Broken Buttons

I carry my city like a note book
in the inner pocket of my ragged coat

my city is a ruin
except its supplications

only in my city, a mother
begs her son not to go to the mosque for Friday prayers

in my city where
the lilt in the voice of the Imam
merges with the sounds of stones breathing 
an air of death

as usual, dusk dissolves, without resistance,
into our standing
shadows in the prayer rows

in my anechoic city, 
where even the skies are mute

I pass people
notes of silence in their eyes,
makes Beethoven, under the flowers,
weep.

***

Inferno

I am a bare remnant of a cloth
fragrant with pallid death 
stranded in a street
smouldering,
effusing
a feeble smoke
a feeble smell
a feeble cry;
unremembered ash.

I want more
I want more,

a huge campfire
atop wild dark hills,
a giant forest fire
an inferno – 

abundant light
abundant fire
abundant madness
abundant bewilderment

***

The Verandah Cat

She stares at me in pauses.
I, at her yearning.
It’s the saddest day of ages.

She lingers grey in the dark.

How did she come to love me with all this hollow
in me?

I had kept the food there, but she didn’t eat it all.
She circled it many times.

Did she know I would be so lonely on this day
she refused to eat?

I tried to look for her after sometime,
but she had disappeared.

The dark cement upon which she had lingered seemed
sadder than us both.

***