Long Lahore Poems

someone always told me this with tears in her eyes...


(for Lata Sethi's late-mother, who was my mother’s ‘sister’ and who took us all into her heart, and for Lata and Ravi Sethi of Defence Colony,...

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CHILDREN OF LAHORE
(Easter Sunday 2016)


Arms flailing
From
Her
Blue burka,

The woman
Jumps

Like a checkerboard
Piece
Up and over
The white squares

Of bedsheet
       To bedsheet
To bedsheet

Each
Draped
Over a
Red blossom
Bump
Lumped
And soaked on
The gravel dust
Fairground
Floor.

Like a game of peekaboo
Between mother...

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(Bal-e-Jibril-151) Javed Iqbal Ke Naam:
(On receiving  first letter of Javed Iqbal(Late Son of Dr Allama Iqbal) in London)
https://youtu.be/jGv1lCDjHEk
Senior Justice Javed Iqbal (5 October 1924 – 3 October 2015) was a Pakistani philosopher and senior...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Three

Note:  I do hope it’s clear to readers by now that – strictly speaking – in these ruba’iyat, I deviate from the original Persian medieval model, introduced...

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Folks avoid that spooky place 'specially on dark and stormy nights!
Heard are eerie moans and shrieks and seen are mysterious lights!
A driftin' hoss thief by the unlikely name of One-Eyed Buck LaHore,
Was strung up on...

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Her name was Anarkali, 
an eloquent carnival of legendary beauty.
a dancer in the court of Emperor Akbar.
Deep russet rouge blushed her red,
a silky smile on her rosy peach cheeks 
rich, sensual and seductive...
With the sweet...

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It’s a Secret

It’s a secret
If you keep it
If you mean it to keep
It’s our little secret, I shall whisper 
Promise never to speak

It’s a secret
Never told you
Never told anyone
Now you know it, the truth… ...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Fifteen

She dreamed a dream all unfulfilled all through the dragging day
Even while she tossed and grumbled half-starved and in dismay
Two lives she lived as the swivelling Door swung...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Thirteen

Oh! Woe! Woe! On pubic islet the dirty deed’s done
Bloodied needle leaves stain the Zen-rock cobbled garden
The derelict torn womb spills seminal fluids on the ground
Fallopian tubes shredded...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Two

All night her troubled sleep buffeted the makeshift ramparts
The flip-flop flop flop flop of her tears undermining hearts
The plaintive cry of the lone crane seeking the flock heading...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Eight

At her feet gather daily plumage dark white to brown leather
Pigeons geese crows sparrows larks and wild ducks in sunset colour
And the resident owners of the waters by...

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The Condition of My Heart
by Munir Niazi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
 
There's no need for anyone else to get excited:
The condition of my heart is not the condition of hers.
But were we to receive...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Eleven

Once a wounded turtle dove ground out its pain in a bare poplar
When autumn sunset bid bitter farewells to the lone star
Three black liana lassies trudging homeward swayed...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Eighteen

Even as the lower rubbed its dazed eyes over Her hillocks
The light-foot Lass of Lahore made her way past the boating docks
Past the Marie’s dank reedy banks over...

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Happy Hour is one drink short
of a buzz,

I try to determine the moment
it all went sour.
I’m looking into the empty glass
wondering where the ‘happy’ went,
did it dissipate on a curling lip
or a sigh?

I find the...

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Khadim Rizvi preaches gore
To his followers rioting in Lahore
He, wears lipstick and ladies dresses
His followers had lobotomies on dirty floors

They wish to murder a young girl of faith
for perceived insults to their petite virility
oh how...

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Silence is Golden

In a laboratory in a far away place called
Lahore
Was a mad scientist, who experimented
Offshore

He fiddled and fuddles deep inside his lab
Making clones of his glorious self
Thinking they mighty fine lads
He cloned twenty or...

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Once the job has been defined health and safety can be addressed by carrying out a risk assessment.
Contractors also have responsibilities for preparing risk assessments. Their risk assessment should fit in
with the clients and provide...

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