The Zahoor

20 Beautiful Poems by

Shaheer Khan

1

Contents Preface 2

Do I Lose Myself 3

PAIN 4

My Time Spent with Nature 6

My Self Denial 7

A lovely Red Rose 8

Will you be my friend 9

A new Morning 10

Verses of Water 11

Infinity of Human Power 12

What do you say Oh Soul 13

My Sins 14

Your Presence 15

What is Love? 16

Story of an innocent life 17

Among ashes 18

Your arrival 20

Journey across the Desert 22

Stories beneath Stones 23

Silence of Words 25

Short verses 26

2

Preface

Poetry is like a cup of wine which intoxicates my senses every time I taste it and lulls me to a

trance state. Its flavor is the best flavor I have ever experienced not among all the material lust in

this world. I started writing poetry to console myself under states of extreme depression when I

was flooded with harsh worldly problems at a very young age. Whenever I took down a word it

increased the level of contentment of my heart. Over time, I started brimming with thoughts

which even to this day are so cloudy in my mind that I barely find myself present in this world

during the hours of the day. I realize that my thoughts should be transferred onto the paper where

they serve as ingredients of wine of poetry.

The poems in this book might appear out of rhythm and a little disorganized. But note that these

poems have been written straight as they popped up in my mind and flew like water onto the

paper. And I believe that this flow of words conserves the beauty of poetry unconfined by the

box of rules of organization.

I have hit the zenith of romance in my poems which you will notice as you read on. Love is a

beautiful entity that we are so thirsty of. Our dried lips cry for one drop of love. I sincerely hope

that my poems will allow you to enter into the circle of lovers, into the realm of people who have

tough obstacles everywhere in their lives and into the realm of nature kingdom which holds a

wonderful beauty behind the veil. Let my poems lift you from the lowest ebb and motivate you

to love the unloved!!

Shaheer Khan.

3

Do I Lose Myself

This poem was written in May, 2014 under the feelings of extreme depression .My mind was

clouded with pathetic sympathies for myself for my apparently lowly stature. The verses below

question the integrity of strength of human and its vast hold which is weakened in face of

difficulties.

The coldness of my heart has turned it ice-cold, buried in snow from all sides.

Do I have not the flame that has always beaten inside to melt it?

The body has become weak and limbs dont move of hopelessness.

Do the blood in my veins not ambitious enough to strengthen the limbs?

The eyes are half wet with grief and loads of remorse; unable to look up.

Do my imagination and visions not fancy enough to make them look beyond what they see?

The lips are silent and tired to put life into my thoughts.

Do my words fail in wonder and eloquence?

The soul has lost its connection with God but feels the crime of betrayal.

Do my infinity matrix not powerful or the evil forces too strong?

I dont dream now and the wine of my dreams is far away.

Do that which is within me is slipping from me? Yes. Ive become hollow. Im no more Me.

4

PAIN

My body trembles with the suffering of pain.

Though I know not of the length of suffering,

but Ill be hopeful like the wind which blows across continents and gets hurt and pinched in its

journey.

Yet it reaches me and my beloveds cheek.

Dont cry from pain.

The clouds first break their existence before they fall rain on dry earth, yet they stay happy.

Your pain is a beginning of immortality.Why should I be worried about my pain?

In each drop of blood that flows outside from veins of my heart,

lies an unfathomable image of yours.

Id suffer a thousand pains to see the beauty of that one and only image.

Id relinquish myself and slay my neck in an altar to let your images flow outside my body in

form of blood.

In every piece of my broken heart reflects your image.

Your existence lies inside me which will come out only when my soul is drawn out.

Id be a fool if I lived and did not abandon myself.

O listen! To part with you is more painful than slaying myself.

I ask you not to stop hurting me.

Your cruelty freshens my love and makes me go wild.

I ask you not to stop slapping my love angel.

Your dryness sprouts a fountain of love wine inside my bosom, which feeds the circle of lovers.

See that the fruit suffers uncountable hours of scorching sun to get ripe.

5

The pain rewards it with sweetness and colours.

You are my enemy yet I lie every day to my heart to consider you as a friend.

Let me suffer and world behold the tragic love!

Let me bleed till every dust of this land turns red.

And a young plant grows on it shouting my story to the whole universe.

6

My Time Spent with Nature

Oh Nature! Your voice is drawing me to an endless void,

to an abyss of those who adore your beauty.

With every new morning, your voice wakes me from deep slumber.

Im born again and again, yet the voice never fades.

It echoes inside me and shakes my senses wildly.

Oh listen! The worldly lust has made me old.

I come off from myself like peels from an old bark.

My soul comes off like an old wound clot coming off from skin.

In your lap, I want to sleep forever.

In your boughs, I want to be embraced forever.

You are the air I breathe, the water I drink.

We have so many memories together but death is impending near.

When soil is overlain my hollow corpse, dont bury our memories there.

Make them the scent of my grave with a heavenly flavour.

Make them the colours of flowers thatll grow on my body.

For a blind never forgets the voices and the lover the hour of meeting with beloved.

7

My Self Denial

If at the door of my heart, the Beloved knocks.

The door will open with the aroma of grief and pain.

The scent will numb the traveller of its way.

The traveller follows the scent of his dream on his journey.

As long as he is drunk and sunk in thoughts of his destination,

His feet gain strength to move on.

But know that its from heap of grief that a peculiar scent arises.

The journey has had its pains. The pain has had its fragrance.

With each intensity of pain comes the fragrance of scent of my soul.

I do not seek happiness nor the friendship of the world.

For I lose my worth if I follow this pursuit.

Rather I seek destruction of me. And the collapse of me within me.

By denial of me, I find my Me within the cloak of body which was hitherto lost.

8

A lovely Red Rose

Whenever I walk my way to the garden,

A Rose cheers up and welcomes me.

The sight of its red beauty intoxicates me like a wine.

Makes me heavily drunk in its beauty.

While I notice its whirling to and fro movement,

its fragrance offers me more wine to my scent.

My love for the rose has become tough oh dear.

If I pluck it to sink in its sight, it would be treachery to the beloved.

If I dont, my soul remains thirsty and melts slowly away.

But I would choose the later.

Let myself die and my beloved live on.

9

Will you be my friend

Alone I wander and alone I sit in this social world.

But Oh Universe! Will you be my friend?

Oh Sun! Will you ripen my dreams till they are ready to be plucked;

Pour into them your loves strength and love them as I love them?

Oh Rain! Will you make these birds sing joyously like a welcome song of a festival after years of

war,

And tune my hearts desires into their symphony?

Make them dance by whirling around in a Sufi style for evermore?

Oh Wind! Will you blow the flicker of flame that burns inside me,

and blow it so that it would not stop burning forever?

Oh Clouds! Will your thunder bolts solidify the melting dreams that my chest bears;

bury my rocky fears into lowest depth?

Oh Love! Will you grow flowers on my grave and water them every day,

and let their fragrance touch the smell of peoples hearts?

Oh Universe! Will you be my friend?

10

A new Morning

Thy every morning is a new form of life,

a resurrection from the dead yesterday.

Dont think the night you spent was useless.

Darkness gives life to the hidden beauty,

which unveils her face only to her believers.

Its a name of the birth of silence after turmoil, human life

after death and a new rise of sun after lamentable gloom.

Wake up from the early wailing of flying doves

that echoes not only in your ears but in your awaiting destiny.

The dew has fallen down on your dry heart now.

It has made it fertile and ready for growth.

Wake up and start sowing seeds of your dreams.

Let the universe behold the blooming flowers in your hearts garden.

11

Verses of Water

Form yourself like water.

Which revives the baldness of soil from nothingness to an Eden.

Which puts life into dead souls of humans,

and brings passion into exotic fire that burns inside them.

Even when its stagnant and hideously immobile.

Its green on its surface is a contentment for many eyes.

Being quiet helps it to breed other living things that feed on its sluggishness.

Be like it.

12

Infinity of Human Power

Dont you see that the nature despises you when you degrade yourself?

Look at your clay like fingers which when clasp together form a rugged projection,

which moulds the clay childishly from which its created.

Look at your piercing eyes under the dark shadowy shelter.

Which unveils the many veils that are unseen.

Look at your radiant face that is a scripture of scattered pearls,

glued with brown of desert and white of snow.

Your body is an amazing wonder of this generation.

Carved out of mud, artistically bent on corners.

When you raise your eye lids up. You dont look at the sky.

But the sky looks at you; dumbfound at art of your Creator.

Believe in infinite power of imagination,

which rests behind your sharp sight.

This world was born barren with ugliness in its lap.

But your power turned it into the beautiful mirage you see today.

Oh human! A piece of universal sphere!

Seek yourself to find the infinity woven into your body.

13

What do you say Oh Soul

Oh my soul! How hopeless you wander in this emptiness.

The images clear now will become shadowy spirits later,

your friendsll turn to dust, your abode to haunted, once you die.

The air you breathe is evil, careless and feverish at heart.

It instils in you dreams that swallows you marrow,

bites your intellect and sucks your peace.

Your wine is your tears you seek.

It balms your restlessness and convulsion.

Let the tears flow into the sea of greatness, till they turn to blood

Thus your deep wounds will be healed.

When youll get drunk with wine, youll fly free.

Over the kingdom of humans, the next world, eternity.

For shattered youll be, the pieces of your broken heart will clatter.

And that clatter will produce a soft music which,

Will take you where had envisioned,

after you were born.

14

My Sins

O despicable me! How can you ask to be closer to Him?

When you pray at night but sin hideously in days light.

In the realm of love it is treachery.

A lover places his heart and soul at Beloveds feet

and desires to receive a welcoming sight.

To subjugate your physical body but not soul

is a kind of love, inferior in eyes of beloved.

15

Your Presence

Whenever I hug you softly,

beneath the sky that wonders at our union.

I feel Universal and out of this world.

Everything seems illusion to me but,

except your presence.

Hug me a little more and my soul will be yours.

16

What is Love?

You ask what Love is. I say, Its the bonding of two souls into one,

two hearts into one.

You ask how to love? I say, Sacrifice yourself so that your Beloved can live on.

At the altar of agony of love, sacrifice again and again.You ask Why love? I say, Because your

soul desires it.

You were born in a cradle of love. Youll die in a coffin of love.

If your soul wants resurrection, it must fall in love.

You ask when to Love? I say, when youre deserted and thirsty for one drop of love in a wild

desert.

When your hunger of love exceeds the hunger of bread and water.

You ask how often to love? I say, At every breath you breathe.

At every air you inhale.

At every throb of your heart.

Love till you can love no more.

Love till you forget self and vanish into nothingness.

17

Story of an innocent life

Those pictures of warmth I keep close to my bosom;

Are strapped to my heart as if it owns it.

They silently whisper before I start to pluck ripe fruits of my youth again.

Oh! Why the people are the way they are?

Why I am the way I am?

I fail yet again. Futile it will be now to answer this unanswerable question.

Ive lived among the barren woods when earth lived gloriously in heaven.

Ive been a rebel detested by those who were blessed with happy and sweet companies.

Ive been thirsty for love when all had it in abundance and all I had wanted was a drop to wet my lips.

When they used to spend lovely nights with their folks,

I slept with moon beside my pillow.

When they found love in living scraps of blood and dust

I confided my trust in wind that blew rarely.

For wind has been the friend of my times

It listened to all the voices I bore in my inside.

And rejoinder has always been the same

A mystifying music sweeter than all the earthly sounds.

Discovered I have now the change in me

I find solace in loneliness and content I feel

A part of it reigns over my soul

With no isolation would mean my last breath

Till then I continue to breathe in arms of loneliness

18

AMONG ASHES

I'm wrapped with vines of thoughts and worldly visions.

The vines have started penetrating inside my clayey skin and replaces my blood veins.

I had stopped to wonder at them to notice their ruggedness and personality.

Alas! I should not have done so.

I should not have cared about other weak images.

I should not have reflected my piercing eyes inside this world nor heard their whispers.

That led the vines to grow more strongly than ever.

It rained and the sun shown worked on its strength.

The water of sympathy put sap in it to boil with aggressiveness. The sun ripened its stem and

roughness of its skin grew even more.

I breathed my last strangled by barriers of my society.

But the vines scraped my body turning my burning flames to fire.

It burnt my skin and destructed it to ash.

I came down on the ground. I became nothing.

Among ruin of me within me, a wish rises like smoke from ash.

My identity lays in wretched ash scattered on low ground.

But the smoke wants to rise. Rise above the destruction to high sky.

Smoke has resurrected from black colour to white. From solid to gas.

From low to high. From impure to pure. From multiple to single.

19

It flies in the kingdoms of far. Heaven or Hell. Universal or non-universal.

The ecstasy of flight is childish but a joy soaked in bliss.

Smoke is not a slave of its mind but its heart. It listens to what it has to say.

Whatever the heart desires, it does it. No thoughts. No chances.

The beauty of it lies in the dreams it dreams.

No other single creature on planet can dream such dreams but the heart.

The higher the smoke rises. The higher it gets drunk with adventures and ambitions.

On its journey nothing stops it. The encounters are strange. Faces are faceless. Identities are non-

identities. Traces are traceless. Bodies are bodiless.

It's nothing but everything!

20

YOUR ARRIVAL

Your arrival is a painful death to my solitary world.

My fragile mind loses its pace and thinks aimlessly wandering like a lost traveller.

Your beautiful scent arrests the air I breathe.

It clutches my surroundings and henceforth my nerves.

Your sitting beside me is blissful for both worlds.

As I see that it's not only me who is enslaved by your scent.

But even angels and demons who forget their duties and sit around in a circle to witness the

magnificence.

Your silence is what we yearn to hear.

Whose coldness hovers on our passionate blazes inside us?

I stay stunned at the beauty of your silence which is in a perfect balance between paradise and

this world.

Your eyes enchant my body when I try to enter into your realm.

These are like black wings which cover my imaginations in their warmth.

Your arrival has made my blood lost its trace, my eyes its sight.

I fade. My heart thumps faster. I'm lulled into a sleep where only I dream of you.

Guide my senses to their state for I lose myself if I stay with you.

21

At last the time has come. Your connection with me faints.

Your departure sweeps a wave of melancholy on us all.

A time of 'huzun' has started for us till you return.

22

JOURNEY ACROSS THE DESERT

I stumble across gleaming sand in this melancholic desert.

Thousands of sands and in them a thousand more smile at my thoughts that weaken me.

The hot wind whirls around patting my bare legs and burning my skin.

I see the whispers of forces telling me its a paradise.

That the melancholy is an illusion for your short sighted eyes but an evergreen oasis lies where

you tread.

An oasis where bliss took birth. Melancholy grew older.

Its where ugliness is not ugliness anymore. Where only beauty exists.

The sand though dry and barren is beautiful in its appearance.

It lies on the ground trampled by arrogance and rejected by world but it stays calm in its peace.

Its dryness gives desert its beauty. Without it desert cannot survive.

The warmth of the land is a pain to the skin but a blessing for creatures.

With it rises rain out of the soil to the sky and feeds thousands of thirsty open mouths.

A thousands take birth when a thousand die.

I'm not alone on this journey, I realize.

I see them who accompany me on this journey.

Those dead in this world and those dead in the other world.

I'm in the company of later. I'm not yet born in the other world but I will.

How tasty is the transition from this to the other place to the traveller!

For me this melancholy has turned into happiness.

If I see it as grief, my existence is more like a mirror who reflects myself within me.

If I see it as solace, myself is like a cloud which owns different images but reflects only one.

Comfort.

23

Stories beneath Stones

As I walk past stones under my feet,

I hear the whispers of those who existed.

Someone cries by looking at my me.

I once stepped on the same stone as you step now.

Every stone is someone's grave and someone's birthplace.

The stones laugh heartily at my immortal nature.

The green leaf might decay but roots under the soil live forever.

The life of this universe is longer than mine and I'm decaying already.

My clay like body has become impure and contaminated.

It will certainly vanish as God does not like impurity.

I may cause impurity among other pure human race.

For they eat and drink love while feed on bread.

Like stones my soul has become rigid and moves less.

Its stagnant and stagnant water is never liked.

Beneath the stones some stories yell loud and clear.

These are stories of love and they rest in peace and calmness.

The cup of wine cannot be immortal or it'll be a disgrace to its nature.

It must be fed to a human soul and put enchantment of love to become a story of love.

Be the wine of cup and quench the thirst of love of your drinker.

Wine is mortal but love lives forever.

24

Play of Show

My ears sense vibrant surroundings and sudden uplift of rapture.

As crops wave to me with their happy smiles.

At this moment, someone I see is playing chords of symphony.

And as chords struck one after the other the air becomes more and more jubilant.

I'm behave like a three year old child whirling round and round to this testimony.

Who gets absorbed in gaiety, oblivious to people's eyes?

I wish to drown into the reddish yellow sky which looks like river with color of lovers' blood.

Dive in it and pour its wine into each vein of my body.

At this moment, I want to fall in love with God deeply and be among his lovers.

And let my soul be His and His affection be mine.

I dont wish to be present on earth and be among mortals.

I'd rather be an entity, some presence to be felt by clayey mortals.

I ask questions and the energy becomes more intense.

The crops and beings surround me with energy drumming inside them.

Clouds in their own beauty start chatting with each other.

My brain is mesmerized, stunned at the show played by my Beloved.

Slowly, noises dampen and become faint in distance.

And the whispers become clearer and louder to my instincts.

And there's silence now.

Somebody is listening to my questions. Somebody's there.

25

Silence of Words

If my lips stay silent and do not murmur a word,

it does not mean my words have failed me.

My lips live and pay attention to world beyond images.

The world where images are pure without impurity and clear without blurriness.

While you speak, I go across the bridge of your fallen spoken words to your mind.

Where I wander around in freedom and judge the beauty as well as ugliness of inner 'You'.

Each word of you brings a change to the atmosphere and gives it energy.

How merciful of you to sacrifice your energy for someone else!

But words have not given me solitude rather put chaos into myself.

I'd rather die silent than speaking unspeakable words.

26

SHORT VERSES

When you sit beside me, I disconnect from this world.

And I float in an unknown world far away from this place.

I shatter within Me, I collect within You.

Your arrival seizes my peace my feelings, my mortality

and all of Me.

_____________________________________________________

We are a dust lying amidst dust.

Sometimes I see the souls who wander around us,

Laughing and cheering all around celebrating their mortality.

Who says that we would die and everything would end?

When we die here, we are born into other world.

We still live but invisible to the eyes of mortals.

__________________________________________________________

At night, an angel comes to me flying from moon.

And behind the veil gives me a beautiful flower.

Saying that it grew on moon's soil and now it belongs to me.

Every night, on every petal of every flower, have I seen;

The reflection of your face and smelled the odour of your skin.