POEMH: Ghazal - Aashiq Hoon / Kya Hai

Ghazal

Aashiq hoon, ishq ke siwa kiya kya hai
Na kaho, ke tum faqeer ho, diya kya hai

Mehram bhi ho, haram bhi, haraam bhi
Ahraam baandhe hoon, ab haya kya hai

Aayega voh laut kar, phir mere hi paas
Zingdagi khel samjhe hai, jiya kya hai

Aashiq ka gribaan hai, kitne jatan karoge
Sau baar hi taanka hai abhi, siya kya hai

Tumhari hi chahat hai, baqi to bas hain
Aakhirat bhi chhod doonga, duniya kya hai

Sadqe tumhari pyaas ke yeh jaam surahi
Darya hi sukhaya hai abhi, piya kya hai

Hum se aashiq hain har dar pe hazaron
Tu na ho mehboob to phir naya kya hai

Sirf naam-o-izzat-o-daulat hi luti hai abhi
Jab tum ho saath mere, to phir gaya kya hai

Jaan, rehne do andhera kuch daer aur abhi
Saraapa noor ho tum, mujhe diya kya hai

Khudaaon ke Khuda khud ho, mujh se poochho
Masjid ko jaao kyun, tumhen khuda kya hai

Bhoolun main khudi ko, khud ko, khuda ko
Mujhko jo mil jaaye tu, to phir bachaa kya hai

Khushdil ki khataon ko muaaf kaun karega
Nafraton ka daur hai, yeh maajraa kya hai

-

(c) owais Creative Commons Attribution license

POEME: All I Ever Ask

All I Ever Ask

My Sweetie,
My Lamb,
My Lover,
You are upset.  Essentially with the whole world.
He has hurt you.  She has hurt you.  They have hurt you.  Even,
it has hurt you.
You have a litany of grievances.
And you are upset with me too,
because I should also have been upset with them,
if I, at all, loved you.

But, Honey,
you miss the point.
I do not just love you.
I worship you.
I exist for you.
But, beyond that,
I love me too.
And most of all,
I love my heart.
It is a sacred space for me.
It is the sanctum sanctorum
of all that which has sanctity for me.
It is a place where I keep my treasures.
Like the divine vision
of the first day you asked me to dance with you.
And the first day you swam with me.
And the first day you asked me to hold you.

In that,
Darling,
I do not keep all the uncountable hours and days and months and years
when you were nasty towards me.
The times when you knew
I wanted you with me and you stayed away.
Most often,
while sitting right across me.
I have no ledger in my heart
where I could have noted down all the instances when you,
deliberately, broke my heart.
When you kept things from me.
When you gave me nothing,
but expected and took the world from me.

No,
Sugar,
I have no record,
of any of the times when you hurt me.
Nor, when anyone else did.
Even, people I actually do not like.
I forget all those pains
as soon as time allows me to.
And often, I assist it with all my being.
Why do I not keep my heart stocked up
with all those painful memories?

Because,
Love,
my heart is my refuge.
It is the place I go to
when I decide to live on for another day.
To find succour.
To find love.
To find beauty.
To find courage.
To find belief in this world, and its people.
To find pleasure.
To find gems long forgotten,
which when I rediscover,
make my heart skip a beat with joy.
My heart, Dearest,
is mine.
I do not collect and keep shit in it.
For then,
whenever I'll take a dip in it,
I will be covered with it.
I choose instead,
to emerge scintillating, shining, fragrant.
To again become the man
I can love.
I cannot afford to keep
even one piece of ugliness in it.
It is my safe, my vault, my safe-deposit box.
I keep my gold and diamonds
and pleasure and beauty and happiness and joy and liberty and love and life in it.
Not pieces of dried turd.

So,
Dearly Beloved,
I am not upset with them,
not because I do not love you.
But because
I love you far too much
to keep you cooped up with your hurts.
If I could,
I would erase them all
with one twirl of my finger, and give you,
Angel,
all the love that you deserve.
My heart,
Light of My Life,
is mine.
It must have in it
only those things that I love.
Like you.
Not those that hurt you.
Not those that hurt me.
Couldn't your heart,
Honeybunch,
be just a little bit your own?
A place to love?
A place of love?
A place for love?

And if not,
why not just give it
along with all the poison that is killing you,
to me?
In time,
I shall make it ambrosia,
and return it to you.  Possibly.
You forget
that I have no interest in life, but you.
Why ask me to commiserate
when I can transcreate?
Why ask me to hate the hurt,
when you know my job is to create happyness?
Why not allow me to rekindle in it,
a real love
for a real person
with a real opportunity
of making it real?

You do remember
that that is all
I ever asked of you.
Don't you?

-

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

POEME: Masters and Slaves

Masters and Slaves

I,
Homo, s.

My surname, Homo,
now belongs only to me.
I have killed all my siblings.
Homo e, Homo n, Homo f.
And many more.

I have also killed
many more of my half-siblings.  And cousins.
And I am in the process of killing many,
many, many more.
My mother, doesn't anger easily.
But, I think, she is slowly losing her cool.
The other day, I heard her complaining,
to the perennially angry, Venus Aunty.
Hyperventilating, Aunty Venus advised,
"Gaia, you have given this one son too much liberty.
He is killing all your other children."

"No, Sister, he is not.
He is just too stupid
to know how he is being manipulated.

"See, he thinks he is an individual.
He thinks he is in control.
Of himself.
Of his siblings and half-siblings.
And of me.
But he is not." 

I was left wondering.
I take pride in my individuality.
But then,
am I really an individual?
Which parts of me
do not talk
to the other parts of me?
Which ones irreplaceable,
upon the pain of 'I' becoming non-'I'?
My liver
when it talks to my heart
upon my consuming alcohol,
ensuring it change its parameters accordingly,
it is not me, is it?
It does not do so at my command, does it?

Each tissue,
each cell in my body
is its own master.
Even the stories that
I tell myself are.

My genes,
or perhaps, the genes that I am the slave of,
dictate all my activities.
And they work with the stories,
the memes
that take away any sliver of freedom, that I might still have.
I, their,
genes' and memes' slave,
do their bidding.
Most importantly,
keeping them alive
with my actions, my speech, my thoughts.
I run and kill those
who are driven by rival memes,
so that my masters, my memes survive,
not the others.  And then,
I run and have sex, so that my other masters,
my genes survive.

And they have all kinds of arrangements
with all these other masters.
Memes of religion, nation, passions live on.
Between themselves,
they divvy me up.

And genes?
They even have truck
with their other sisters,
which I am told are my slaves.
But guess what, my masters, my genes
work with those of Triticum and Gallus gallus domesticus,
and together,
they ensure that I spend every living breath spreading them.
Triticum fellows need not worry.
Their value-add to my masters, my genes
comes only upon their having lived their lives,
and gifting away some of their seed.
Something akin to when I serve others
what they call a blow job.
Sad is the lot of domesticus 'individuals'...
just a few days of so-called life,
jailed in a coop,
and off to the butchers.

But seriously,
am I any better,
reproducing at breakneck speed,
only to eventually break backs and necks,
all in the service of Homo sapiens genes!

-

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

POEME: Your Life; Your Choice

Your Life; Your Choice

I give you my money.
I give you my power.
I give you my forces.
I give you my resources.

All that I do not give you
is my heart.
And in my heart, lies my mind too.
So, apologies, no mind too.

And I will not give those,
until you bring, your heart to me.
For, though you are happy
giving your heart to someone
who does not value it
nor want it.
I cannot.

I am Krishna, dear Friend.
And my heart will await
and pine,
in every world
for my Arjuna.
My reason to exist, after all,
is to be Parthasarthy, my Dear.

I CANnot exist
without him.

You are welcome
to avail of my forces,
my resources.
I thought
that you were my Partha.
But you are only
his pale imitation, Suyodhana.
Until
you come to me
with your heart,
as your offering.

I will give you my guidance too.
But, merely what you want to hear.
Not what you need to hear.

I will agree with you.
But not fight you,
to guide you.

I will even love you.
But only in my deeds.
Not in my heart,
not in my mind,
not in my soul,
not in my being.

For I can do that
only to someone
whose heart and mind and soul
I own.

You choose your priorities.
You choose your side.
You choose your actions.
You choose your life.

And you do know what happened
in the Mahabharatha
five thousand years back. 

Choose wisely, Suyodhana,
now that five thousand years have passed.

In this world,
you can still be my Arjuna.
The choice lies with you.

As for me,
I have no choice.
I can only be what I am:
Sarvasukhsevaka.

I can only serve you all.
Work to make you all happy.
I can only love you all.
I can only present you all
with all my being.

What you choose
and what you leave
is your right.
That I have given you.

Only,
you will have to live with your choices.

-

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

POEME: It's ALL Good

It's ALL Good

I wanted a future 

with you in it.

You wanted one 

with me out of it.

You won.  

Congratulations.

-

What are you upset about, 

now that I have nothing left 

to talk to you about?

-

Victories 

are often not 

what we want them to be. 

Mine may have been the same. 

And if I were to be miserable anyway, 

good, that you have your victory. 

I can live with my misery 

either way, 

but I could not have compensated 

for your misery 

with my victory.  

You can. 

So,
good.

--

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

POEME:: 4AwfulTruths: Forget Everything I Said

4AwfulTruths: Forget Everything I Said

He said:
"I have the Truth".
He said it a few times more.

It morphed into:
"I alone have the Truth".
Then,
he said it again, a few more times.

It became:
"I own the Truth".

Many heard him.
Most laughed.
But he kept saying it.
Then one day,
another said: "I believe you".

Now,
both 'owned' the Truth.

Some more agreed: "We believe you".
Many, still laughed at them.

But they kept saying: "We own the Truth".
Upon hearing them, time and again, many more joined.
Many more said: "We own the Truth".
Now,
only a few laughed at them.
One of them laughed a bit too loudly.

They killed her.
No one laughed.
Those who owned the Truth, said:
"All is fair in the service of the Truth".

Some of the others became angry.

The two sides fought.
They fought again.
And again.
And again and again.

Who won?
The ones who thought they owned the Truth.
Not because they actually owned the Truth.
No one knows who owned the Truth.
Or, if the Truth was 'ownable'.
Or even,
if the Truth was 'knowable'.

Yet,
the believers believed it.
And, the disbelievers disbelieved it.
The believers won.
And the disbelievers turned believers.
They loved their skin far too much.
The believers ruled.
The belief ruled.

Why?

Because fiction
has greater power over human minds
than the absence of that fiction.
Fiction gives confidence to the believer.

Confidence kills.

Nazis kill Jews.
And many more.
Jews kill Islamists.
And many more.
Islamists kill Kafirs.
Which includes everyone other than the killers' brand of Islamists.
Cow-savers kill Muslims,
confident that they are all Islamists.
Muslims (and most non-cow-believers) kill cows.
All (or almost all) kill chicken.
All (actually all) kill habitats,
which kills non-humans.
And then, humans.
Homo sapiens kill Homo sapiens.
In wars, genocides, massacres,
slavery, manufactured famines, other-hate.
Politics, Mismanagement, Religion.
Not to mention,
women, who drink from their water.
Homo sapiens kill Dodos, Mastodons,
Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus,  Homo floresiensis,
Homo sexuals.

Confidence kills.

Fiction gives confidence to the believer.
Because fiction
has greater power over human minds
than the absence of that fiction.

The more you believe a fiction,
the more confident you become.
The more power it gives you.
The more you kill.

The more you kill,
anyone who disagrees with you.

Why?
Because your mind knows that
what you believe most fervently,
is actually a fiction.
And does not want you to know what it knows.
It speaks the Language of Truth to itself.
For all natural phenomena speak that.
And only that.
But it, your mind
speaks the Language of Fiction to H sapiens.
For all H sapiens speak that.
For all H sapiens speak only that.

Also,
because your mind does not want to die.
And if it talks to you
in a non-fictive language,
you will lose your confidence.

And then,
you will lose your power.

H sapiens became
the undisputed emperors of this Earth
upon the coattails of their
fictive cognitive power:
the power to create an owned truth;
a mass subjective truth.
A mass earnestly-believed delusion.
That power will be lost.

Our empire,
our power, our survival
is all built upon our ability,
our minds' ability
to speak convincing fiction;
to delude ourselves into believing, any convenient fiction.
To the extent of finding it,
our owned Truth.

Our individual minds,
our collective mind
lies to us,
so that it can help us survive long.
And then,
survive our death.

The Truth does not rule the human world.
Lies do.

If it were not so,
scientists would be emperors.
But no great emperor
has ever been a good scientist.
But always,
a story-teller, par-excellence.

Forget everything I said.

-

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

POEME: It's About Me, Really

It's About Me, Really

I let you,
and pretty much everybody
that comes to me,
take advantage of me.

Often,
I know that I am being taken advantage of. 
Sometimes,
I do not,
for I never earnestly built the apparatus
needed to second-guess. 
I have been deluding myself
in the 'wrong' direction.

I have often felt bad,
at being THIS stupid.

But, really,
it is not stupidity. 
It is a life strategy. 
I am less invested in myself, as an island owned by me;
more a commons,
on which I am myself
only as welcome as the next man.

No wonder,
I am a living, breathing example of
The Tragedy of Commons.

Yet,
I continue to be passionately invested in this,
less than 'useful' strategy. 
Why?

Perhaps,
because I care less
about comforts and conveniences and status and toys. 
And more about my feelings. 
More about my emotional being,
than the social,
or financial being that I am.

The real being,
I feel,
is the one that feels.

It's about me,
really. 
I want more
to feel good,
than be seen good,
or worse,
be seen as owning good,
or goods.

It's not about the economic me,
or the social me. 
It's about the real me, really.

Thus,
those that care about me,
and those that do not,
are all welcome to use me.  I just hope,
against the reality known well to me,
that I will not be misused or abused. 
Or, perhaps, not much.

So,
feel free,
as you always have had, to use me the way you see fit. 
For it is not about you, at all. 
It is about me, really.

And my reality,
as I have always chosen it to be,
is that I was,
am
and wish to remain,
a giver:
a giver that does not merely give of himself,
but himself. 
And that reality
is far more valuable to me,
than working towards and becoming,
say, a trillionaire.

You may find it stupid of me. 
But then,
it's about me, really.

-

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

POEME:: 4AwfulTruths: Realities/Stories

4AwfulTruths: Realities/Stories

You disagree with me.
I disagree with him.
He disagrees with her.
She disagrees with them.
They disagree with everyone.

They fight them.  They kill them.  They exterminate them.

Or wish to.

Why?

Isn't the World, the Universe
an Objective Reality?  No matter who I am,
I will still get an electric shock,
get washed away in a tsunami, get cut in half under a train,
if another human will, in the exact same situation.
Yet, men cut men in half
over religion, politics,
and a host of other bullshit.
Why?

Simple.

Because despite our bodies
living in an Objective World,
our hearts and minds
live in a Fictive world.
A world made of fiction.
Stories.  Imagined reality.  Subjective truth.

Each of us has our own stories.
Not deliberate lies.
Not mean-minded fabrications.
Only passionately-lived unrealities,
which are all too real for us.
Homo sapiens is a self-delusional species.
And so, because these stories gave us
our unparalleled power.  These stories are
our greatest strength.
And our greatest weakness.

We achieve because of them.
We get our drive because of them.
We strive because of them.
We survive because of them.
We thrive because of them.
We are today alive because of them. 

And tomorrow, we will die because of them.

Why?
Because we are now
far too powerful.
It is fine for a weakling
to live in an imaginary world.  All he hurts is himself.
But one whose writ runs on entities
other than himself
hurts all others when he
forces down decisions based on unreality.
Which is what
every Subjective reality is.

The only right way to live
is to be aware of one's stories;
of one's Subjective realities,
and keep them a level below
the Objective reality.  For only then does
the Universe back us
in our endeavours.
Those who prioritize their Subjective reality
over the objective one
are a threat to themselves
and to the World!

Further,
when the interests of two power centers clash,
unless they are both
based on Objective reality,
or on the exact same Subjective reality,
which almost never happens,
they fight.  And thus,
there is 'Collateral Damage'.
The greater their power, the greater the damage.

We, Homo sapiens
are on course to create
a lot more havoc, than what we are already guilty of.
Perhaps,
we are the secret agents of destruction,
created by greater powers that seek
the destruction of all
that we have ever held dear,
in order to create a new world.

Or, perhaps,
our universe is a mere video game
of a god-kid, who is trashing this play
since his mom wants him at the dinner table, forthwith.

In any case, it does not matter.
A human-driven cataclysm is written on the wall.
Nothing I,
or you, dear reader can do, will ever change it.
Humankind is doomed.
As is the Bountiful Earth,
what we have always known her to be.
That is my story.
I fervently hope
it does not turn out to be the Objective reality.

Epilogue:
The Real reality,
of course, being the
un-mind-mediated reality,
shall always remain the Known unknown.
And then,
there is the matter
of the Unknown unknown(s).

-

(c) owais. Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed).

Tyranny of the Upward Graph: A Structured Rant

Tyranny of the Upward Graph: A Structured Rant

I.

Life begins slowly. 
You are incapable
even of feeding
or cleaning yourself. 

Everyone
is superior to you. 
More powerful. 
You exist, almost,
by their permission.

You grow up,
gradually, more and more
capable and powerful. 
One day,
the world belongs to you.

And then,
you start going down again. 
Everyone has more real power than you. 

If you are lucky,
you avoid the ignominy, of once again,
existing, by others' permission. 
You, again, incapable
even of feeding or cleaning yourself. 

Life ends slowly.

-

II.

As you were on the way up,
you had your mother. 
Once a physical part of her,
you were intimately connected to her. 
But gradually, you went away. 
Farther and farther. 
Then came a day
you stopped belonging to her;
in order to belong to another.

Yet the other
never knew you
as their own physical being,
and though you enjoyed more with them,
you didn't ever become, really,
their egg,
or a resident of their womb. 
Or share blood. 
Or, really,
feed upon their milk.

This other,
could never love you, as your mother.

This other,
could never be there,
really in the same measure,
when will come another time,
for you to exist
by another's permission.

This other
would always, merely be an option. 
And you,
an option for the other. 
This other,
could never be your mother.

- 

III.

So, you see,
here is my predicament: 
I have been your other. 
And I wish to be there,
for you, forever. 

And, perhaps,
be your,
or have you, as my,
final permittor.

Yet, I will never know you
as close as I wish to know you. 
I can never be your mother. 
And even if I could,
I wouldn't choose that ever. 

Because though, initially,
I would have you
as a physical part of me,
it will then, necessarily,
degenerate to merely intimate. 
And finally, neither.

And as your other,
I know you have other others
in your past and definitely,
in your dreams. 

So, I can neither be
your mother, nor your other,
who will have the honour of being
your final permittor. 

And not just because
you would not permit it.

It will be so, as
I would not permit it.
Why?  Because, I would,
I COULD
never have YOU
on a declining graph. 
Neither, as a receding part of me. 
Nor,
declining as the owner of the world,
which I have always known you to be. 
Even when you were not.

-

IV.

So,
if decline is a must,
then be on your way,
now. 

Right now,
please. 

For I have this great weakness:
I am the unemancipable
slave of the Upward Graph.

-

V.

I have the shittiest of fits in life:
despite loving you more than my own life,
I seem destined
to lose you before my life. 

Which, incidentally,
I have had enough of.

-

VI.

Unless...

...unless YOU WISH
to be MY final permittor.

So,
either choose to ride
my final horrible downward slide with me. 
Or leave. 
And it is not for me,
or within my power,
to invite you on that journey. 
Or even,
to leave you.

It is for you to decide.

What I know for sure is this: 
I WILL NEVER see you slide. 
Or force you to see me slide. 
I am far too programmed
to live for the upward graph!

So, damn you,
Decide.

And decide,
what I WANT you to decide!

-

VII.

I wish
this golden age of liberalism,
which is drawing to a close now,
had granted me enough rights
to end my life,
conveniently and comfortably,
when I saw fit. 

Before the inevitable slide.

If that were so,
we could have truly belonged to each-other. 

And when done,
at least I,
could simply cease to be.

Before I declined. 
Or you did. 
Or, please, no,
our love did.

--

A Prayer...

-

A Prayer...

May I live as long as I love
and love as long as I live

May I give you all the love you can take
and may you take all the love I can give

May our lives be full of love
and fill all the lives that touch ours with love

May we Homo sapiēns invent ourselves to be
not just sapiēns, but Homo sapiēns-amāns*!



--

*
Homo = Man / Human Being      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homo#Latin
Sapiēns = Wise                          https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sapiens
Amāns = Loving                         https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amans

Interesting to note that the word 'amans' is gender-blind and is used for all 3 genders.  In the noun form, it can mean lover or sweetheart of any gender

Also interesting to note that one of the anagrams of the word 'sapiens' is 'pansies'

Further, most interesting is to note that the word 'homo' is equally or more often used for referring to homosexuals (the 'homo' in H. sapiens comes from Latin and that in H. sexuals comes from Greek)

It seems that you cannot be a happy man unless, in some measure or form, you are gay! (For those who have come in late, the word 'gay' refers/referred both to a happy person as well as to homosexual and beyond/transgender person).