Inam Hussain Mullick writes

Summer is My Faithful Dog or a Few Somersaults for Our Time or Let’s Talk Religion

dead pigeons

laze in the courtyard,

why do you preach

of the darkness?

the handler

of odd jobs

smokes a cigarette

and speaks to birds in bird-whistle.

at the diffident

hour,

a plaintive rose

parts

the sky and demands God's attendance

night grows

and my mind ballets between embers

and wet clouds

queen bee, matriarch

summer

is my faithful dog

and I love my enemy;

I explore the wind's memories

and discover violet songs—

secret bougainvillea

ballads. I compare

cultural metaphors

in moon's feverish gardens.

while the war

wounds the sky,

we hold on to each other

tighter,

and kiss

hungrily

in the market

of poison,

market of puzzles.

my fears

have changed

to acceptance.

I have opened my doors

to starlit angels

broken dangerous and beautiful

they say God floats

high

above all slime.

ants and angels

ant-angels

lift the sun’s corpse.

your eyes are fairytale boats,

I have loved them so long

that it hurts,

my desire for you

exceeds

and cracks

passion's blue

meter

sleep upon my chest,

we'll build gardens

and bamboo huts.

to cure the skin

they applied an embrocation,

but soon the lie was

understood

the lotion left them burnt and dying;

in the mountains

the heart is a bowl of light,

in angelic time

I am too small to speak of God

or beauty and anguish,

you took long

to know God,

the plan is a mystery and a miracle,

I know God since the time my soul was created

and every moment of mine

is a genuflexion—

but remember, pilgrim

we are always equals.

the limbs

of the night

stretch like tired dogs,

lovers and rebels meet,

one remembers

the room abreast the school playground

where one thought

a ghost

lived.