in the night, under the swinging jazz
of moon and memories,
i rearranged alphabets
to formulate semantics and pragmatics.
i lost it: no prose, no poem, no mythology;
nothing inflated from my pen.
a fox on the other end of the road
saw me through the parallax buttons
on his head; he handed me an anthology
with the qasidas of urdu poets—a gift from arab—
i read it; it obliterated my language from inside out,
and i wrote
adjectives-ridden-coming-of-flood-of-storm-of-volcano-sound-of-sophisticated-tempestuous-songs
in the excitement of wilderness, when heavens break the silence of my mind.
outside the tent of laila, outlandish lyrics entered and fucked my brain,
and i write this poem to handle night’s sighs assailing
the blue sky of my obsolete heart; and that lovely fox still glances (and now smiles).
Bio note:
Furqan Ali is an accountant from Peshawar who is fond of poetry, stories, literature, and everything under the sun except hard sciences. He is also an editor at The Peshawar Review. He can be reached at: alifurqan647@gmail.com.
