Siroun: I’m summoned to this woodland on your journey Round moon’s seven stays, O mutable embodiment, Digressive claims assembled as cascading teleology! I witness horns immersed in voices, and demonic eyes That scatter rainbows in a camel’s head – are you a friend Who spins a veil of value round an ancient tree, where I, […]

No spite, unease, no muted grief or plea; just skill to swim this atemporal sea… To what song shall I now my mind prepare and which undoing of this eve repair? We cannot leave the unknown to streams of leavened lust; the ebb and flood of silt and smoke retains the quiver of each breathing […]

The mud that makes a man molds women into birds, although we know avians come from dinosaurs and humans from a heavenly jubilation of glad apples. The spotted dove between the flowerbed and a melody line bobs on the grass and scans in peace for pearl millet. Its ruby heels don’t bruise a single blade […]

A little girl sleeps with magnolias by her side and the longest lasting pink carnations in her hair. There are clouds in the window and a sunny tune in her mind and a dream suffused with the sweet and spice of blossoming, and a yellow ladybird is crawling on the sill, spanning silence with silence. […]

In a room laden with dust and books sleeping in cartons, under a roof baking in the sun, a pair of hands hems in the halos of time with a list of chores and a letter… A beaming face, a lovely you ordering the day in minutiae, pruning it like a bonsai elm red with […]

You little purple ones who smell of nothing and speak in specks of radiance over meadows and the briefest patch of grass your pretty names invoke the mostly girly and grandmotherly admiration – you have the charm of youth unraveled in the passing years – yours is the truest virtue of pleasing without knowing – […]

Roofs remain cool under leaves of watered vines green with budding grapes – fruits of sultry solstice dewed with sudden drops of cumulus rains and swept with winds let loose ineffably across my face and yours, flustering sleepy birds in the distant bamboos only to confide that they will live to sing the break of […]

We have touched the precarious petals of the flowers called friendship on many sides and they have never ceased to surprise. Everywhere there is a purpose, everywhere a suspicion as to the purpose, nectar guides and scent and sweet relishes, but seldom the power to hold the whole fluorescence to the same receptacle for long. […]

May this noon rest lightly like a plume from an egret’s crest on your happiness, ease inside the book you clutch close to the feeblest murmurs. We witness birds and reckon their flying for freedom; I write verses to weave your voice into mine and let it off in the simmering noon – listen, and […]

The essence of actions may not be confirmed and tend to sail through pompous pillars bobbing on crests of breathless surfs back to ourselves, may sink like pebbles in a blind well, reemerge as dragons misconceived forever, forever named and seldom deemed lone travelers who breathe fire only to warm their clammy claws – they […]

Along the muddy torrents in the winter downpour’s view of old alleyways, there hides a mosque with a lorn façade and silly marble tiles burying the yard. There I want to feel the cool rain on our soles together, to enter through the arches into the chamber of two blazing domes, see the stars of […]

Across the curled and twisted shisham twigs, the clouds are breathing facets of the sun as it slinks and slings shadows of the smallest things onto a great expanse of the greenest grass. If we sit quietly on that green bench and listen, we’ll see that no one speaks to another but still, see what’s […]

empty ink and perfume bottles hair and paper clips sewing threads and greeting cards watercolored tenderness birthday logs and snaps scattered shirts and answer sheets pangs of sown affinities flickering strands and kisses invested with farewell… — Taimur Khan

The scent of your face is an ode to the moon lingering on my lips, and the air on your lips is a butterfly resting on my hand, and the clasp of our hands is an easy little home where all specters sweetly sleep. — Taimur Khan

Pastel leaves flutter to the mind of the wind – they never found out they no longer breathe and go on as before to borrow all our meanings. — Taimur Khan