Little girl with the curly,

long, dark brown hair.

She needs to catch up

on some sleep.

But each night after

each hard day of the week,

she says a prayer

to her Father in heaven,

for the endurance

that does build her faith.

She sleeps through the days

on weekends.

And stays up late

during the week

doing homework. Being

so lazy,

too lazy to even go to sleep.

Each day she waits for a text,

a text from someone

who can make her smile.

These smiles are bright and

so shiny,

but they only last

for a little, short while.

At school she is friendly and

quiet, but loud when it counts

the most.

As she drifts through the friends

she knows, she really feels

like nothing more than a ghost.

Watch as she sits and thinks;

you’ll see tears almost come to her

eyes.

But she keeps a closed fist

on those floodgates.

No, she won’t let anyone see her

cry.

You see her

as she goes to practice;

whatever practice it is for that time.

When she messes up,

she beats herself up about it.

She’s got that

‘she wants the best from herself’

kind of pride.

Coming home, she heaves a heavy

sigh.

It’s not as though she doesn’t

want to be there.

The stress is what makes it

hard to come back.

Yet she does and she stays

awake late every night.

It’s no surprise

that she sleeps

through the weekends,

to make up for sleep

those dreamless days lack.

Little girl with the curly,

long, dark brown hair.

She needs to catch up

on some sleep.

But each night after

each hard day of the week,

she says a prayer

to her Father in heaven,

for the endurance

that does build her faith.

Hold me deep into the night,
sing me a song
through the phone,
I’ve got to hear you’re voice,
it haunts me into the early hours
of streaming sunlight
that peaks into my room.

I need the comfort
of knowing you’re alright
seeing how I can’t see you
without asking to see you,
but I can’t do that.

It’s not right
how I want to impose on your life
and fix the wrongdoings,
yet, it’s all I seem to want
other then to hold your hand
and have your scent on me.

My body aches to hear you,
my fingers reach out into the darkness
wanting to grasp
what has become of you.

(posted on my fictionpress account aka counting luv toxic stars)

the night’s air-cold fingers
sting my eyes and lingers
with the rise and fall of a sibilant breeze

January’s breath is a venom
the bitter and biting demon
the unseen imperious trait of a breeze

a sky is blue and brittle
dotted with a crescent shell
an unamenable bluntness of a breeze

I want to elbow in for one last drink,

I want to quit cigarettes so we can start

smoking again sooner.

I want to laugh too loud for the setting

and look sideways at women and

know that we will always make room in life,

amidst change,

for that irreverent joy that makes two

incongruous individuals feel complete.

Submitted by: umbreenbutt

You welcome me with your curving corridors

wide open on a Sunday morning when

 I descend cautiously into your awkward embrace.

Windows to empty offices look out at me,

bear witness to the concrete communion of

broken flyovers and melting roads, a sordid 

semblance of modernity.

Hundreds of empty eyes: hard and unsettling,

hold back low ceilings and stuttering

tube lights, the thick smell of too many men

and rubber shoes, wet with periodic ablutions.

Air condition units like acne, line your

crumbling facades; you are like a

teenage bride, rushing and ungainly,

crooked teeth cramped into a wide metal mouth,

neighborhoods rising above the past.

I travel your arteries unaccompanied

but for electric wires running your length:

they combine, explode and hang, exhausted

and overused, bunched up, and buzzing off

crooked poles: a crime barely concealed,

a rage that rests on Sundays.  

And I see the dreams you lure them out

with, layered like last night’s makeup on

caked and crumbling walls, and I too want to

press against power, enjoy youth and  

believe in Asfandyar: in bright ideals

that are not crushed under gleaming concrete

and loud colourful buses, and powder

that make it all a little softer.

I want to forget Big Brother,

who always watches; I watch you

worship him and feel discarded.

But your avenues spell out desire without 

discrimination and I also want a job,

I want love, but not yours,

I want an answer that I know 

 cannot be found out here. 

Submitted by: umbreenbutt

the still best is true my dear

of how me and you is clear

for morrow,

day

  terday

the still best is true (you)

as sunset go the way he do

(for i am but a hue)

in your eyes of beauty and rest

as sunrise go the way he do

(for i am only a dew)

in your smile of warmth and care

that i will always bear

as i am (only) the flake that melt

in your face you never have felt

submitted by: pen li

freckled lover
you are so clever
to know no other
has a constellation
on their shoulders
like you.

Submitted by: pinksubmergence

i’ve got a thousand words

rehearsed and queued on my lips
pushing, some cutting lines
to reverberate across the air
saying it’s not fair
to be memorized
but never be sanctified by sound
and they’re pooling on the edge
one after the other
with a velocity breaking
the vocal limit i’ve arranged
so instead of making sense in front of you
i stutter,
i
i
i stu-
stutter
fuck
er

Submitted by: pinksubmergence

Your death is no more than an inconvenience: 

traffic blocked before

Billawal House,

a legacy of tragic endings, of

empty promises undone

at the end of a rope, or

with a bullet to the brain.

When I watched you on 

the tele, I wanted 

to smash the screen 

as if it would break your

pride and not just your 

likeness. I despise men

who believe in the sanctimony 

of power, but 

your tears were real and 

in spite of the of the

crooked fight you’ve played,

I believe there was simplicity

in your soul: 

we are all searching for deliverance. 

Success makes us believe that 

we are invincible;

in the earth you are as good 

as dirt, better in memory

than in life. 

You stood in front of Benazir, 

stopped a rock from 

breaking her face

by breaking its momentum 

with yours. And she 

paid you, you confessed, 

tears welling in your eyes, 

as if money were equated

to greatness, although all

grand acts are really free:

as are those tenacious words your wife

must have lived without for years. 

Bhutto’s chadur mopped up your

forehead that fatefull day…and

on a Thursday morning, after

telling your life’s story on

television, your

greatest accomplishment

since you moved out of the crowded, 

unpaved hills of Orangi town,

where your father is buried,

blind and bent over a loom in life

as he was in death, 

on that Thursday morning, did

your daughter mop up the blood

from your multiple wounds

the guards could not control? Can she

clean off the memory with her private

school uniform? 

Tell me, Shams Bihari, 

did you wife love Her too?

Did she love you for

making her number two to an 

unequal contender? Was your 

wedding procession no more than 

another political rally?

Did gunfire rattle the chandeliers

hanging from her ears?

And did she wonder when

you moved from Orangi to Clifton, 

how you’d soon take a short cut to the other side?

Submitted by: umbreenbutt

Ire crests the coo of nightingale —

under a veil of plumage, vibrant;

a summit of wonder erred.

-

Lithe flames, coal, radiance,

ensconced upon revelry;

mortified.

-

Jest emits a perfume - ecstatic in the stale air.

Falling from leaves and snowflakes

comes dreams unrequited.

-

Alas, sombre eve;

set in folly, a mire of relent.

Picturesque in the highlands of requital.

-

Supernova cobblestones

and shoes melted thereon,

fathoms of feetless homes broil.

-

Pen is knife; the knife as ‘n err;

paper-cut-writhe under a penniless stare…

c.2010 Josh Garret

Submitted by: strange-walking