The smoke choking my throat
I have become schizophrenic , I think
Perhaps, that’s why I can’t see the dead in Paris
In Lebanon, in Baghdad, in Gaza
In Syria, in Afghanistan.
The world would christen this as my Schizophrenic imagination
They will take me to a doctor, tell me that everything around me is fine !
But I know, like you know, it’s not just Paris that is burning
The world is burning.
Like you and I
I see Fascism Coming
I see Fascism coming
In the pool of blood of fetus
From the womb of their mothers
Shedding on to the streets
I see vagina’s screaming in horror against the barbarity of saffron trishuls
Breasts suckling red blood
even before babies could be fed
Yes from a distance close enough I see fascism coming
This time not from Weimar Germany
but from Gandhi’s Gujarat
Soil has no static culture
I turn sides in my bed
Reading the history of past
connecting Gujarat to Germany
Muslims to Jews
Who calls them the enemy?
The chain of historical fascism unites them together
Surrounded by the countless others.
Yes I see fascism coming and knocking our door steps
Images of Qutubbin Ansari and Annie Frank
their many sisters and brothers, dampen my eyes
I wipe out the tears with a handkerchief of spirits and passion
Yet fascism looks to be tomorrow’s reality
and the piece of cloth stained in red imitate the fascism I look at through my eyes.
I see the skyscrapers buildings in Ahmadabad from the windows of my room,
And not miles away from there,
the deserted farmlands with a plant of Nano on it,
the miseries of farmers ,who grew their crops on it once
and their malnourished children, do not escape my sight
I see fascism in those skyscrapers buildings with paints of fancy colors
Hiding the cracks on its walls.
Yes, I see the fascists coming
Before I sleep into a dream
harboring a new crop for the fields where industries stand now.
The world on the wall
I don’t need a piece of paper,
stamped by a sovereign authority
to discover what the world is.
On my wall, there hangs the world
there are boundaries, there are borders and capital cities,
there is Ankara, there is Berlin and there is Gaza.
There are mountains and rivers eclipsed by borders
Yet I trespass them all.
On days, I eat my meals in Lahore
And on others, I fight with along my comrades in Gaza
On nights, I die a martyr’s death and on others, I survive
to travel back to my own bed, and look at the wall strangely.
The borders, the army are all perishable
In the world of my imagination,
I trespass them all and come back to my bed every night,
Sometimes alive, at times dead.
Asad Ashraf
asadashrafblog 