Poetry
Shattered Bangles
Samia Ahmed
I imagine the lives of others,
Of households in concrete,
Scattered on the horizon,
Seen through the corner window
In the stairwell area
Where I live.
And sometimes the rain clouds
Make me sing;
Birds know by now
The routine of my day,
Of a joyless marriage,
And pains
Of a mundane existence,
Which my family deems
My destiny.
My rightful place
Is beside the man chosen,
Where I am to accept
Deafening accusations,
Digest the demand for dowry,
Trauma of sleepless nights,
And haunting voices
When I sleep.
Complain I can only
To the sky, endless and blue,
Of the red marks on my wrists,
Fragments of color
From shattered glass bangles,
And no one to ask for
Embellishments anew.
Samia Ahmed is a poet from Bangladesh and has been widely published. A wishful Existence is her. first book of photo-poetry, collaborating with a Czeck photographer.
To Be, or Not to Be...
Hasan Maruf
To be or not to be,
Truly is the question, isn't it?
To be who you truly are,
Very often takes not being
What everyone else thinks
You should be.
To be genuinely happy,
often means going through
Periods of immense unhappiness,
in order not to be miserable.
To be serene and at peace,
Often comes after fighting
Devastating personal battles
And losing a lot along the way,
In order not to be at war within oneself
In order to be, you must be willing not to be.....
That is not only the question; it's also the answer!
The Principle of Resonance
The Architect of designated Life
Calculates the gravitational pull
Against the leverage of resonance
To a precise second of entrance.
Our plotted trajectory course
Is determined by our final blueprint;
The diaphanous mystery of choice
Is balanced between past and present:
We remember who we were
Before time allotted this experience,
And recognize who we are
Despite our current existence,
After all,
"A bond between souls is ancient –
And even older than the planet."
Hasun Maruf teaches English in DPS Dhaka, and writes poems and stories.