THE BRIDGE

Compost Species by Muhammad Khurram - Pakistan

There is no ‘the’ in the fantasies of nature

Putting an ‘ies’ in fantasies doesn’t cut it either

For Nature in its multifariousness dwarfs human imagination

For human is part of nature, so

Nature’s fantasies are compost

Refused, recycled

Inorganic matter suffused with organic, dying and living

Harmonious living without aging is an anti-Nature fantasy

As is an accelerated, break-neck evolutionary speed

For islands drown, continents crash into another

But, only after millennials...

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A Broken Meeting ! by Aaisha Umt Ur Rashid - Pakistan

When waited I

To see your face

When stopped the time

My heartbeat’s pace

When I became a worthless bum

You did not come…

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Dreams: A Chorus by Muhammad Khurram - Pakistan

In dreams begin poems,

As both are tenants of the crevice that

make-love in the muffling

in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

Celebrating with full heart what is here,

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

surviving in a transparent, ghostly, vividly coloured and easily forgotten

state

but, remembered because the body remembers and the mind dreams of

violence

and, of woven air, running water, evening dew

because life is so much more than the misery in our marrow

and the deferral, the death of things,

of beings

of us - multi-tongued, we live in a canopy of cacophony

hot, flashing visions. Dreams we dare not dream

are the bars to ourselves...

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Nostalgic Euphoria by Dirha Qazi - Pakistan

Today it smelled

just like the Air of Naran, as if the mist,

 it carried, sublimated right from the valley of Kaghan.

and the soft touch of its twirling wind transported

my spirits in past,

as if Elysian fairies had cast an incantation,

with the purpose to outlast,

my finite existence...

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Faith by Dirha Qazi - Pakistan

What is faith to me, how do I put it?

Where do I begin? The meaning or it’s value to me.

How it’s so invisible, but how there’s not a place or

A spot, or a sensory experience,

Where my eyes do not see, where my senses do not meet

Where my heart doesn’t greet, where the mind doesn’t breed

It’s Essence...

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The Physicists are Lying by Muhammad Khurram - Pakistan

The physicists tell us, 'we don't see color'

and no, they aren't talking about discrimination

but, light...

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The Shrill Shrieks of Silence by Mahnoor Tahir - Pakistan

To most out there

Silence may be an absence of noise
A void they crave to fill
With love, life, and laughter.
To me, silence means something else...

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The Pitfall Called Love ! by Mahnoor Tahir - Pakistan

I do not know who

Romanticised

This terrible thing called love.

It sneaks in like a dream

A haze of soft clouds,

An endless meadow,

The sweetest symphony.

It burrows deep within...

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