Our hypocritical definition of terrorism

Terrorism. The most used word for violence in the 21st century. The word blinks in front of our eyes ringing loudly repeatedly until it is engraved in our minds. We take in what the media tells us what the politicians tell us what the people in power tell us. Without so much as a curious peep questioning their message, without really processing what they're telling us.
Terrorism. What do you think it is? How do you define it? Its probably linked to ideas about a brown middle eastern black man with a beard too big for his face in your mind shouting 'this is for Allah' pressing buttons screaming violently until he explodes. That is what you're fed of course and you're too complacent to think of anything else. Hey its not your fault, if I was fed a single story like a bowl of soup again and again, I would also dig into it without thinking too much. Its easier that way.
But let me tell you abt the definition of terrorism. The Oxford dictionary defines it as 'the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.' Nowhere does it say that the person has to be from a minority community. Turn over the pages and read, it doesn't say the person has to shout some bullshit thing he was brainwashed about because its convenient for him to blame a specific kind of people for all the crimes he does under the sun. Turn over the pages and pretend to spot the ideas you have about terrorism.
Guess what? Those pages are blank. Because they aren't definitions of terrorism. They are beliefs that you have associated with the word because it is easy for you to call a coloured person a terrorist and make people hate them bomb them hurt their husbands wives children and destroy their countries. Because when you do that, you aren't called a terrorist. No way, you are a saviour or maybe drunk or mentally ill or some other bullshit excuse that you carve out from the ground to plaster across the world's eyes so that they don't treat you like the evil you are. The hypocrisy is too real. We don't always want to bring up race or politics but we can't be blindfolded by your lies, by your view any longer. It is toxic dangerous poisonous, only encouraging more violence. See the world for what it is. If an evil white person does an act which harms civilians, call him a terrorist. If an evil coloured person does, call him one. But don't make excuses for white people while within minutes of an attack by a coloured person you scream out terrorism. Don't give more importance to lives in the West or lives in the East. Create and enforce the equality that you love talking about. Educate yourself. Question what you're told. Be empathetic.
Terrorism is terrorism no matter what colour the attacker is. Victims are victims no matter what ethnicity they are. Open your eyes and call it out for what it is. Hypocrisy.

Blossoming in hypnosis

Pave your way in my mind
Planting electric glowing seeds where your footsteps fall,
watch us blossom together
Until our bustling roots spin around one another in hypnosis

Crossed

Cross my legs 

fold them over my heart,

Hear them as they pound echoingly

taking me to bathe in the light of the aquamarine sky

Mesmerise

Drive me to the furthest corner of the rugged world
And watch my arms and limbs twist and turn
mesmerising my soul in your spirited eyes,
Until my spins start twirling your soul round and round
on my tips

Speak

Speak 

until your cords radiate in the piercing shine

thunder against the boundaries

And continue to flow in the air that was created for your fluent word formations,

Speak

until they learn to listen

Dapple me

Dapple me in dazed pink

Until I curl and extend into the shimmering wind

Depletion

It will only exist

until the last icicle drips into raging oblivion

"English parh ke kia karogi"

"English parh ke kia karogi?"
You ask me again and again until it rotates in my membranes pulling at my anger cords. I look at you just as repeatedly, cocking my head to one side like a bird confused about a silly question. Except its more like I'm confused about why you are interfering in my choices. English parh ke kia karogi? I don't know, maybe break your assumptions apart and grind them into burning fine powder, strapping tape on to those critical lips? I don't ask you why you did business or science or law so why do you feel the need to poke your grubby nose into my power over words? Stay out of it.
English parh ke kia karogi? Maybe change your robotic minds which see only a straight path to success by ignoring the highs and lows of education and career that were made to be breathed in and devoured as success is achieved. You ask me why I study English. You, who only think education should be chosen so that it gives you a career. You, who ignore the knowledge books gift. I'm sorry that I'm not going by your rules that are chains that trap any free soul into the money-driven career ground. I'm sorry that I choose to fight you and follow my beating passion.
You ask me why I study English. You think it means grammar and punctuation and reading books. You have no idea what it entails. I study English because I unravel what I've been taught, because I need to learn empathy, science, psychology, and society from two sentences that you take at face value. I study English because I understand that one thing can mean a billion other things. I study English because I want to rewrite our ideas, our beliefs, our constraints, our societies, our lives. I study English because it gives me the power to tolerate and understand and explore and depict without you stopping me. English parh ke kia karogi? Maybe I will use it to create a world where you finally understand who I am. Maybe I will use it to create a world where all career choices are equal and respected. Maybe, just maybe, I will use it to shove your unnecessary opinions underground and continue creating a world where passions blossom from the roots.

Pink piety

When the sky is painted deep gold with baby pink candy floss floating on its waves, I open myself up closing the gates of immorality inside my territorial mind until fluent light fills my veins, breathing soundly through my lungs winking a goodbye at the toxic that existed before.

Harassed by desperation

I walk down the street and eyes follow me everywhere. Every step that I take is reinforced by a blink or a wink that passes from man to man thinking that they are praising me with their leers and smirks. Unashamed among the footsteps of the ants, blindly tracking the curves in my figure, mapping myself in front of themselves, placing their claws on my neck taking me into a clouded haze where I only drown lower and deeper until I disappear. I walk down the street where cars are growling and fires are burning brightly, feeling their eyes clinging to me; they are echoing deafeningly, beating until everything else disappears. In a trapped maze trying to make my way through and I feel impatient dirty fingers slide down my support. Quick prodding poking, hurried desperate invasion that stops me in my tracks for a second but they have disappeared already. I walk down the street only to be explored by unwanted surveyors that I cannot grasp in retaliation. I walk down the street only to be harassed by cowardice and desperation that I definitely don't need walking down with me.

Polychromatic waves

It burns my skin seeping into the ivory waves that used to be sapphire daylight. I mixed the ripples with the scarlet rays until they bled yellow inside me blending with the dazed blue sky that spread out on my dented fingers. Small eyes peeked at me as I folded it, making the waves rumble and rush over one another until they moulded to form a shining silver that twinkled at me.

Thoughts

I'm draining into iron holes losing pieces of myself with each dragging drop of water that drips down my wheat body. Thoughts are tangled with my fingers, pointing and poking my scalp telling me to go left right draw a circle turn over reach out unleash myself curl up. It extends into my rolled stomach, crawling from my wrapped up palms and flowing into my legs that feel like they cannot support me. I climb into a deep dark hole befriending the wolves until they make my thoughts go away.

Hidden in henna

They say a husband's name is embedded in his bride's henna, hidden in the dark patterned flowers of her palms. Everyone believes it and I did too. Sometimes in the past when my palms were decorated in hypnotic patterns, I searched for him, a mr right to my mrs right, our names entangled together echoing in the delicately stained curves. But now its been years since I explored the dents and scratches in my fingers for a face masked under the effortless twists and turns. Now when I stretch out my soft pink hands they are bare of scented henna and I watch as his name lights up in my wrists where it is intertwined with my veins and beating comfortingly in the place of my heart.

Too bad they don't go by their own mantra

Their fluid judgements restrain you. Tie up your tongue in knots that grow bigger and bigger until your tongue vanishes in a mist of flames. You're wrong, they say. Closing off their iron gates bringing a barrier of intolerance ready to strike at the drop of a bowling ball. They preach tolerance but flood your mind with mocking that continues to beat in their chests like hypocrites swimming in a life which they feel is superior and desired by all. Don't judge, they say yet they stray away from the other calling them names cutting them out of their lives like women cutting locks of hair into a disappearing black hole. Live and let live, they say. Too bad they don't go by their own mantra.

Galaxies

The galaxies of my mind are filled with twinkling thoughts and everlasting rings that fall softer onto paper that flows trickling into untouched holes like water streamlining down a mountain. When I open my mouth to voice what's inside, it fogs up like the dreary dew hanging on branches on a winter morning. That's okay. I pick up a sword instead, cutting through the inky fog like a pen grazing on paper. I write down my thoughts about Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons onto the crumbling wood, engraving my initials into it until it continues to blink brightly even in the darkest hour.

Flowered Roots

When I was younger I used to walk through the flowered fields and chase the patterns of the roots that were ingrained in the soil. I used to blow on a rose and watch the bloodied pink petals flow into the aquamarine sky creating a tornado of dust and sickly sweet rose odour. When I was younger I traced the patterns on my body wondering where the veins led to, aching to burst them open and explore inside. My mind was filled with dreams of adulthood and legality; dreams that were too bright for a child. Now I am older and I sit and watch the roots of flowers pass through me, stretching me longer curving through each other until I begin to wish I was younger. Now I am older and my dreams are impossible realities with mountains and earthquakes blocking them until I am too blinded to see them anymore. I am older and I watch life pick at my petals, drowning them in a succulent swirl of chocolate and fire until the the daisies cease to grow. Now I am older and the moment I turn over, I see the roots that I tracked when I was a child grow out of my back to form those sweet roses I blew away.

You laughed at something that was ingrained in my vocal cords

You used to sit in class and laugh at me. When I got up and spoke you giggled and exchanged mocking looks that pierced through the back of my head and into my mind. Digging into the sinuses of my brain your looks cast their seeds, rootedly growing each time you smirked at me tripping over my words. I put a stoplight at the front of each word, not because I wanted to but because I had no choice. I stumbled and sped and slowed down and suffocated under word formations and mouth challenges and tongue misbehaviour but all you did was cackle uncontrollably and whisper poison among yourselves. I didn't even need you to mock me, I did it very well myself. I tortured myself I was ashamed I was angry I was cruel to my tongue and my mind I wanted to cut it out of me and fling it out the window. Too bad that it is ingrained in my vocal cords and my bloodstreams.

Sometimes I like playing with fire

I like playing with fire sometimes. Twirling the colourful crackling paper until it burns my fingers, chipping them off one by one. They tell me not to. I light the matches one at a time dropping them all around me surrounding myself with tinges of fierce blue and orange until it envelopes me high enough so I can swallow it. My mama told me not to waste matches and not to play with fire. I tell her that I only watch the ballerinas dancing in my deepening pupils until they creep inside me lighting my heart. I tell her that she doesn't need to worry, it's only fire.

Written in response to the mob killing of Mashal Khan. He was attacked because allegations of blasphemy were made against him.

You lie here thinking about the sinking inside your brain of the death and destruction. Continuous hands pulling you down, claws ripping into your heart, scratching at your liberal heart, dragging you down to a dark abyss where people like you are burnt and tortured. Beaten and killed. Dragged along the road while shouts of religious and cultural extremism ring in your ears, clapping loud in a foreboding fervour. Repeated repetition. You do not belong you do not belong you do not belong.
Then
white noise your eyes are bloody your veins are lilac and burnt blue. Draining a piercing red, the same pierces as the weapons and the words and the wounds. Alive or dead no one cares about you. They care about their version of their culture of their version of their religion of their version of their society of their mindset of their of their of their Only theirs. Never yours. Never ours. Blind hate blind fear blinding anger until we are all blind until we have violence engraved in our bloodstreams, in our arteries in the tiny spaghettis of our brains. We kill in that violence we kill in that intolerance in that hatred that we think is right until we don't know who we are anymore, until we have lost ourselves in that quicksand of anger. We are soaking....suffocating...sinking...sinking. Save yourselves, save us, save each other before there's no one to save anymore.

Hilly Abyss

Will you take my hand and stare out into the verdant distance? Watching the hills mesh into each other, rolling and drolling until they blend with the clouds, giving birth to freezing sunshine which eclipses the warmth of your hand in mine.
Lets tiptoe closer...
A step or two
Oh wait...
We're at the edge now. Looking down into the twirling and swirling abyss of grey cords growing out of minuscule houses that exist within the green solar system of humans and animals.
If we look a bit further, will you grab me before I fall into the abyss? Or will you take my hand and drag me down until we become a part of it.

The Perfect Woman

"Be thin"
"Thori gori hojao"
"Be tall"
"Aur parhlo thora"
"Be polite"
"Be shy"
"Tameezdaar hojao"
"Khana pakana aana chahiye"
To be someone's bride there is so much more I have to be. To be a stranger's idea of the perfect bride. They are carving their wishes into me, moulding my body to create their ideal clay model of a shy, submissive, slim, fair woman who they find suitable for their not always perfect sons. They want me to be educated, but not enough to work after I say "I do." They want me to be young but only if I'm beautiful. Late 20's and I'm a used paper bag, crumpled and crushed until I am cast aside to be ground into a fine powder by an older man who looks at young models while I sit next to him. Late 20's and I'm too firm too strong-willed too wise too independent. Too not the ideal wife the ideal daughter-in-law the ideal mother. It's the 21st century where women show the world their shine and their headstrong heart but you want to dim my shine with every scrub of a dirty pot and every "jee" that I utter out of fear. Not fear of you but fear of "log kya kaheinge." Fear of your disapproval, afraid of your son's shame because his wife is too talkative too brave too smart...too unlike his friends' quieter wives. So you continue to suffocate me, merging me with your idea of a perfect woman that I don't agree with but everyone else seems to.
I don't agree with it. Your 19th century ideals of a perfect woman. We come in all shapes and sizes and colours and minds, you cannot tell us what is ideal or not. You want us to be perfect according to your shrinking bubble of perfection but why should we be a certain way when your son can be any way he wants and it's okay? Before you point at us mould us change us redress us reshape us, look at who you're changing us for and stop to think if they need changing too. Marriage is a compromise so why do you expect only women to leave themselves lost in a pool of black instructions and critiques while men do as they please? Don't be hypocritical, let everyone create themselves. Whether man or woman or any other, let us form our ideal version of ourselves according to our wishes and dreams. All my life you have said be a certain way, I spit back in your face. I will be educated I will have strong ideas I will be myself. I won't be thin if I can't be, I won't be fair if that's what your version of beauty is because I think all colours are beautiful. Tell you what I will be; Strong
Brave
Kind
Wise
Supportive
Hardworking
Understanding
Accepting
Mature
A good wife a good mother a good daughter-in-law. A good woman but according to both our wishes, not just yours.
In return I wish the same.
So although I might not be society's version of a perfect woman, atleast I'm mine and my family's. And maybe just maybe, it's time for society to change their ideas about men and women and everyone else too.

Searching

Have you found yourself? What if you're swimming in the light forever, drowning in the current of confusion, sinking in the frost of frustration forever? Until it exists no more. Without finding yourself. Without finding people who are your routes out of depression. You're continuously searching. Finding your beats and your thuds, failing again and again and again. Struggling to find yourself. Failing to surround your lost soul with friendly saviours who drag you back to the path with their definite fingers. You don't have any of those? Welcome to my world. We are always searching for people to understand
To see you
To first find themselves
And finally find you again.
But we know there aren't any such people out there. We are alone. You are alone in this deep dark world filled with crushing roots that are wrapped around your legs pulling you down to the deeper ends where you're lost until you don't recognise yourself. Where the bullies wrap their cords around your neck moulding you with their sense of what you should be. It's called life. And no one understands you here.
So I ask again. Can people help you find yourself? Or are you simply swimming in a sweltering pot of unrecognition, loneliness and denial.

The Love that Heaven Separates

Elevated colours,

shelter of evergreen and brown,

The understudy waiting

Curtain closes

hands come together thunderously,

Scarlet grin upon the wrinkled flag of white

bald head, smoky hair

Azure stars twinkling

The hugs of a grandfather

Following day:

Contoured face contorted with pain

warm, soft skin freezes

blue veins turn grey

heart stops

the curtain falls

The sail is torn

Death stands,

A mountain of black

Sheds his curse,

Clown's mask washed by the waterfall of ebony

Grandfather who brought joy the night before

Exeunt.

Stutter

Do you know that feeling? That heart in your mouth. Pounding. Deafening. That pounding that begins when you're picked to read that one paragraph.
One simple paragraph.
One stanza.
One line.
A word.

All is quiet and you think they can hear your heartbeat. Your tired, sweating heart. Your poisonous mind whispering to you. Signaling a mess up. The other mind egging you on. Which one should you listen to? Both mean certain death.

You break the silence. You speak. Beginning that word. Flawless; you think it's smooth sailing now. You get confident, you read more and more and more. But then you can't anymore. Your breath stops. You're fighting with yourself. Your tongue wrapped, held in place. No air in your mouth. No breath. You're gasping for air. You’re stuck on one word. You know what it is, you can't say it your mouth won't let you say it. How can you describe how it feels to have that fight with your tongue and mind. You have no air, no structure, no control you can't form it. It's a word that starts with 'a.' You are always stuck at those. There's something about that letter, you can't defeat it. A  A  A  deep breath  pause  breath again. "Arise."

The worst is over. You can't see any more 'a' words. Or 'k' words. Or 'w' words. No more dangerous lettered words. It's over. The panic wheels in your mind stop turning. You read on, two more words to go. One word. No more words.

You can't look up. You know you’re burning. Can't look at everyone. Or anyone. What if they're laughing? What if they never understand. You’re ashamed. Angry. Embarrassed. Why is this not over? One part of your brain scolding the other. Scolding your tongue. Bas karo, khatam bhi hojaye. Doesn't look like it will. You thought it was. You were fluent, flawless, at least in English. Phir kia hua? Wapis kyun aati rehti hai? How do you fix this? What do you do? Is it even fixable? You thought it was. Everyone told you it was.

Why does it keep bouncing back? No clue. You hate talking. You hate reading. You want to hide somewhere and never come out. You hate yourself.
One moment it's fine.
The next, it's not.
You’re tired of fighting. Fighting to speak. Fighting to gasp for air to grasp those words. You’re tired. You shout at yourself. You can't have this struggle every time.
The struggle to do something that everyone else can do just fine.

A Response to Racism

You look at my warm skin,

it's dark; like chocolate

maybe even lighter,

It invites you in

I invite you in

with smiles, warm greetings

a good nature

You take one look at me,

At my skin,

My accent

which is a wee bit different,

My dark eyes and dark hair

In comparison to yours,

See, that’s where you make the mistake

You compare

I don't

You take one look at me

Comparing;

Establishing yourself higher

Me lower

Who gave you that authority?

You retreat within yourselves

You would call it 'your kind'

I wouldn't.

I'd just call you humans

You seem to disagree

To you, that would mean we are the same

And it's clear by your wall, you don't agree

So be it.

You stare at me,

Judging

my darker skin

my Pakistani accent,

I pronounce the words like you:

To-may-to

Po-tay-to

It's not enough for you

I sound different

I mix two languages:

usne mujhe dekha weirdly

You look at me ajeeb se

I mould cultures

create a new one,

You look at me ajeeb se,

You don't think I'm good enough,

My land, my language

inferior to yours,

You want to teach me

Correct me

I stand up to you

My naksha, my dil, my zabaan

My rang

Is mine,

You cannot demean it

You fight back

Invading my zameen

A zameen you will never understand

Picking at my parts

Exotic, you call it

I call it orientalist

My chai, my salan, my naan

You take for your own,

But you don't understand it,

You call it curry

It will never be curry

You think I'm barbaric

uneducated, a thief

or a terrorist

I'm so much more

You want to lead me forward,

I should tell you

I don't need you to,

In terms of humanity

I reached there way before you

So when I sit across you

don't giggle

don't exchange looks

don't be surprised

I'm the same as you

There's no need to stare.