Truth

the truth,

as it happens,

a little

out of tune;

a lot, actually

very, out of tune.

the truth!

but who has ever

seen or heard or believed?

so, the point,

quite moot.

and that the truth

is.

Or Other

And what if 
your ex boy
-friend is a note un
-noticed by the 
birds, gurg
-led by a stream
like the bang
-ing of a spoon
on a hollow metal 
dream, deep inside
a well,
a-band
-one-d
by the thirsty
who no long
-er
care to drink?
And what if
you're in
-tent
on me
an' eye on you

Spinner's Legs

 you should swallow my pride.

1. 

I met a man who said the Taliban did not have open minds. so I showed him one who was willing to blow himself up. "Sir," said the Talib, "once I blow myself up, my mind will be very open, very open indeed; in fact, some parts of it will be so far removed from others, you'll never be able to find them. But I am not a selfish man, sir, when I open my mind, yours will open too."

2. 

I met a woman who thought religion was oppressive and annihilated the self for the sake of some trumped up higher cause. I didn't really have much of a verbally communicable justification so I showed her a ballerina, and she said, 'Yes, but this is art; it humanizes.' I said, 'I think we should feed her and get her comfortable shoes.' She said I was an ignorant barbarian upon whom all refinement and culture was lost. I said, 'Umer, you really need to imagine better women to have pretend conversations with because this bitch is fucked up.'
It isn't terrorism, fools! it's just art at its sincerest!

3. 

I met two women who said Islam did not prohibit homosexuality among women. They said the wrath of God fell upon the people of Lot because they were rapists and sodomites of the male sort, not because they were homosexuals of the female variety. "Find one verse," said one of the two, "that clearly states the punishment came on account of lesbians!" So I went home and decided not to. Perhaps it is for the best. I mean breast, I mean best, sorry!

4.

Eventually, however, all our experts in the field came to the same conclusion: education could only help the educated - and was, therefore, utterly pointless. "Education is just plain, old rubbish!" said a senior Education Studies expert, "It's a myth, for the most part, and a waste of time too - unless you're educated, in which case you're already educated and so, don't even need it! I mean, you see how it's just dumb?" 
"Educated people, by the way, are quite condescending towards others, towards those who aren't; actually, they're even condescending towards their own kind, once they "specialize", but by and large they seem to think only education is important. Narcissists, all of them, self obsessed!" said Professor Abdus Salam (not related to obel nay ize-winner pray). He further stated that, "Maybe ignorance is really important. I mean, were the dinosaurs educated? Were they? No! Try to be a little less arrogant, for God's sake! I mean was God educated? Did God go to Harvard? No! Humanity clearly pre-dates education! So, let that be a lesson to you." 
Education has, after much heated debate, been abolished and is no longer considered the bee's ankles.

5.

my side, center-right - leaning more towards the right -, is large in numbers but inarticulate. it is not impossible to defend it, but it is futile to do so because it is ignorant and self destructive - an elephant rampaging in a minefield. what the other sides, center-left and left, have, for the most part, is cold, and what appears to be, reason. what the center-right needs to regain is rhetoric, but rhetoric informed by knowledge and nuance - for cosmetic purposes. historically, rhetoric has always trumped reason. and though i find that to be disturbing, because of what that says about humanity, i have yet to find any reason that is not dependent or even rooted in rhetoric - for they too must rely on their poets and their martyrs! - except that it is always necessarily intellectually dishonest about it. ultimately, their smattering of statistics and sound arguments mean nothing to People. it all comes down to whose narrative creeps inside their gut and gives their soul a squeeze. victory, therefore, whatever it may mean in the times to come, is assured us. an insignificant minority will continue to scream bloody murder, but that is, as it has always been and always will be, ineffectual and unimportant. this minority exists only as a means of keeping us on our toes and must be treated with the kindness that any purveyor of free goods must be. it must be humoured wholeheartedly and generously allowed to flourish, because it simply cannot. it will exist to have lost, always. 

- facts are rubbish. they tell us nothing. life is much too random. facts are farts in a gale. 

6.

I remember reading a parable about a lion and a cow or a rabbit and some other animal, perhaps a wolf and a mouse perhaps. And so, one day the cow or rabbit and the wolf, if indeed it was a wolf, and the mouse, chanced upon a tasty treat that was just lying there in the jungle. So they brought it to the lion because he was the king, and they said, "King lion, here is a tasty treat that we found lying over there in the jungle, and we thought we would share it with you because you are the king and we your loyal subjects." The lion looked at the tasty treat and then looked at his loyal subjects and then said, "So, how do you see it divided, this tasty treat that you have brought." The first to speak was the wolf, if the animal I am thinking of was, in fact, a wolf. "I say, my lord, your highness, that in the spirit of equality, fair play and justice, we should divide this here tasty treat amongst ourselves equally so that everyone could partake and be pleased and so no one feels left out or wronged or etc., and you know, it's for the best and harmony and yeah." The lion killed the wolf, that is to say IF the animal in question was really a wolf, because it may well have been a panther or something, and then he ate it. The bear, or whichever animal was next, said then, "Personally, your majesty, I feel that since, you're the king, you should have the largest share and then the rest of us should just divide the tasty treat in proportion to our respective sizes, respectfully. I mean, it just makes sense and you're king and some of us are large and have needs and others are smaller and have fewer needs, so, yes. That’s what I think, personally. It’s my point of view." The lion killed the bear as well and ate it. A third animal proposed a third means of dividing the tasty treat and things seemed to be going well for him till he started talking about his preferred methodology and of course the ontological and epistemological concerns etc., at which point the lion killed him too. Eventually the cow or rabbit or mouse or some such animal suggested the following: "King, you are the lion, I mean, you are the king, your highness, and the king is king, which is sort of tautological but what I mean to say is, who am I to say which way is best? You’re the king, yes? THE king! You decide whatever you want to decide. The tasty treat is yours. You keep the entire thing if you like. Nobody has the right to say anything about it. Just, it's yours. You. Yours. It’s so yours it's not even funny. You know what I’m saying? We’re just, you know, loyal subjects. So. You decide!" The lion was very pleased with the answer and said, "Yes, indeed. I AM the king." And then he divided up the tasty treat among whatever loyal subjects remained and he divided it in such a way that all were satisfied. That’s right. They were all satisfied. And they had better be satisfied. And they were.

- Divine Logic

7.

The floor was made entirely out of glass. So, when the Queen finally appeared at the King's court for the first time, she raised her dress up to her ankles and took her shoes off. She had never seen glass before and assumed it was very wet.

'Must I get used to this," smiling all the time she sighed inside.

'Wait till she finds out it isn't wet,' thought the king to himself, inwardly amused.

Quite so, this particular king was known as the smartest king of all time. He understood life in terms of moves and thought of it at least seven moves ahead of everybody else. He, at times, felt what is known now as 'The Time Traveller's Guilt' or 'Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?'

8.

There was a candle there, on the table. Also, a man stood there, with his head bowed over it, eyes closed. Some men's faces age nobly, he was one of those. The spectre of a woman appeared, seated, beside the table, in front of the man who had just now opened his eyes to see the woman who had appeared in front of him, spectral and dark. Shadows managed to slip every which way to accommodate the newcomer.

"I was having a nightmare," spoke the spectral woman. She was very bored.

"Indeed?" replied the man. He was taller than most things.

"Yes, in fact, in that dream, I was sitting right here."

"Do you seek rest, then?"

9. 

you wear it like a dress, so well,

- a fancy one that you have found -

what they've been wearing b'neath their clothes

except that theirs don't keep them warm

so sing your borrowed local poetry

make your outlook socialist.

preach t' th' poor 'bout poverty

let them know what they have missed

 10.

"I find the views and sentiments expressed by Pakistani ex-pats, whether these are positive or negative, to be contemptible at best. They know nothing. I shit on their collective opinion. I say, 'Come back and say it in this climate or just shut up and keep sending dollars back home. That is your purpose, not commentary.'"

- Dr. Abdus Salam

11.

some people you may know

grow up in gardens

pluck up their courage

like fruit or like flowers

they harden their shoulders

and lift heavy boulders

some people you may know 

fall off of mountains

and land in the desert

and walk to the ocean

then swim to the point where the sea meets the sky

some people you may know

12.

"My religion allows me to kill people who think their religion allows them to kill people."

- Zindagi to Tum Bhi Ho.

Heavy Lies the Crown and a Short Short Story

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.

And now, back to the show:

by that time it was clear as day that survival beyond, say, ten, would be impossible, or, at the very least, extremely painful. by day fifteen, you'd be a sort of gooey meat smoothie in a wrinkly bag, leaking plasma as you sloshed around distastefully towards oblivion. by then, the Government stopped trying to calm people down - or just generally it stopped being a bother. It, that is to say Government, stepped down from the position of a vaguely unsettling abstraction and became people again. It was pointed out with odd, grim hubris how it took an apocalypse to bring that most desirable change about. 
i suppose, at the root of it, money was as valuable as cooking pot tops - actually no, it was less sonorous, and therefore of no worth at all. I mean, of course, it had always been rubbish but we stopped pretending otherwise, you see, and that made all the difference. although, admittedly, it made no difference at all at that juncture. 
i personally played a cooking pot top to great effect once the skins on musical instruments politely, but not gradually, vanished. much to my father's chagrin. chagrin is the kind of word you come to recognize way before you learn to pronounce it. the latter you learn by happenstance.
you would assume incidents of mass looting or people holding hands and so forth, but no, not really. In fact, one of my best sisters went to a room that wasn't - in some ways, at least - even in our house, and did not say why, did not come back, did not laugh either. how do i even begin to explain this? i imagine there were throw pillows and colour, but that could not possibly be true since i went there and there was only a petulant shadow spreading its arms and lengths over all things - as if to say, 'mine!'. It conveyed nothing. 
i went up there with my friend - i will not pretend to remember him - and we met a man who sniggered, an older cousin who knew exactly who we were, once we told him who we were, and who got it all wrong for a joke, i suppose. he had muscles and smoked. at that point it was OK. 
we sat there in that room, talking about this and that, waiting that interminable wait for the inevitable sickness to set in, waiting for symptoms to become manifest, rather like waiting for a drug to begin its effect - the nervous excitement that entails being very aware of your own breathing and sensory etc. and somebody said we should probably go see what mother was up to. we found her strolling in the garden at night. she met us with all good humour and smiles and with parched lips said she wanted to go to the park. since that was where i was headed anyway, it worked out well. 
there were many veiled and sweatered women in the park walking in the brownianest of motion it seemed. identically attired, they were trying to be as disconcerting as reflections. i enjoyed their cheerful lady size steps as they traversed and conversed in "hello" and "hello" and were all exactly the same. that was the first time i realized that in every woman's closet there must be at least one ensemble that every other woman also owns. this could've been said better, but it wasn't supposed to be an aphorism. aphorisms had failed. 
i remember watching the state police drag a man all the way to somewhere between two motorcycles held aloft like so. almost as if he were being helped over a puddle it seemed. i was always a little concerned about being stopped or asked questions - but we drove in our lane and we turned when we were supposed to. my mother and i and driver. 
there was not much traffic. a fast car would pass us by like an arrow. but it meant nothing except a peculiar kind of lonely. it was just silly. perhaps, and it is quite odd to think of it, but my sister's self exile into the unroom was what made me feel that the entire planet was marked by a profound sense of loss. or perhaps that was just the apocalypse. she wasn't angry at us or anything like that. that is, or was, i suppose, how she wanted to spend her time. that time was quite unequivocally hers, i'd assume. perhaps that is, or was, what she had actually wanted. she was quite the dreamer, that one.
i remember staring at my mother's fingers as her rings turned black and nails fell out. and i won't deny that it repulsed me and i won't lie that i did not hold her hand anyway. because why the hell not! my father disliked the noise of the cooking pot top. but he put up with it - barely, like a bear. he was relieved when the skin had melted off the percussive (this is how i avoid saying tabla - in fucking italics!) instruments initially but then this master told me to sort of hold the skin and stretch it over to play on like a weaver ant holding leaves, but eventually the skin just dripped liquid and so then the cooking pot top was taken out and i beat out this really nice melody that made the master speak in elaborate sexual metaphors. that, perhaps, more than anything else, bothered, no, no, it was just the sound. he hated the cacophony, my father i mean.
the identical women in the park in their identical periwinkle knitted sweaters with identical patterns and their (the women's) dull grey veils walked in brownian motion around objects that turned, well, green. the kind that glows that is. and nobody fought. in the last days, everyone was looking inward and seeing out. it was patiently and desperately expected that someone somewhere would suddenly wake up and the nightmare would be over. someone else would wake up, you see. that was the key to a good last ten days. the quietest of desperation. the kind that stares.



.

A Song:

 heavy lies the crown
the king who wields the weapon
yet cannot command without
a clown to run his kingdom
he'd take the banners down
and hope that in the end there
when his story's coming round
there will be words of wisdom
At least a word of welcome
though perhaps devoid of sound
but someone must've said
Hey, look! how heavy lies the crown!

heavy lies the crown
upon the brow that furrows
everytime he puts it on
though heavier sleeps the conscience
of the ego of the proud
a stroll there with the queen
to go survey the royal grounds
and look beside the courtiers
there are eyes that can be found
eyes look but do not see
appraise but cannot feel
that though light as light can be
just how heavy lies the crown.

And now for the news:

I do not understand smart people who are not smart enough to know that sometimes the smart thing isn't the smartest thing to do. (vote pti):

I

i wanted all points of view - perhaps because i wanted to know the truth or because i was afraid of being wrong - and for that i had to begin somewhere; so, i began with what interested me most. 
you and i doubt if beginnings of this sort can ever be objective because etc but still, you and i understand that a beginning etc. 

II
points of view are very hard to gain. they require you to scoop out nearly all your internal organs every time, set them all in rows in front of you to be stared at till they begin wriggling of their own accord and then you must patiently wait while they inch their squirmy way back into your body. this was a metaphor. also, those who begin with, "I for one..." will rarely not disappoint in their private capacity as organisms of interest. this is a point of view - but for some reason, not a good one.

III

some points of view are contrary to reason - which is not to say insignificant - and harder to stare at. their wriggling seems diseased. they are unsettling points of view and yet for you to pretend that they are steeped in stupidity, is stupidity, but a valid point of view - maybe.

IV

some points of view are just as valid as others and a choice between this one or that must be based on some brand of faith - which is not a dirty word. some points of view are unacceptable. you cannot have them. therefore you cannot have them.

V

Rocket Man is a brilliant song that was billions of evolutionary years in the making - as was Hips Don't Lie. And which of your Lord's favours will you deny? so many points of view. it is like a mattress full of fluff being shot at with an automatic weapon.

VI

because all points of view cannot be had simultaneously, we must huddle together, suspicious and perhaps obnoxious, and be alone.

V

honesty is da bezt polici.

VI

at any given time, you are a hero, the answer to the question of life, and also a complete fucking moron. this is a point of view.

VII

you are somewhere.
this may or not be where i am.
let us converse.

That's All Folks!

Moth

I, when I was a moth,
I went to the moon,
I planned a plot,
Alone in my room, a dot on the wall.
I, would the eye of a child

Pluck out and steal, slip out unseen.
Surrounded by beams of a silvery hue,
I’d live, and outlive and then die on the moon;
Thrive on the whitewashed wall in my room.

I, when I was a moth,
I took out an eye,
Replaced it with yours;
Then to my surprise did I see it all!
There were flies in the ointment,
And ears on the wall,
There were lies and lies and lies on the moon;
Some of them were false, while some of them were true:
Trying their wings in the light of the moon.

(final version)



iTroll

Like a fly to a turd 
I'm attracted to your stupidity. 
I wish to settle on it, gently, almost unfelt 
And then throw up all over it. 
Then when my vomit has marinated your fecund little thoughts, 
I want to suck them right up
Like shit from a straw.
No one knows how it works,
But I get to fly around being an asshole,
While you get typhoid or cholera or some such shit. 

Arse Poetica:
I'm an asstronomer,
In love with asstrology.
If I were your asstronaut, 
Would you put your 
Asstroname?



Iwuzgoing

i was going
the wind was blowing
a cow was lowing 
a breast was showing
the milk was flowing
and the farmer sowing
his wife was hoeing
the field was growing
the truck was towing
the car was slowing
the horn was blowing
like a crow who's crowing
at the all unknowing
and it started snowing
while the sun was glowing
on the boatman rowing
owing to the fact thati was going 

Passel o' Moo

To Animals

O' Noble Cat!

O' noble Cat, nine times blessed, do tell:

How dost thou lick thy balls in times as fraught as these

With draught, famine, flood and fire? How canst thou be

So dedicated to thy morning wood? Man has let his

Wander to the ends of Earth but not as yet can he

Do with his tongue what thou canst do with thine.

O noble Cat, if I but could, you know I would lick mine.

Tea at Ate

‎- '...Sooner or later, Mister Alligator,

They'll all make a line

- A sign of the time - And walk on down

Right into your mouth, past all of your teeth

Move along your spine,

Till they hit at the last, the end of the road,

And you shit them all out! An insufferable load

That thought that you were...that...Oh this, and that...'

- 'Be quiet, Mister Cat!'

Genesis

The bird that sat

Sneezed at last, and it was as if

The tree had shuddered - but had not really!

The snake that slithered round and round the massive trunk

Slipped and fell upon the ground with a sudden thud.

A sound was heard: the fluttering of wings, and other things

A creature besides, far away, singing.

An elephant lumbered its hungry way across the plain

And everything else was much the same.

But somewhere, up there, behind the starry skies

A lot of gossip going on, back and forth, about right and wrong.

O' Bed

O' Bed! You lusty old fool!

In whose soft embrace all foolish dreams come

True!

In sleep, when I all moral thought suspend,

What lechery

Wilt thou not for me portend!

My Mattress Mistress, Misfit I

Ready to come and ready to die.

For Sale...But Not Worth It!

O' you and I, we sell ourselves short,

Afraid of advertising false; furious,

When the would-be buyer falls for our honest pitch

And leaves us there upon the shelf,

And shuffles off in search of shit.

Come, we shall our curious talent mourn

And call a Heart a Spade.

Mice

We tried to be modest...we did!
But you were such a bad person
That we collectively decided
To rub it, our brains, in your face
And to not even rhyme;
But be better and more interesting
Than you could ever hope to be.
To be sublime,
To steal your first born from its mother's womb,
And leave a ticking time bomb in its place;
Your wife, your cocoon, your analgesics,
Your total and complete inability to perform...
(We got your girlfriend off two stops back by the way)
There she is, back there, alone, on the platform.
Tell her where you've been...go on,
If you have the balls...tell her
What's wrong...




Talent? Addiction?

Bottle full of sound.
Drunk.
Throwing up a melody:
Dehydrated dissonance;
Hungover on a Tuesday.

Rehab around the corner;
And I have found a corner.
Somewhere to belong;
Never sing another song!

But the bottle full of sound...
Drunk!