ENTRY – 1
Dedicated to:
“Someone who’s like a guy friend or
a best friend”.
Ballarat
By Anika Karim
Service to sever
And dismember;
To disremember you
Who live within me
Nestless in my restless lore
Of yesteryear…
To delirious highs
Of solemn castrati harmonizing civilizations,
This story cares naught for thirsty stratospheres
Or greedy mummies
Of lovelorn false Friars.
For the heroine lives within your frozen
“Horror movie perfection”
Of Autumn paintings and tangerine dinners
Before she could ever bear the fears of reality.
ENTRY – 2
Dagger’s Dawn
By Asif Iqbal
She came rambling along with a Flaubert
and sat next to my table.
Condemned
as if by
eternal laws
I gazed
profusely
at her daintier aspects
Our eyes met
and I soared higher
singing chants of love.
Ignoring my soul’s beckoning,
her frigid eyes
danced to the simmering delicacies on her table
tore me apart like sliced bread.
ENTRY – 3
In Love with “Ploughing”*
By Asif Iqbal
He a man of outstanding magnate
with a noble prize under his belt.
Uneasy with politics
he chronicles “Ireland”
bogs, religious divide
makes his poetry
tense, torn.
His pen pleads to stop
violence and conflict
It is snug as a gun
And he digs with it,
just like his ancestors dug with the spade,
to grow potato.
*A tribute to Seamus Heaney
ENTRY – 4
of Pilgrimage and Divinity
By Asif Iqbal
Pilgrimage as a niche for battered souls,
and leverage of the faithful,
Cure festering sins
Unholy entente, corporate deals, imperial politics
damage the essence of pilgrimage now.
Divinity is a reason for pilgrimage
and if woven with ambiguity,
is a threat to the individual
Sisypus knew it well
as does a laborer or rickshawalla.
But divinity and pilgrimage are a casual concoction of
status symbol, power play and bankrupt religiosity
for rulers and regimes blessed with timorous teeth and tenacity.
ENTRY – 5
Of Women and Wine
By Asif Iqbal
Eau de vie, French kisses, exotic embrace
sleek brunettes or blondes
not good enough.
Women hunted with little at stake
goes well
with coffee and cake
Never try Vodka
or Jamaican rum
Things could be confusing
Outcome disastrous.
ENTRY – 6
The Man Who Plucked Flowers
By Muhammad Al Amin
He was walking in the rain barefoot with strange and odd flowers in his hands,
Holding them as they are still blooming inside his palms.
Almost everybody could recognize the man, always walking alone and looking for flowers,
The familiar stranger could also be seen from the glass windows of the neighboring houses,
Drenching in rain, searching for something up in the sky.
No one could hear him say a word when lucid clouds floated in the sunlit sky,
But when it started to gather on the Northeast horizon, he would unblinkingly gaze to find his true canvas.
The man remained all mystery to us like himself and the unusual scent of the flowers that he plucked, until one day,
When a giant seemed to tear sky apart with both its hand and frighten us with lightning balls,
Nothing seemed to bother him as he was on his own,
This time we heard him screaming in the wind, once and for all, during the pauses of heavy sound of rain and thunder struck,
“See! I’ve brought you flowers plucked from my heart’s garden,
I pluck for you every day and keep them in my heart’s safest place,
Won’t you come and dance with me today?’’
Was the stranger crying?
Perhaps, But his tears could not be separated from the pouring drops of monsoon rain.
ENTRY – 7
The Rhyme of Rain
By Muhammad Al Amin
Cloud’s cry fall away,
Tear drops only hear.
In cloud’s will,
We shall hear the rhyme
And slow drops will become heavier to sweeten our sorrow.
Our hearts shall sing strange ancient songs,
When there is just you and me, under the rain-washed sky, bathing in the newborn moonlit night,
And no one is even nearer.
Still uncertain tomorrow and a nameless fear,
Tries to build a wall between us
Yet we hold us closer, once more, like yesterday.
Our hearts speak,
When we are silent.
Here we are,
A man and a woman oblivious of their past and present
And the sound of breath that declares our presence.
ENTRY – 8
Love in the Rain
By Raisa Tamanna
Dwindling into darkness
Crumbling with fear
And as I fall down I am swallowed by shadows.
Then suddenly, I feel the teardrops falling on my face
Oh dear! The mighty teardrops
Sliding down from your eyes
Sprinkle life on me, reviving my senses.
Then the rain comes down
Washing away my bruises
Your tears mingle with the raindrops.
Oh the rain! Enticing us with its tempting melody,
We hum, we love, we sing together.
No reparations, no abrasion from the past
As we cry together in sheer joy.
We indulge in the rain,
Coddling each other with somber love.
ENTRY – 9
Dedicated to:
I won’t promise you that I will stay with you.
But before I take my last breath I simply want to
smile and say,
“Babup this is me staying with you forever, so smile.”
Time
By Sarah Soha
3 am, the bus running fast,
From the window I watched the silver moon follow.
The wind whispered your name,
The stars sketched your face.
I was drunk with memories of you and me,
The best wasn’t the one when you got me presents,
Or when you got me surprised and made me smile.
It was whenever you walked towards me, sweet and simple.
You usually look me in the eye,
Say nothing but smile.
I wish I had time to hug you tight
Hold your hands for the very first time.
Time takes wing and flies,
Sometimes it stops altogether.
For a loud crash there was a pool of blood and a silent goodbye.
Please know I love you and this is my fairytale.
ENTRY – 10
Dedicated to:
Shehzar Doja
There
By Shampad M Rahmatullah
Have you ever kissed light on the lips?
There,
In the shade of the banyan tree?
Seduced by the sight of the contours of its sightless eyes,
Penetrating,
Deep into your lofty ululations;
Of the laughter of children
And the broken dreams of an era long lost,
Lived,
In an instant of clarity.
There,
In the shade of the banyan tree.
ENTRY – 11
Ma
By Sumaiya Ahsan
She knew the day I was born
I would be stubborn and largely wrong
She knew that day
I was to be long gone!
She read tales and fables of all sorts,
She nurtured with love and care for all
She taught it well and taught it hard
She knew it would make her proud.
She knew one day her brat would grow
That I would grow into a wonderful soul
She longed to dream of it as time went by
She saw herself in my eyes.
I fell in love and the time was near
The mother shuddered with fear,
But then there were tears
All around of farewell and cheer!
ENTRY – 12
Undersized Limbs
By Sumaiya Ahsan
I opened my eyes to sunshine beauty
I found myself in the warmth of love
I opened my eyes to truth infinity
I raised a finger to feel what she was made of!
I had played in the Garden of Eden
As I vaguely recall the day
I had much to do then,
And little to say!
I woke up in the middle of an ugly day
Wondering which hell I was wandering around today?
I saw her lean, figure
Silent and asleep, as if entire day had been taken up by me!
I wonder if she knew how I felt,
So I let out a moan of joy and agony
Her dark brown eyes looked at me,
And she knew right then, I was her baby!
