A Vapory Noose – A poem by Syed Rabe’a Bukhari
Away from din and delusion of the city
When evening skids down my glum shoulders
And darkness stalks
Like a lost sobbing child
Rambling down a blighted wild,
Weeping clouds accumulate
And sky of my memories turns overcast
Ominous speculations trickle down
With a melancholic black rain
Creating torrential ripples
In dry corridors of brainAgain this parching night
Somersaults
In bottomless vaults
Of my vacant gaze
And I wonder
Under these sultry scarlet skies
Why is sleep such a costly affair?
Smothering behind rusty barsOf a blind window
I scratch into the skin of night
Carving out a little sky
With my bleeding fingers
And endlessly I gaze
Into the sinking eye
Of this unfamiliar bronze sky
And upon the withering face
Of an absent pale moon.Restless upon a solitary bed
Somber shadows dissolve
In my open eyes
And dawn germinates
Shredding the doleful robe of night
I sit up
Perspiring in gloom
And guzzle down odd sips of fractured water. I choke.Chasing the glimmers of my half burnt shadow
Ugly facades fretfully muse
Kashmir crawls within like a vapory noose.
About the author
Syed Rabe’a Bukhari, published her first work when she was in 7th Grade in 2003.
For her, writing is something which keeps coming back and acts as a potent device to portray the simmering anguish and choking emotions of those around her. She writes so to carve a memorial, however small on the fleeting pages of time. Now she writes to cure her maladious soul