Name was Valentine,
Baby, be mine,
Said I was sweet,
Oh, would be neat,
If we could cruise
Sometime.
Name was Valentine,
Get in the line,
Said I was sweet,
Oh, what a treat,
If we could bruise,
Sometime.
Name was Valentine,
Girl, you’re fine
Said I was sweet,
Skip that beat,
If we could rhyme
Sometime.
like a niqaabi
all you see
is my
eyes
follow
your circuit
i hijab my
lust
wrap it up
so you wont
be offended
when i dream
of you.
Poems
are
polaroids
for days
when
stories
fail
us
and
we
want
to
tale
the
moments
that
define
us
but
the
plot
eludes
us
so
we
string
some
characters
make
them
up
pretty
like
mascara
metaphor
and
a
rouge
of
rhythm
smile
and
say
We can’t swim
You and I.
Yet I fear no fathoms.
For we’ve not learnt
to drown.
between backpacking
and bungee jumping
Live fijian seas
and crazy fogs
exposures and
sunrise over nostalgia
scaramouche fandango
and konichiwa
a new arabic tongue
and freestyle butterflies
everyman’s Everest
and the open road
between city living
and smallville.
you want to
lose yourself in someone.
the box on the shelf
with the black-penned Possibility
has a lid that won’t close
for
yesterday’s thinkings
and tomorrow’s
procrastinations
clutter
and never lie flat.
in it is the house i’d build
and fill with his favourite things.
he’d laugh,
for he hasn’t seen the butter-flour apron
beneath the ink of my liberal jeans,
but there I’ll be;
a smile in his kitchen
and one for when he’d wake,
between my work with words
and the song of sunrise
sweeping outside the front door.
these
paper
shoulders
crease
crumple
pucker
powder
from
catching
the
tears
of
the
world.
yours are made
of
stronger stuff.
when
frayed books
in
frayed schoolbags
become
an Official Threat
at an Official Whim
when
a made-in-china
mass market
fickle prop of play
becomes
an
unmade-in-jenin
12-year-old Man
when a little girl
‘scared to death’
according to the
Official Transcript
is ‘shot to death’
instead
and three-year-olds
who won’t sit still
could lead
to
“confirmation of a kill”
I wait for my
baby cousin
to ask-
“they shoot children don’t they?”
to concur
is to conquer.
