Hymn to the Dove

by Ayaan Fahad (February 2025)

Dove (Pablo Picasso, 1949)


Hymn to the Dove

Burn your insights,
Dim the city’s lights
Where puddles reflect my frights.
Where the crowd dismisses the stagnant water.
A pitch consumes me.

Flee to frosty woods
to die on an unimportant hill.
And sing to love
Sing to the squirrel in the tree,
Write to the dove
Ask how she broke free.

Live not to be buried on a mountain,
But a hill uninhibited.
Free spirited.

You may have lost all
But the woods.
Butterflies enthrall,
The bird broods.

Man broods too,
Menacingly; corrupting words,
Maliciously; corrupting worlds.
So I sit in the forest free,
Needing no man’s plagued honesty.

Listen to the strum of a guitar,
The hum of a shooting star.
Intoxicate on nature’s blissful qualia,
Slip into rasasvadic reveries,
Intertwined with the trees,
One with the azure sky
Sway to the creek’s lullaby.

Bathe in gold,
The apricity descends from heaven,
Flow along the December breeze,
Let the soil meet your knees
By this elysian’s amaranthine awe.
Till the frost melts on your skin,
Forgetting to bite,
As you dissolve in sunlight,
One with the earth.



Ballet Brûlant
=
Toska.
Icicles enclose my burning heart,
Melting as the blaze runs cold.
It yearns for coals-
To reignite the flames
Or fade into embers.

Carpe noctem,
The hour forsaken.
Fulfill or exsanguinate your desires.
Water-wood to my heart’s flaming fires.
Extinguish it
For all Love is Futile,
Lost. Nothing worthwhile,
An eternally haunting hiraeth.
Miracle;
My uneven, fleeting breath.

Inferno.
Ashes ascend to heavens,
Raining upon barren ground,
Begging solace and attention
Of an indifferent bloodhound.
Nosferatu drowning in impure blood.
White peignoirs disgracefully drenched in lust.

In Somnia Veritas.
Veritas awakening volitions.
Your dreamy eidolon’s,
Visit my reality,
Your shadows in every corner,
They question my sanity,
My ability to love,
Stab my heart—
A hemorrhage of longing.

Scarlet Serenade.
In this rose-meadow, collect your scars,
Through thorns, to the stars.
Burn and Bloom-
A waltz in this burning field.
Among flames lies our fate concealed,
Sealed.
Still, Sway to its mournful melody,
Aware of tragic ends
To this dreadful delight.
To the vivacious virulence
Of this ephemeral night.

Amor.
Burn, Rise, Fall—
Let flames rewrite it all.
Hearts and Roses,
Through Thorns to your destined star.

=
=
The Mockingbird’s Lament
=
Desire another to cling to,
Does it have no limbs?
Is it only morning
When the mockingbird sings?
Why doth the moon alone be forbidden
Of its seraphic melody.

Though in scarcity
Does a camel not need water?
And prithee,
Do you not wish to be loved
And not left slaughtered.

Why do you curse,
What you yourself desire.
Say the soothsayer speaks the truth,
Yet deem him a liar.
For you defy your inevitable fate,
Unable to create,
Your own,
Your throne
Of sticks and stones
Shattering as you rest alone.
Homeless homesick for a home.



Ghosts of the Past

I stab the earth’s soft soil,
Murdering a pure life
As I dig into its malevolent heart,
Burying Ghosts of the Past.

They drag me along
In graves
Deep, dark, dismal.
To chasms abysmal.

Phantoms and specters,
Residing in the labyrinths of my brain,
In chambers of my heart.
A memento echoes.

An ember star glimmers,
Shining faint hope
Over the remnants
Of my memories.

The grave hauls me within.
Trapped amid its jaws
I plead for light,
Struggling to reach the surface,
Each crevice
Haunts me.

A rose wilts
Over my grave.
I drown in the earth’s soft soil,
One with its malevolent heart,
A miserable life murdered.
Till stars blow into oblivion
Bound eternally;
To Ghosts of the Past.

=
=
Acherontic Abyss

I open the windows,
Welcome the agonizing cold breeze-
It blows
Within my soul.

It casts spells on my mind,
Shows beauty futile to my eyes
For I have gone blind.
I refuse colors,
Poisoning the lavender hyacinths
On life’s barren land.
I snatch a dagger
And stab your pathetic helping hand.

My fingers twist and break,
Refusing to write
For my sanity’s sake.
With my bruised palms I carve
Each verse, a prayer for solace.
A saint worshiping words.

My mind: a labyrinth.
I carve perplex pathways
Leading to chthonic depths;
A vexed abyss
Of an insufferable mind.

I weave mosaics in lunacy.
Seduced by insomnia’s ecstasy.
Starving in famine,
I bathe in sanguine.

Fragments don’t constitute poems,
Call not a heart a home,
Turn yours to stone.
Flesh, Tears, Bone.
Call not a heart your home

You will turn to-
Flesh, Tears, Bone.
Turn to; my beloved graveyard,
Tombstone.

Cut warmth,
Weren’t you born in fire?
Plead paradise,
A demise to unearthly desire.
A tantalizing glimpse.

Walk among shadows-
The light will burn your skin,
Your crimson stained white linen.

Spectre’s entwine my soul.
I step deeper into the void,
Fiat tenebris: dim the light,
Suffocate brains pleading paranoid.

Dismal.
I step deeper into the void,
I fall, paranoid.

 

Table of Contents

 

Ayaan Fahad is a poet from Lahore, Pakistan.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast

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