Mushtaque B Barq

Robust metaphors

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Kill a cub and run out of jungle

narrate this coward tale

to hornless deer and lame lambs

for such ‘say’ have takers too.

No way the lion and leech

Can live in den same

If they, me shall call it loudly

“ A cold day in hell”

 Desires are to shoot up human existence.  On one hand a man has tendency well born within his capacity to generate the wish list. But, on the other hand his infinite aspirations have always administrated a vim and vigor as much as necessary to make him optimistic. Between these oppositely moving planks, a tranquil mind manufactures within its own faculty an antidote to curb these mundane palpitations.  And the mind that propels the fancy at the end of the day regrets. One has to establish a link between pleasure and satisfaction. Pleasure is a seasoned bough of wild grapes, luring the taste buds but destroys the lining of belly basket. Satisfaction may seem only a detached nut hard to crack, but its soft kernel a luxury for teeth set. It is better to serve at inn than to rule in the woods. Choice is always what matters, it matters when you decide, it matters too when you ignore and above all it matters when you take a U-turn where a road breaks its boundaries and broaden its horizon beyond imaginations. Pursuing a rainbow leads to nothing for the sunbeams spoil the spot, but to follow the footprints, a lot is selective.

Follow a feather

nay but a house fly

in two shakes of a lamb’s tail

a mind calm can make it count

but is a dark prison

insects bisect the ruthlessly

for one in cell has nothing to tell

save a housefly was a honey bee.

The obsession to obtain a wave out of the sea may dulcet the liquor of life, but marks a bad taste. Chase a pigeon that you have nourished him even in the blue above, but never track a butterfly that knows no nest. To achieve an achievable goal is like a glass of fresh water after a rigorous exercise under the scorching sun. Nothing pleases a mind than a glass of water when body demands it.  The projections of fanciful and aromatic intellect must be costumed in the veil of sacrifice as life blooms only when a wave of wandering wish is sealed before reaching far off places. May be a slip in innocence or a planed split in the garb of experience endows with a new wave, but nothing stays for man’s end save seeds of good tidings. Spoil not the soil that nurses a seed. Destroy never a bucket that draws water from the well. Lubricate the wheel that winds the rope. Before one employs his tools to destroy the turf, one must at least rely on the things that live in vicinage. A neighbor’s little window is wider than a wide gate of a relatives living down the lane.

Nurse a pain

not but hate

for love lives where hate dies,

an amber in the heartless hearth

may look like crimson wound

but out of the hell

a bit of ash nonetheless.

Why then rely on warmth

 when a poor tree sighs

to raise the dust above

and nurtures the soil

‘a treat’ to formless farmer.

 It may for certain reasons irritate the eye ball like a grotesque cataract to carry a foreign particle of dirt like an ill begotten babe after a compromised combat of desires, but then one can never take his hands off the eye indicating his urgency. This kind of exigency for a man of ordinary understanding may look run of the mill, but for a thin-skinned, a well marked change, a rebuttal to impress upon his point of view despite the fact being in opposite swing.  To get out of the gruesome jaws of radical attitude, one’s firm faith will undoubtedly wrap him up to break the tyranny of tools, to split the bars of brutality and certainly one will walk out of the hearth that otherwise spoils even the bones and not to talk of muscles and nerves. Paying a visit to connoisseur at the time of need is no way to be labeled ‘defeat’ but a strategy. The line of attack is what must be conscious of. This is a defence mechanism for better sustenance. Need is what makes us feel. And to respond every such feeling we run from pillar to post.  Our thrashing about persuades us and it must go like the air to lungs.

Pay a visit

shy never

let you a word write

of your own in thy sheet

for blank papers are at risk

to be signed by a soldier without sword,

scratched by a senseless toddler

to make his teacher take a stick.

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