Poetry by Abdulrehman Minhas

Check out these awesome submissions we just got from Abdulrehman Minhas. 

OVERDOSE ON NOVOCAINE

She loves like a moth
But when that arsonist comes
Pray William and tell—
Would you put the apple on your soul?

That is how she gets off,
Extinguishing her senses on hirsute chests
The moment she immolates a heart
And the needles don’t prick anymore

Don’t become like nicotine
Fuck like a flame—leave a burn
As they all deify the vapours of lust
Till the tears turn to smoke and regrets to ash

Love like a dead-weight
Why don’t you just fall prey
To tragic absinth
The ecstasy of drowning

As your paper house burns
And the monkeys dance around the salamanders;
Feel just slightly numb,
Overdose on novocaine.

EXPORTED DREAMS

Love is Urdu and heaven is the papyrus

Conjure! — It floats like naked smoke

Epidermis cells reborn on wounds,

Perfume-flasks shattered in the depths of consciousness

Agony in post-cards of pleasure

As the butterflies peak through the veil

Immolate memories on the pyre of suffering

Let the serotonin fill the bowl

Lark! The xenogamous petals twirl

And so the betel-leaf is chewed and expectorated

The enchantress prophesizes golden henna circles

The sweet-nothings of her curse; whispered to a merchant of dreams

As you pick up fragments of thoughts

Construct—like the mad-houses of Idols!

Insert galvanic energy into the palate

Recreate the divine in foreign dreams

Let it pixelate your vision

Repeat it verbatim,

Your tinnitus will be its prison

Imagine in rapid-eye movements.

ABSINTH MORNING

By the absence of morning light,

She held out the sáki plight.

Violet essence mourning delight,

Beloved in heaven– always in flight.

Ambrosia bestows a saccharine kiss,

Enamoured by the injured bliss.

O! Qalb

Caress brine’ n’ hiss,

Honey-milk procured in the drowning abyss.

But tears shed by the love-struck timid;

In wine they taste putrid

Absinth eyes are lucid,

Beckon to her in a dream drunk and livid.

Gulab sprinkled misty dew,

Plumage of eyes — colored hue

Lilacs prickled the lusty shrew,

Withered are the leaves—stitched in blue.

O! Kismet

Breeze sang verses on sands and shoal,

Kayanat left with her an empty bowl.

Henna awakens her brightly: bursting with Chaand’n’dhol

Fragment her always, never be whole.

TERRIBLE ANGEL

On a winter’s night,

I slept in my warm bed,

Entombed in the sepulcher of blankets and stillness,

Till a soft coo whispered in my head

From the depths of my consciousness,

Released from my comfortable enclosure,

I escaped dreams and my eyes opened to darkness

But, alas, there was someone there by my bedside,

It stood there: the terrible angel

It changed its form with its caprices

The wings bent at odd angles,

Its armor glinting behind the pale moon lit sky,

Devoid of stars, the reflected light acted as the beacon

The veil of darkness had flung,

The angel was a hermaphrodite,

Beautiful manwoman, I could see the small shadow hung

Punctured through its breasts, peaks of carbonite,

Rising from below its depth; jutting out like a tower

It spoke to me now a hissing from its forked tongue

‘Love’, it said in a way that was unworldly

Reverberating, across the oblong room

I narrowed my eyes and asked it how?

But it repeated itself perpetually

As the words remained there forever

Like paper-cuts smothered in honey

But the cacophony grew louder

The words he repeated now had grown to a fever pitch

They had taken a life of their own

I told it that I did not know how to love

The angel; if it was an angel

Sunk its spindly fingers beneath my chest

I froze, paralyzed by pain and fright

I could see its eyes, scarlet flames that eat themselves,

Its teeth pointed

Saliva dripping from its lips

As my ribs cracked

I felt its cold unearthly hands down my labyrinth

Pirouetting fingers and the reveal

Dripping and oozing: the scarlet beating heart

I looked, unable to close my eyes

As the thing touched its forked tongue

Slithering down multiple valves

Cleaning the residue of blood vessels

Then with an instant he ate it whole

Chewing it rapidly

I could hear the splutter of blood

And muscle and fat

It ate my heart and I was still alive

A bloody smile

It stared into my off-center eyes

Knowing that I was alive; it took its time to…

‘I know how to make you love’

As it sat on the newly created hole

With a mortal heart in its divine bowels

It defecated a blackened heart,

Into an empty chest.

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