11.28.2009

Death Cab ♫ Your Heart Is An Empty Room

Oppa. Bhaijan. Hermano. Athelphos. Berader. Uror. Akhi.
You have a name, but i have only ever known you as Bhaijan and that is how I choose to remember you.

I never thought I would feel the sensation of losing you again. You have been lost for a long time. A lost cause.

As we drove home from Khala's house I watched the streetlights pass on the highway, like man made stars they guide us home. I wondered if you might still be there when we arrived. Gone you are. What a coincidence of a day. Celebrating God in the fact that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son to the Glory. Ill consider this a sacrifice we are all making and let you go. Out of sight, out of mind my brother. I imagined hugging you, telling you I love you. But I only have the strength to do these things in my mind. That will never change. Gone you are before I have the chance to try. That will never change. I miss you before your departure. That never changed either.

I have said so many times that you live like a ghost in this house. Why does it feel different now? Your things are gone. Your room is as empty as your heart. Why does the emptiness that fills your room feel so wrong even though you were never there? You were never here. Maybe physically. But you were never here. Having your things there somehow pacified me into thinking that you would be here, with us, one day. But, with your possessions out of their place, the belief that I hadn’t lost you yet died.

Purging this place of your presence. What is missing now? The apparition, the hollow vision of you passing me in the corridor every now and then. There will be no more of that. There will be no more sliding notes under your door to tell you things I have not the nerve to say. There will be no more going through your things when you are gone to know you, understand you. No more listening to you play the guitar outside your door, holding my breath so you would not hear me eavesdropping on your only form of speech.



Phantom pain. Believing in a brother that never called himself my own. Phantom. The hurt that houses itself in a corner of my mind that continues to believe you are my blood. Even if you will not.

My brother. You will never know what you mean to me. You have left so many times, why does this feel so final, so menacing? Maybe because I don’t know if or when you will be back, and I wasn’t even this worried when you were in the army. Maybe because as you leave this time, I will never have known you or what I am to you. I may worry that you will come back different. But my greater worry is that you will come back unchanged.

I always thought DC was a breathable city. Not too many skyscrapers, not too many telephone lines crowding the sky. Not much blocking the sky from your senses, not so much contaminating the breaths we take. But maybe it wasn't the city that suffocated you, my brother.

11.17.2009

Thievery Corporation ♫ Who Needs Forever

Insomnia.
let the tiring overtake me.
Now i can sleep.
finally. as the sun rises, my own night falls.
let the darkness within prevail
not a restful sleep, but
an exhausted slumber accompanied by
exhausted dreams.


let the weight of the world
shut my eyelids.

11.15.2009

Amaral ♫ Estrella Del Mar

writer's block/mediocrity/call it what you want.


Nothing tastes as sweet
in your absence.

Your presence may be distracting.
But, your absence is even more distracting.
This is the crossroads,

Where I mix pleasure with pain.
This mixing of souls,
May as well be a mixing of drinks,

This tequila
shot
love.

It burns,
and churns
my insides.
intoxicates me.
evades me.


Your touch can not truly
contain all the power I prescribe it.

But absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Absence makes this intoxication stronger.

11.12.2009

Anna Nalick ♫ Wreck of the day

(this was my initial reaction to the death of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007)


To see bodies lining streets. Those streets.
What kind of cause is this; politics? Bhutto, breed of corruption.
That’s not a cause to die for. A cause of death, maybe.


Blood and bodies. My mind is on turbo, what street is that? Shahr-e-faisal? The street where the races happened? The back roads where we ate ice cream in the middle of the night?


Today, arresting prominence.  Where yesterday we flew kites. How can one city support such multi faceted memories?  The unreality and the reality are sinking in through my eyes at the same rate my tears sink in to my shirt and my cheeks. I’m glad no one in the living room is looking around. Slip away into the corners of this tiny apartment. Steal away a moment to breathe and heave out a sobbing sigh as it rises in her throat.


No. no. no.
That’s my city.
Those are my streets.
That’s my home.


“It hurts. My heart actually hurts.” She cries amid angry tears mixing with hysterical laughter. As she paces madly the expanse of her room, in the dark. Stumbling over her own feet, raising her voice, “Have I ever even mourned for anything in my life like this?”[ever mourned a life like this? when i realize the city is living, alive inside me and outside me] And finally she buckles down to her knees and rests her head in her hands. Pushing curls back as they roll over her shoulders, she incessantly rubs her forehead against her hands as if to try and generate an answer to this riddle of the future through friction. Physics. No, this cause is not physical. It’s chemical, irreversible. Chemicals; burning cars on the streets and corners. Burning validity of all emotion to ash through violence.


Karachi is known for its wind. Close to the sea, a relieving breeze. A reliving breeze. One that I missed for a whole decade. But, now that I know it, I know that breeze again. It taught me how to open my heart again. Those winds entered my soul. I know that breeze. It fans flames of the heart, not the ones I see on the Television.


My country. My city. My family. Scattered to no end in this scheme. Sing me an anthem that will tell me not to come. Let your sands soak the blood. Let your sands know no vengeance. Let them learn forgiveness, as they forgave me for being absent for so long.


Karachi. Tell me you’ll make it through. Tell me you’ll be the same one day. Tell me you will lull my heart to sleep once more with the rhythm of your winds Karachi. Not with the ricochet of bullets. Speak to me, like your streets did when I walked them. Speak to me in silence. Hush hush, I know traitors tread your faithful streets.


Hush hush. I’m coming.
Hush hush the tears. There are many more to come.

11.03.2009

Zeb & Haniya and Javed Bashir ♫ Chal Diyay

earth spins slow,
slower everyday.


it has only survived the penetrating darkness for its pace.
otherwise it would have corroded, corrupted and been consumed.


faster, faster, to gone.
slower, slower, to last.


then why are we so so keen to connect so quickly?
faster than light our eyes lock,
like some radar of chemistry
that we cannot define,
that cannot be confined.
so let us spin slowly, like earth,
let us spin slow with her,


so that this love can last.
so it doesnt become a thing of the past.

The Thrillseekers ♫ Waiting Here For You

i dont ask much.
i dont say much.
why
corrupt chemistry
with words?

give me your body.
your heart and mind,
will come, with time.

give me your body,
and once i take hold,
there's no other world.

give me you body,
i'll take your soul.