Three Poems

by Junaid Ahmed Ahangar

TRYING BUT NEVER

do the tired hands of a clock stop ticking when the ship they are on runs aground? they must.

your head resting on my arm, numb and it feels like a hundred years i can hear the sound of rain coming from my radio.

or maybe it's just static.

fix the radio, maa tells me

but she doesn't know what i know.

i am searching feverishly, for shelter

 you find stillness in the unlikeliest of places like a wavering cloud, young and wild and free finds a solitary tree to shade.

it has forever been like this cold and dreary

when i

rode naked into an old winter carrying fragments of an exile birds ate letters from a mailbox perched on a lonely tree

a somber leaf before going to sleep asked is it still december?

wake up and stop daydreaming, maa tells me

but she doesn't know what i know.

i chewed my heart out spat it back.

there's more left, there's more left there's always more left.

folly.

but i want to live so i plot my demise. pick it back up

pieces of this carcass 

sew it back inside my chest.

don't gather it up back again, maa tells me

but she doesn't know what i know.

if it were a different life i'd be you, i tell you i tell myself i cross my heart, i run and hide.

a raindrop somewhere finds its way into a womb i don't quite remember what i am searching for but i found answers i know i was not looking for.

i cannot find a reason why not to like you.

always living in fear is when you know i, i am

i am scared i am scared.

don't be scared, maa tells me

but she doesn't know what i know.

do i atone for hesitancy or celebrate it? half a step, a step too far or a trifle?

i don't know how dante carried beatrice for so long with so little. i am going to listen to maa.

i am going to fix my radio.

i am going to wake up and cease my careless dreaming. i am going to hide my heart in a box i don't remember.

i will not be afraid.

i will auction my life to meet you one day

and i will spend the rest of my life, waiting.

don't wait, maa tells me

but she doesn't know what i know.

MY LITTLE BOY OF SUBURBIA

my little boy of suburbia did you go in peace?

everything feels like foreshadowing now

the spilling of water, the clacking of the wooden floor the disdain of a forgetful heart

were those feeble footsteps a premonition? small paws but a large heart i know now

you gave yourself enough and then you gave some more wayfarer wayfarer, my little boy

it’s a different world they say, the next life they say freedom is vast there

in the shape of god’s hands

the expanse of which shines through

did you find your way back to your womb? did seraphs welcome you in a lap of clouds?

here, i shall gift you the moonlight in wicker baskets i'd saved for long here, you can knit your own dreams with your paws

and the words which fall, i’ll sew together a poem out of those here, i shall drape you in a choir of curtains

carried on a silent breeze and solemn hymns although this grief is resolute

and unflinching like the trunk of the methuselah tree

i console myself thus

i picked my thunder, who else can say that? i saw a crack in our mirror today

it eluded your guile just for once

remember our pledge that we would daydream together always? as you scratched a fresh summer rain to life

one lazy afternoon full of frowns

my devout little boy never in need of rosemary beads frivolous games the repose of all meaning

psalms long forgotten in your eternal heart

i've walked all night long just to reach here today

i once thought hope is a nascent dove settling on an autumn twig but hope is a lil farther still

when I meet you in another life my little boy

JUDITH

Leaning against a transit, I tend to look beyond I thought of you, Judith

And all the things that passed us by The magpie that wasn’t blue

Fall which came unannounced Tiny gestures dwarfing a bird All of it still, still like you

The struggle of memory against forgetting never gets easy I am thinking of you all the time, Judith

The curtain silhouette creases The paint coming off the wall

The drop of water finding its way through the roof I hide under a handkerchief in my dream

Trade dreams for seven pebbles It’s my dream after all

Only to wake up and find that It’s December’s unending snow

I wait motionless to gather this small world In my ordinary hands

I’m still thinking of you, Judith We nurture this fire

We find answers we are not looking for About conversations we never had

The hourglass waiting, lying in ambush We nurture this fire together, Judith Silence dwells where distance resides Falling apart is never a single act

When courage to say meets courage to not and is left wanting One too many leaps

Soon cannot come soon enough

I am never not thinking of you, Judith

Is it too late for a kiss to make everything alright? All this search for a metaphor

What does it amount to? What if life lies elsewhere

And to find it, you have to look over your shoulder?

BIO: The author, Junaid Ahmed Ahangar works as a doctor in a tertiary care institute in Srinagar, Kashmir. He graduated from Dhaka, Bangladesh and completed his MD in Medicine from Srinagar, Kashmir. He also has an MA in English Literature from India and is currently in the second year of MA in Philosophy. He devotes his time between his profession and passions which over the last few years has seen a conscious departure towards writing poetry and prose. He is also a singer-songwriter and occasional guitarist with other interests apart from literary pursuits like music, film-making, podcasting and theology.