POEM_: Dialogues with Mother: III

I am sorry, Mother,

that is the way it is. 

You have no parents,

I, no offspring. 

And neither likely to be found.

You will never know

how suffocating it is

to be smothered in love. 

And I,

never the pain of growing up an orphan. 

You shall never know, first-hand,

how a child sees his parents;

and I, the view from the other end.

We live in two worlds,

occupying, approximately,

the same place in space-time -

yet unable to reach the other.

- owais

--

This was published earlier in "Love?"

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POEM_: Dialogues with Mother: II

Do I value love? 

Do I? 

You should know the answer,

Mother. 

And do I value you? 

You should know that too. 

Twenty-seven years; it’s a long time y’know. 

And if you do not know me now

you never will know.

Anybody.  Ever.

I have loved you

and trusted you,

like nobody since. 

But do not ask me

to stop worshipping Eros

and “the heavenly Aphrodite”. 

They are my gods.

My raison d’être.

You are not in the habit of losing, Mother. 

Do not ask me to choose.

- owais

--

This was published earlier in "Love?"

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POEM_: Dialogues with Mother: I

Do you know

who a mother is? 

That to whom

one can go –

when one fails

and bare all: 

all one’s bruises, hurts, inadequacies;

drop all defences

and all make-beliefs

and be acceptable for what one is. 

A person with whom

you find tenderness and love

simply because you are you. 

With whom

you need not put up a show

of the confidence of a breadwinner

of the strength of a father

of the bravado of a lover…

Mother,

you were good

but this one thing

you could never give me. 

So rarely could I come to you

with a failure. 

And when I did

it would be to hear you say: 

“I told you so.” 

You could never really accept:

Incredulous, you’d say: My son? Failed?

My son? 

And to this day

I know no greater pain

no greater failure

and in retrospect, no greater betrayal

than this.

- owais

--

This was earlier published in "Love?"

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HS_KP: Introduction & Good Bye...

Dear Visitor,

Welcome to this blog.

I used to publish on this blog until recently. I have now moved to a new blog address, which you can see in the very last entry on on this blog (dated 4th October 2010).

Blogging is basically a publishing tool for me: I do not want to take the hassle of pursuing publishers, so am publishing my writing through this and other blogs.

I apologize in advance to any person or group that I may hurt through my writing.

Having said that, I also want to put it on record that I do not intend to hurt any person, group or any other entity capable of getting hurt.

These blogs mainly contains my writing related to my philosophy of life, my poetry and my thoughts about management of life and other related aspects.

You can read more about the above in the very first blog (post-marked April 20, 2008, 3:12 PM, titled ‘Welcome’) here.

To get to the specific kind of my writing that you may want to read, kindly press the relevant label (below the writing). The detail can be seen in the description of the categories below.

Anyone and everyone is free to use any material from my blogs, so long as it is done without any ill-intention towards anyone else. No permission is required from me.

If you end up making some profit from any material taken from here, and you feel that you would like to share that with me, you have two options. You can either ‘pay forward’ what you believe to be my share; or you can pass it on to me.

If you need to contact me, you can do so via vassoc@gmail.com.

For pre-published material, here is the list of publications:
.... -‘Love?’ published in 1992, by Writers Workshop, Calcutta.
.... - 'Yaraana' published in 1999, by Penguin India, New Delhi.
.... - 'शम्ए-राह' (‘Sham-e-raah’) published in 2002, by Markaz-e-Adab, Bhopal.
.... - 'Bombay Dost' magazine published by Pride Publications, Mumbai.
.... - 'Poetry Chronicle' published by The Society For Promotion of Poetry, Mumbai.
.... - 'Trikone Magazine' published by Trikone, San Jose, CA, USA.
.... - 'किताब नुमा' ('Kitab Numa') published by Maktaba Jamia Ltd., New Delhi.

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POEMT: What's wrong with our world?

...we are following the wrong Dào!

- owais

--

This is first being published on this page.

POEM_: Whoami

Whoami?
Idunno.

But what I do know
is that I am
one thing one day, one moment
another one,
another day, moment.
Some days I am an egocentric
selfish bastard, ready to trash half the World
for some real
or imagined injustice to me, or mine.
Other days I am a sucker for love
ready to torch my career, my life, my world...
...for the World,
for some real or imagined
beloved. An idea
or a man.

I am a bundle
of such contradictions.
I am also
a son
a citizen
of this my country, India
and of the World.
I am a brother
to a Hindu
and three Muslim girls.
I am a Muslim,
culturally;
I am an agnostic too.
I am a man
and yes, of course,
I am a fairy queen!
I fuck
and I get fucked.
I am a gourmet,
and a gourmand.


Apart from these
and so many more
contradictions, I am
an executive by profession
an engineer by education
a fat lazy bum by inclination
a poet by inspiration
and a gay,
human rights activist
by necessity.

Who am I?
I still do not know.

Or perhaps,
I do know.
I am ‘I’,
And that is perhaps
a definition enough.

- owais

--
This is first being published on this page.

POEM_: Morality?

Standards of morality change.

I am sure some of our haloed ancestors
believed that it was immoral
to not eat a vanquished
enemy's flesh.

You tend to begin
and end your moral history
at a point in time
a few, or perhaps
several hundred years back.

And I can not
live by a canned morality
the use-by date of which
has expired long ago.

So you live by your tradition.
But I,
shall make my own.
Please don't judge me
by your standards.
And I will not judge you, by mine.

- owais

--
This is first being published on this page.