Wild Orchards

I am the same person
Who once existed
For your ideology and promise
For years
In between
The two enemies
Through the old landscape
Haunted and gripped
In its old spirit

Once it was me,
The same person
In music and poetry
I found myself
From travels of past
In wild orchards
The offerings of youth

As the time switched on
From present into past
As the regions slip into darkness
Here I am still,
With two enemies
Misconceptions and indifference

In this most beautiful place
I am all alone,
Gone those wild orchards
As the world unites
With new ideology
Against us

As I travel back
For a moment to reside
In old wild orchards
Heads straight our way
The purple wrath
In between
My life,
Unfinished story
Lies there a body
Charred in its old scent
Of my distant time
extinguished in split seconds!

Kashkin

Famous Blue Raincoat

With a different story,
Here I stand
At this deserted station
Ready to embrace
The new beginnings

The new life
New to this land
And its ways
Many years will it take
To bring me to learn
Many years it will take
To bring me to accept

Learning is easy
But to acquire wisdom
Take it will many years
From old hardships
And unknown struggles

In me exists myself
And others,
nameless souls
From a distance,
Many I will meet
Many will disappear
In this maze

All these cultures
On the move
All of these ways
On its demise
I will begin somewhere,
Find I have to somewhere
To begin my existence again
In colour, left behind in distance

The old trail of pain,
The old trail of memory
As I find myself amongst
This architecture and people
Study I will have to again
But not enough, not enough
Learn more, as this world cease
In its wonder, in its formation
As passer’s by gaze, as end of days

What will I say when asked
Recount all those tales of freedom
From one land to another,
Did you achieve the purpose
Of all those sacrifice,
We made on your behalf
Bring us the good news
Of all your fortunes and decisions

Here I stand,
At this deserted station
In my famous blue raincoat
Ready to embrace
The new beginnings

Of what will I do,
The new promise and old pacts
Remains in me, to serve the purpose
Of what we have become
Of what you have turned
As the world changes
Its feet and its clocks

In my famous blue raincoat
Here I stand
At this deserted station
With old notebook
And sharpened pencils
To sketch again,
My mortal mind & existence!

Kashkin

Curación

Stands there this madness,
In corridors as they depart
Logic and wisdom, one by one
Draped in frustration,
From years and its fate
Tired from this journey
Our minds and lives
As the words pour out
Like the blood from the veins

From cuts deep as the gorges
As the Indus flows undeterred
We speak of the pain,
Inherent and resident
Of all those missing souls
For concepts now challenged
For visions, now distant
For words, in whispers
Stands there this madness
To end, as the moments fall
With arrival of spring
As the colour begins to emerge
As healing steps forward, uninvited!

Kashkin

Echoes of Silence

He walks all day upon those avenues to sell
oranges, ice creams and some times religion
he says “nothing is free” but i will give you
advice, free and pure, and u must rebell
come with me otherwise u will end up in hell
There stand two women, his wife and his daughter
by the tree, in shawdow of their misery and dwell
in thier hunger, in their shame and all what is left
of their Pacific islands and the man carries on
painting strange forms and naked women
all the prostitutes come and go by the bell
time comes when all disappear and he cries
for vanity he don’t understand and his muse
kills his wife every time she lays naked for love;
crowd disappears like shawdows as the sun go down
and the bullet paves its way to her daughter’s cell
to let her free of the promise she made to rebell…………

Kashkin

Kashmir

She travels with me with promise and hope
The thoughts of her surrender, not alone
I will win my freedom back, one day
The years spent in between, my fight

Seen enough my eyes, these blunders
Of our elders and youth, and all in between
I travel with you, bring me back, from
Complicated truths and fabricated walls
Of divides and economic greed

Seen enough my eyes, the love
The long narrative descriptions
In books and papers, all around
The neglected truth, strange affair

She travels with me in her might
Of rivers and valleys, and heritage
Seen enough my eyes, this abuse
The hate built in furnaces of love!

Kashkin

The Dance of Solitude

The solitude and its silence
Stands there, the grand empires
Built from dreams of the past
The old chaos of times
From distant corners,
Come they to examine
To see, how this life, spent
Through opium years to its magic
Hear they not, the deafening soul

The rapturous routines
The old peaceful moments
Built for the dreams of future
From distant corners
Come they to examine
Their own past and the colours
Through the years of violence
Hear they not, the drowning heart

The perpetual existence
In time and its space
In this grand scheme of life
From distant corners,
Travel they far, to examine
Themselves and the light
Through years of creation
To the end of time, hear they not
The Dance of Solitude!

Kashkin

The Human Journey

The mystery of Universe and the journeys taken by humans has had an immense impact upon different civilizations of the time. How humans have traversed from one civilization to another; how languages were developed and their attributes transferred to others. How architecture, culture, and everything that defines the very “fabric of civilization” created the need to survive, to transfer the knowledge and wisdom through the feathers of time. The modern times and era owes everything to the past – the struggles and its determination of those people and the times they lived in. In the course of time, some civilizations were to leave lasting impressions and some momentarily but their intrinsic nature remained to create something through the intellect and the learning endowed upon by them by nature. How history has captured those pages of time and its passages for its very need to determine how we have all evolved as humans in our ways and cultures. In various fields of science and in fields of arts and new technologies owes portion of their success to all that is left behind- some have been preserved by those who realized that very need to remain intact  and some lie there in the wilderness for all of us to learn what mankind achieved and lost.

In the end, each fleeting moment becomes part of history and the times we live in. The search still continues by the mankind- the very search and quest for who we are the very purpose of our existence and life. It is these questions – the very fuel and catalyst that drives us forward and it is that process of living we become part of those different cultures and languages. There may be many civilizations pertinent to different times but human civilization and its journey remains one in search for truth and purpose. The ways we attain those answers may be different and diverse; but the purpose remains the same. It is this journey of mankind through not the landscapes of time and buildings and architecture but through the human need to strive and struggle to find the purpose of life and its meaning.

Kashkin

Prisoner 650- Part 2(The Betrayal)

Captured woman,
Known to the world,
Prisoner 650,
Throughout these years
The grey ghost of Bagram
Her beautiful mind,
As she travelled
From one institution to another
To learn, mechanics of mind

Now in capture,
From years of injustice
“Fault lies with her”, they say
Knows she too much,
Holds she wisdom far from our reach
The price you pay,
To discover trails of wisdom and injustice
Travel sometimes inwards, to view
The handovers of our sovereignty.

Captured woman,
As her cell speaks volumes
Of history of democracy and freedom
Tortured and raped, as the paralysis begins
Lives in separation through distance
Of all her children and world
Of what it presented her, the gifts
Deeds we all have to present
How great we are, how grand our schemes
Remains in hope, the old stars of hope
The old candle.

Died we all, long time ago,
Only the spectre of our memory
There she is in New York,
Some day if you find her,
Let her know, we did nothing
Let her know, of all our betrayals
The old tales of friendship and needs
The old deeds of corruption and politics
Never may we get this option, we all died
Long time ago too, only there she remains
The spectre of our memory and voices
Remains in hope, the old stars of hope

Catch it; hold it, as the wind begins to howl
The curse upon us, time to taste
Of what we did, of what they did
To Prisoner 650, grey ghost of Bagram
As hands of conscience begin to suffocate
The turmoil inside us, the cause of our demise
Let her know of all our betrayals
If you find her in New York, before she finds us
As the winds begin to howl, creeps forward,
The hands of conscience, the hands of nature!

Kashkin

Walking With Wordsworth

The lands we have traversed
Different and diverse,
Strange and beautiful, in arrival
The long walks and drama
Lend me your ears, lend me your heart
As the words cry out
From the poet’s heart and its echoes

I am not off from this land,
Strange lands I have traversed
But here I walk with you briefly
Beside those rivers and landscape
Where words, born and decimated
The old hearts and moments of inspiration
In your thoughts and rhymes
Somewhere else, strange n fine
And here, walk I with you briefly

Outside your cottage, as I abide by the lakes
Through those distant woods,
As I walked through the countryside,
The old books and shots of language
Forgetful and distant, as time flies away
Walk I with you briefly, for a while
Not from this land, only the words I recognise
From a distant time, as desert sweeps its storms
From dusk till dawn, arrives from these old cities
These caravans of words, and its infusion
In display, the tales of distance and echoes!

Kashkin

The Cancer Boy

This poem was written to highlight the plight of a little boy Zaqwan Ali, in Gojra, Pakistan. Many others like him every day fall prey to diseases of all sorts.

Never met him,
Never knew
The pain he carried
The little boy
In his body
The frail and tired
And yet, I cry
Thousands miles away
As earth covers in its blanket
The tiny soul
As snowflakes cover
The distant echoes
Of pain and despair
“I wish I could do more”

Underneath that earth,
The angel, the world
And emptiness in hearts
Still alive, his parents
Yet I cry, thousand miles away
As earth covers in its blanket
The tiny soul
As snowflakes cover
The distant echoes
Of pain and despair
For children in need
Of my home, and place
“I wish could do more”

Kashkin