RIZWAN SALEEM - POEMS

Rizwan Saleem is a Banker based in Dubai UAE. The thoughts and expressions detailed in his works are of his various escapades suffered through life, and of the profound surprise of having survived long enough to pen them into words. His poems have appeared in anthologies Twenty Seven Signs by Lady Chaos Press and Self Portrait Poetry Collection by Silver Birch Press.

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                                  THE DEPARTED           
 


Covered, closed and sealed
Fist after fist of moist sand
Laid to rest
The walk back now for the living
A drive to return to an empty abode
Wouldn't it be so much better to also bury the memories behind
Carry on now i must, and still be near the places where we used to dwell
Incomplete, left to repeat  a single wish
If only you had taken me with you
My eyes stray on the barren shelves
Where you kept your clothes
Residues of your perfume still linger in the air
The very scents that stirred my lusts for so long
Now make it so hard to breath
i must wake still, every morning and pretend to be alive
Though, i know i went in that grave much before you
What remains now is a quest
 To seek answers for infinite questions that are left for me
All of them beginning with "why"
The finality of it all, this surcease
 Becomes too much to bear
My heart beats on my chest like a hammer on a condemned wall
And when i can take no more, i fall to my knees and cry
Sob tears that rise from an abyss
Very deep inside
For the love lost to me
The warm embraces now cold as artic snow
The kisses owed but never collected
The words that i felt but left unsaid
Maybe you're in a better place now
 Better than this living, breathing hell
That caves in around me
Maybe you're happy now
Or maybe, simply, this is what i deserved all along
So now that you're with others i see
Everyone else but me
 I'm taken back in that cemetery
To a cold dark corner, tranquil in perpetual shadow
Far away and sequestered
 On a little piece of hallowed ground
Where broken hearts are buried
 
 


                            ANATOMY OF A CURSE
 


Let it be so
Let it come to your turn
 These dark hallucinations of my mind
 The hope that your lips burn
When you kiss some other
Your deepest hazel eyes to lose color
When you see it’s not me
 
 
Cry out loud in anguish
When you think of the love we made
Rashes ravage that flawless skin
With every touch that isn’t mine
 
Ash gray to your fleece of jet black hair
I wish it to be now
The same pallor of what you left behind
Since they no longer cascade over me         
Let those nimble fingers never feel sensations
Those fingers that once entwined with mine
 
Slip from your palm every coin you ever hold
Know you how it is to be bereft of all you ever owned
Skip a thousand beats of that dead cold heart you carry
Every time my name is told
 
Ghouls and vampires call on you
 In the dead of every night
When this world retires to its slumber
See how it feels to live
 Your life six hundred feet under
How the full moon now shines but not for its purpose before
Those kisses we shared in its glow are ours no more
Walk to where you want, run so you can hide
I pray my memories hound you
Let them never leave your side
 
 
No church or temple to give you relief
Dance your ways with Satan
Go round and round and round
Such a lovely couple you’d make
Always room for some common ground
 
Rejoice in rebirth, I am fully woken
The spell you had cast is finally broken
 Now live the way that I did
Have your remaining years be wasted         
 And let you languish through days and see
Then and only then
Will you discover, lover
The true meaning of the word misery.


                                             SAHARA
 
 
Only when on my knees
I saw how far I had fallen
The azure skies above me 
Bereft of clouds of shelter
Had perhaps shown me enough mercy
The cracked and dry soil below
Have gained a few drops of rain
Shed by my withered eyes
Arid, desolate this land
Vast and open
Yet closed to supplications 
Only my lonely cries
Come echoing back to me 
Mumbling verses of faith
Through lips parched 
My resolve fritters away in the furnace hot winds
Whilst I wallow in reminiscences of my halcyon days
Night falls with no promise of surcease 
And I'm haunted by specters of worries to come 
Toss and turn like violent seas, I can get no release 
My ship sails endless over breaking waves 
Falling at the seams 
Ready to be broken on the rocks of the sorrows I conjure
With every dawn rises new pain 
Of repeating what yesterday left behind
And hope floats like a mirage 
To let me walk towards another oasis 
For some elixir to wet my lungs 
Each step on broken feet 
I falter and I fail
Vultures follow me with malevolent glee
Waiting for that final fall
I stumble and I crawl 
For temporary refuge
My beastly companions track my trail with blood lusted eyes
Point their poisonous beaks at me
Hands fall open
Unravel scrolls of dreams yet to be fulfilled
They laugh at my condition 
Behold the fate of man; they say 
Holding on to things that do not hold to him