This morning I woke up,

Switched on my computer

And felt like setting a ‘poetry-wallpaper’ on my desktop.

For some reason,

Google Search displayed only Urdu poetry.

I couldn't understand any

But, sincerely, wished that I could.

#

My friends whisper in my ears – yes – virtually.

They tell me these images are not real poetry.

No, I don’t ask, “What is real?”

But reply abstractedly,

“It sure does the job, after all I was amazed

And elated, albeit, ignorantly.

I watered the little sapling

Dreaming of a cool and shaded tomorrow

And the fruits that, someday, I may reap off it,

Forgetting that the young one was just a subtle herb.

I bit into the juicy fruit

Aspiring health and wellness eternal,

While worrying too about its unknown origins,

Forgetting, in the process, to savour its taste.

I hurried on and on, on the endless busy road,

Squeezing through to make it before everyone else,

As if racing the very earth and time itself,

Forgetting to look around, staying ever unaware.

I’ve lived through many relations

Some - with casual dedication, others - responsibly,

Ever awaiting a perfect life full of perfect people,

Forgetting to live the little moments that were life too, in fact.

I laid bricks upon bricks

Raising my walls higher than my neighbours’,

Seeking to build a tower that reached heavens,

Forgetting that I only needed a house with a roof.

Here I am, back at it again
Playing with the frayed hems
Scratching open healed wounds
Pulling those old heartstrings

I am listening to that song again
With the intro that wouldn't end
I am searching the right words again
To describe what I cant understand

I cant see clear and straight again
Loving the fog and haze again
With both my hands outstretched
I'm waiting to be reached out again

Overflowing my poor heart again
Trying to see the way I used to again
Starting the incomplete story again
Here I am, back at it again

I never came up and said hi,
Never did you too smile back.
And that was that to our story,
It never began never did it end.

For this today I truly apologise
To you and to you and to all of you,
For having once dreamt a life
And now living an entirely another.

I fall in love quite easily
And just as easily move on too,
With a name, a face and a few wishes
Bundled up as memories cherished.

For this today I truly apologise
To you and just to you alone,
Not for living the best dream with me
But for being the one yet the last.

I see the surface of sea,
I see knowledge and acceptance.
And yet I sense, underneath,
An enigma that is the ocean.

A sense of understanding,
With clarity and consciousness,
Followed by proper planning,
The future I've thus devised to face.

Always, yet, something there is
That makes me shift my steady gaze
From path that I have readied
Towards an unknown mysterious maze.

I break the calm of surface
And take a plunge into the deeps.
A thought yet in my mind stays,
'I'll have to in time come up to breathe.'