-
Why my notebook has been empty
It is Tearstained From seeing Bloodstained Sheets and streets And flour sacks And empty pots And bloated bellies And gaunt faces And sunken ribcages And trembling unblinking children And split skulls And spilled guts And limbs gathered in carrier bags And corpse After corpse After corpse After corpse After corpse After corpse After— So many →
-
You Have Forgotten
Lest we forget, You say each year. Never again, too. As you wear your poppies And lay your wreaths And judge those who Choose not to join you. Lest we forget. But when you are the ones Bankrolling a genocide, Dehumanising a nation, Ignoring massacres and starvation, Propagandising for perpetrators, Silencing reporters, Criminalising protestors, Demonising →
-
To Him we shall return
They are leaving us one by one The always-been-there uncles and aunties The longstanding pillars of our community The landmarks dotted along our life’s journey And each time someone leaves we say To Him we belong and to Him we shall return Quranic wisdom to balance grief with patience A gentle reminder that death is →
-
On counting
1. Some lives count more than others. This past year, more than others, Has made this abundantly clear. Those one thousand lives, they claim, Count more than—and therefore justify taking— These forty thousand. Or is it one hundred thousand? Or two hundred thousand? Or more? It’s hard to know for sure When they’ve made it →
-
Tandem Fandom
Mentally pat yourself on the back for making it to the cycling session when your inner demons were doing their very best to talk you out of it this morning. Be amazed that you’ve not only got back on a bike (the non-exercise kind) after more than thirty years away from cycling, but you’re also →
NAZIRA'S NOTEBOOK 