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Best Poems Written by Sarwar Morshed

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Requim For Un

United Nations, United Nations
What an oxymoron!
What an oxymoron!!

The platitude goes-
‘United we stand’
In the UN,
How erect we stand!
How erect we stand!!
We are homo erectus
Aren’t we?

This genocide-friendly unity of nations
With extra-care tending
The weeded garden of poison-trees.
When Hutus and Tutsies blood-bathe
The UN closely observes the situation,
When Israel unchilds, unhusbands and unfathers
The Palestinians, the UN
Appeals to both the parties to exercise restraint.
When the Theravada fanatics exterminate the Rohingyas
And the West-engineered Arab Spring
Tears the Middle East asunder, 
The UN condemns and condemns and condemns!

O UN what a paradox you enflesh,
Bringing to the forefront
The anti-thesis -
‘United we stand, divided we fall’
To what insurmountable height you have taken
The human(un)kind, we have seen
Now anti-thetically we would like to fall
As ‘fair is foul, foul is fair’.

In your acronymic form
When in lower case
How prophetically you become
An ominous prefix!

UN, UN you are non-existent
An ethereal entity, a papier mache;
Ailan’s death has finally declared 
You biologically dead.
Let this cenotaph be 
Placed on top of UN HQ:
Here once architecturally stood
The divided conglomeration of Nations – the UN,

A metonymic entity
Proudly pronouncing human unyokability.
RIP, dear UN.

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2015



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The Physics of Love

Once, the fairy tale vein do I embrace, 
once upon a time
in the past not mnemonically distant,
were we the two poles of a magnet-
if you be the South,
me the North Pole.

If I be a flying matter,
You were the gravitational pull.

If I be the water,
You were the wave.

If I be a bridge
You were the pillars under it-
Yoking stasis to dynamics.

Now, as stasis and dynamics are unyoked,
I am all water under the now defunct bridge.

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2010

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Cry No More, Penelope

They weave, they weave
They weep and they weave
Smarting under the persecuting whips -
Verbal, literal or carnal whips
They weep, they weep.

Locust-like they swarm the streets
To reach the factories before the sun settles well
In its diurnal rounds.
There are no circumstances unavoidable
Reach they must the gates at the hour final….

Sartorial gladiators they are
Salary they draw but in the 
Etymological sense- they are well off
Enough to buy salt.


Eagle-eyed lustful look
Do the ups and downs of their physique hook -
Surveying the geography of their constitution
And the lecherous bosses or carnally starving colleagues 
Devotedly concentrate on each continent
And ready to pay compliment
Only if they are crowned with the sovereignty to discuss
Issues that make the gynecologists blush!

Penelopes of the modern times,
Your hands transform loan-sharks
Into pot-bellied, globe-trotting tycoons.
These textile Sheikhs
When their family or female(s) sneeze
Millions and millions they unsqueeze
As if they are sylvestral leaves
Falling beauteously in the vernal breeze!

But alas! These helicoptered and villaed
Villains, as if through the alchemy of a vile wand
Into penniless paupers transformed
When the Midas-hands entreat them
To get exchange for their tears and sweat.
All big talks, fountains of philanthropy run dry -
And they weave and cry
They weave and cry!

Cry no more, Penelope, weave no more,
Never will your Odysseus come
Cease weaving, cease embroidering.
Yet the dream-laden Penelopes
Weep and weave,
They weep and they weave!
They weep and they weave!!

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2015

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Portrait of a Bibliophile

Portrait of a Bibliophile


Be it time of photosynthesis or lunar luminescence, 
Diligently the boy pores over his book-
Sunshine or moonshine,
He is not arsine
To de-book himself.

For the book dear,
Has he divorced light-solar,
Burns he midnight electricity 
To delve deep into the pages dear.

The mother super-saturated 
With affection blind,
Feels so grateful to the boy kind
Who shoulders the heavyweight 
Of her tall dreams.
Obstetrically, she delivered him once
But now she delivers each night
A glass of hot NZ on the boy’s table right.

The father cynical, burns bright,
‘Why are you connected, day and night?’
Baba, I ‘like’ your ‘status’
Pray, let me ‘add’ you
To friends’omnibus.
I’m ‘inviting’ u, do ‘accept’ n ‘confirm’
Now r we ‘friends’.
As a ‘friend’ see me ‘wall to wall’
‘Post’ ur comment, won’t mind, at all.
What? ‘Friends' with my own son?
What you keep doing on?

‘Now let me make my comment.’
Ok daddy, post ur comment.
‘Why do you change the collocation?’
Father, it’s the fb fashion.

‘Right. Fashion it is. You ‘add’ me, and I’m your ‘friend’,
You ‘like’ my ‘status’, ‘share it’ and ‘comment’,
It’s good semantic enrichment.
Son, dear, on your ‘wall’, I see,
You’re an untiring reader cum writer excellent
But you threaten Brahmi with the Roman Script,
I vehemently ‘dislike’ it.

Now, see I son, what you read all time on,
Your reading list is all Mark Juckerberg,
Seriously you love a book, that’s Facebook
There on your mother’s dream, you hook.
Now let me give the final ‘status’-
‘Fb, fb, burning bright,
Stay not connected day and night.
Let Rome in Tiber melt
Don’t ‘poke’ that girl svelt’.

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2010

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Orang Bangla

Orang Bangla, Orang Bangla
Whither goest thou?
Poor Orang!
Need a job, right now?
Come hither, come hither
No worry, at all
Money is calling you, dear Bangal.

Sweep my premises, cut the backyard trees,
I’ll sacrifice full ten ringits.
Need you lodging?
Why am I here, Orang?
Go thither, go thither
Live with the cows, there’s dung
Only,  innocent animal litter.

Coming straight from Kualalampur?
What?
From Muradpur to Kualalampur?
I see, you speak some English,
You educated? Want to establish
By working in Ringitpur?

Ok, Orang, start journey
To feed your family distant
You need to eat on this instant?
Long journey? Long time?
Orang, so what?
Need you rest?
NO, Orang, do your best.

I’m a kind Malay-Tamil,
Ok Orang, take two biscuits for meal.
What? Tea? No tea, no tea,
Life’s not so easy.

Now Orang, lets talk business,
Give me your passport
Life, after all, is not all easiness.

Ten ringit full
And live by the cow and bull.
What? More?
Payment on weekend?
You’ll get it at your life’s end
In Malaysia.

Hey Orang, what? Eight weeks’ ringit?
Look Orang, you have no account
Even cows steal here
To me your money is safe and sound.

What? Need to telephone to home?
Why bother them? Here you are at home.
Tell again-
You have a sweetheart? Need to phone her?
NO. Go and work-
She has no wings to fly elsewhere,
Bangla’s Tunku Zafar.

Will not work?
Your father will work.
Want to leave Malaysia?
Without passport you are in Siberia.
Why persist, Orang?
You came here through water and forests dense
On Tarzan visa.
Should I call your father, police?
‘Hello, Inspector Tansri Wahab’-
What? Will work?
You naughty, orang otang

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2010



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Letter From a Son To His Late Mother

Ma,
Why do I need to apostrophize you? Why did you flew away into the celestial regions so earlier? Is it because you are from a land where ‘twenty is plenty’ for women? And hence, ignoring the official life expectancy figure, you bade us adieu at your quinquagenarian phase? Or did you arrange a rendezvous with death at an officio-statistically pre-mature time only intending to avoid the geriatric ward? Did you want to make us like the baby who wished to be a pilot just to reach his mother in paradise?
It sounds like telling the story of ‘nanubari’ to you. But it is to aid your mnemonic nerves. After all, I am not sure whether you bear the memory of your terran abode. Your distinguished father, a renowned teacher of maths, you thought, committed a sophomoric mistake In the arithmetic of life. He yoked you to a milieu where you always had been an extra-terrestrial. You resisted all attempts of the seasoned head master and the poetess to transplant your allegiance - You choose to tread the path thorny.
Like yours, my path has always been thorny. Your unworthy son, unschooled in the way of the world, was and still is surrounded by some hyenas. As the canine bipeds parade, my unperturbed exterior undergoes the chemistry of change. Inside,I experience a haematic revolt - at midnights a sudden rush of the endocrinal fluid unsettles me.   Why? Have you stopped blessing me? That stuff you are not made of.  From the celestial region, high heavens, you blessed me. Keep showering your blessings, mother mine, so that the anthropoid animals with claws clandestine, meet their Waterloo every time they embark on a villainous journey.
You tried to make our life as beautiful as flowers and as fragrant as a floral bed. You tended the unweeded garden of our family with hortensial care. The world classifies you as dead but I classify you as immortal. You are not a flower that has withered but to me you are a rose that is transplanted and touched by celestial hand and are ‘blooming in richer colours and sweeter shades’ than the terrestrial ones. From the heavens high, mom mine, unnerve, undo the bestial homo sapiens. 
You delivered me once obstetrically, but you delivered the cargo of your love till the gravitational force became inoperative on you. Do you remember how you wailed and moaned your ‘Babylonian captivity’? At the dead of night, I found you many times with your lachrymal gland unguarded. I needed not to soothe you. You, as a handy, anthropomorphic automated appliance, used to put rein to your lachrymose mood. You reminded us that your heart goes pitter-patter outside your frame - in us. Hence you locked, subdued all of your passions to be a Cypress. You have (im)planted saplings of innumerable memories in our memory-garden. Those memory-trees abloom activate our tear-ducts and transform our eyes into tear factories. We thought, you were a perpetual bank for us. A bank that can never go bankrupt. We blindly banked on you - for everything. In the mother-bank, we deposited all our tensions, worries and wounds. You healed those wounds with your heavenly word-balms and presence. Alas! Now we have your presents, not your shadow extending presence. What a poetic injustice it is! ‘You could not recline under the shadow of the Oak which you planted!’
Your precious memories and anecdotes are snippets pasted together forming a film projected on the back of our minds. Our albums are full of your pictures but our hearts remain empty without you. The void created by your absence is unfillable. Longing nostalgia and melancholy have sworn to accompany us in our battle against the brutal impact of your absence. Compass of our lives, your departure was the maiden sorrow we wept without you. 
By heart and by deeds, to the best of my knowledge, as they say it, you were pure. People around us say it. ‘Vox populi, vox dei.’ Ma, entreat the Almighty to save us from the squaline waterluvians. Pardon me for my failed sonship. Your heart, I know, is an unfathomable abyss which is profusely sedimented with forgiveness. An ounce of your blessings is worth a pound of the wishes of the saints. So, mother mine, bless us, perpetually, for your blessings are our Excaliburs.
                                                             
                                                                                          Umbilically yours.

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2015

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Thoreau's Question

On this Eid, as your sumum bonum 
Is consumerism and as your soul is 
Mortgaged to the Federal Reserve Bank
And hedonism, your mental wish-list has been
Inked on ‘things-to-dos’. The catalogue is
Quite impressive. Apart from the toddler,
On your lap, often you place your lap-top.
This time before Eid, to go smarter, you have
A must-gadget purchase: Palm-top.
To outshine others, and to add some
Extra gloss to your gadget-profile
You actively consider getting a tablet.
Even though, it is not the diminutive of table
And has nothing to do with the quadruped rectangle
And it is not to be swallowed with water,
It still has some therapeutic attributes.

Your schedule has accrued extra adipose tissue
With a cluster of meetings looming large on the corporate horizon,
You order designer cloths for yourself. Those fancy textile Marco Polos
Globe-trot and come to your door-step riding their
‘You shop, we drop’ policy.
You give blank cheque to your greater-half
To travel to Metropolitan Centres or Peripheral megacities
To epicurianize herself and her cohorts.

From the other side of the horizon,
Thoreau watches you thoroughly and asks,
This time you’ve parted with
From your obesity-ridden bank account.
All this, I know, is cosmetic purpose-driven.
You, proud buddy, spent this much to decorate your body.
Have you spent a single farthing to adorn your soul?

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2015

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Machiavelli's Own Son Or Thespian

You re-house Machiavelli’s soul in your foul frame
That soul great guides your head and heart;
Not what you learnt from the kitabs
Beacon to you is Lucifer’s own light.

With verisimilitude unseen,
With finesse unthought of,
You pose as a Judhishtir.
But Dharmaputra, I know you 
Engineer mischief meanest.
You are the mid-husband of
Old rustic plot,
Vile stinking villain
You know not- unhiegynically you rot.

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2010

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Banking

Leaving banking, I am thinking about banking. When the red humour from the human system drains off, we irrigate the haematic fluid inside through vein-channels. ‘Blood Banks’ with sanguine loans come to our rescue. In cases of renal malfunction, we ransack kidney colonies for mercenary donors. Or don’t we eye greedily at the safest vaults for the bean-shaped organ - at the healthy kidneys inside the frames of our beloved ones? For grafting damaged skin, happily we become clients of ‘Skin Banks’. Those banks supply us with new apparel – bio-RMG, culled from the homo sapiens. In needs cellular, ‘Tissue Banks’ help us consummate the transaction. Aren’t ‘Eye Banks’ the last resort of the visually deprived or underprivileged ones? To cater to cerebral needs, there are ‘Brain Banks’. ‘DNA Data Banks’ through gene cartography help us circumnavigate the vast continents of bioinformatics. Oh that we only had a ‘Philanthropy Bank’ to supply us with liquefied humanity for intra-venous infusion into the sadistic, misanthropic minds!

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2016

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Yingluck, Yingluck

Yingluck, Yingluck,
Bad luck, good duck
Good luck, dead duck
Yingluck, Yingluck.

Helen of Thailand,
You launched thousand foes,
Your sorroral defenses
Of Thaksin
Was a sin, is a sin
Unkennelling jaundiced protesters
Causing you a premier ruin.
Yingluck, Yingluck,
Bad luck, dead duck!

Copyright © Sarwar Morshed | Year Posted 2015

12

Book: Shattered Sighs