African Vibrant

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She walked out
Limping
For reasons God knew
In her multi colour
Dressing
Sharp spikes of yellow
And darks
The African vibrant
Against the white and silver
That dullness
The blandness
Of terminal 4
Arrivals
As her arrival
Was different
Though she didn't seem to know it
I couldn't see her face yet
But somehow I seem to know it
There was tiredness in movement
Pain perhaps
No amazement
No awe or surprise
At the fact she's under British skies
Where did she come from?
I could've checked the screen
But didn't
I watched on
She slowly limped
To her son it must've been
And hugged
And kissed
And loved
And shook his hand
He smiled
like we all do
Her story unknown
Sadly I could guess at heartache
How awful of me
Or them
Or us?

Desert Rainfall

Glamour
On the run
Neck crooked
Catching strains
From skyscrapers
Draping the desert
Like technicolour rainfall
No drought here
As they pour from the ground
Pushed upwards by clouds of slaves
Brave brown men pushed to the sky's limit
But ride with it
The wave, still rising
Tsunami surfing 'civil engineers'
Basking in the sun's glory
and soaked in the rainfalls
The recipe for rainbows
Unseen by many

Dreams From My Father

Dreams from my Father
Dreams of my Father
Selflessly deflated
For me to go farther
Little could be harder
But Father is a master
Of service, an art that
I should've mastered
Before a disaster
To put life before laughter
My Father a Master

Looking Upwards

We are not from here
These realms of hellish facade
I am heavenly
As are you
Regardless of what they tell you
Regardless whether its the A or B team
We play for the same team
And walk around the same drum
As we drop from clouds and seep through
Earthly clay
And through the velvet
Elegantly trimmed curtains as we play Shakespeare's men
And women
The celestial is where we come from
In both tenses
We sit and marvel at wonders of the Mother
And rightly so as we glorify the Source
Who may produce His brilliance through many a means
Which means
Dubai is no Manhattan
But the Nile remains the Nile and the Amazon the Amazon
Rivers which we swam in before
The skill itself left us
Wanting and panting for breath like fish
Who leave the sea
If we could only see
That all the water in every glorious depth
was within us and running through our veins
Since the days we were born.

Jeans With A Kurta On Top

My tattered past
Strips of it here and there
Across artificial borders
Historic notions of home
Blurred by visions of the present
And friends and family
And songs sung in different tongues
But a love song is a love song
I suppose

Fearing betrayal of both my houses
A plague has struck me
Of questions and uneasy answers
Said smiling because I love the asker
And want them to take me as their own
I am one of you
My blood is red and my soul hidden

Strange to read poems
To prose like questions
Like two different languages
So here we go again my friend
Having swam in both salt and sweet seas
I know they're both just bodies of water

Home

Is love
Can be found softly resting
Intertwined in the arms
Of an embrace
Heartfelt
Or the small space
That sits between the shake of two hands
That come to each other with nothing
But peace

Is familiar territory
And sometimes not
For the character within
Those four walls
Can turn any dwelling homely
But is most at home
At home

I have done neither
Love
Nor home justice
My words tremble
At the thought
Of their reality

Layla

That mystery
That spoke to me
In interrupted silence
A language so clear
And polluted
There's something about her
She comes alive in herself
Serene and superficial
Silent and deafening
Starry eyed when she appears clearly
Sheltering and exposing
Its as if sometimes
The rules don't apply to her
But still after dusk
She's at it again
What a sight in the city
She competes with it
For light
You know her name
At times I feel insane
Majnoon if you will
But I join a hundred others
Necks strained
And she has the time
For the lovers
Whisperers, screamers
And the ones barely breathing
The prayers
None prey after her
But many pray after her
Some cannot love her in her absence
And forget their odes to her later
And when she arrives again
She'll be the same Layla