1.’His mind is a violet’
To a six year old,
It was easier to contribute his
Primitive scrawled vision
To a defect easily imprisoned
By rainbow crayola
Where my brain was meekly lush
And perhaps more conflagrated
Like a glade-scaly blazing star,
His burden was held to the blowsy
Flame of consciousness by a craw of
Lumber,
Eyeless but voluminous,
An apostrophe in the blared
Consensus of his vividities,
And yet, mother of his aerate
Polemic
The light maleficent, expensive,
and veins,
thickly scattered like broken glass
He performed his duty by it,
Grew his soul sleeker with harvest
But for me,
There was only the violet invention,
To abide by,
His mind was a knot of wild flowers
And mine yet disentangled,
The circuits still and chrome-rich,
But his
Stroked with circuitous umber
Each time the wing of a transformation
Scraped the soft wound
Of his invented world,
I knew keener,
The strange and celadon
Lightness of my own pursuit.
2.
His cries do not unfold with algorhythmic
Precision,
No contusions, surcharged,
Like those found on marble,
Flicker above the whetstone,
The sculptured oval of his tears;
subtle congested scatter
He can be found fringed with purple marl,
A daydreaming prince, lantern nests of
Mesh forming the viscera,
The great silky oriflamme of
His cupped head,
A globe of wool,
Grazed cellophane, lethal orange
Marking the pith,
The sky breaks through its net of bones,
Door to door
They collect his cries
In stainless pails,
The women glitter,
The heat of their chuckle, is a
July-mistral,
A Venusian menagerie,
Bearing
The temperature
Of him, unspeakable
3.
All literature is evil,
When you’re climbing down the wood dew,
Down the lit stairs,
And the blood in your supporting hand
Comes to the surface,
Like jetsam,
Everything is occult,
The human cacology of the whirring dark,
Your throat heavy with
New and gravid betrayals,
Your plea for slumber,
Is the alphabet in chalk on
Summer breath
Each pound of air you nourish
In your mirrored gut, is
Delivered to the world
As, petals of nickel,
Vaporous, wired
Some angsty curator
Divining their manner of florescence
It is not that you are this inflammable thing,
Returning to the shirr of pleasure,
Within the verve of your web,
And your bonny preludes
It is that you are free of
The slaughter of age,
Submerged in clarity
To the rims of your eyes,
Each vowel, intoned is acidic,
Dimensioned,
Exceeding the reddening
Abstraction of water
At your feet
4.
So much of it is an anticipated
and congruous
exegesis of faeries,
tetradactyls, blunt roars,
snowfall,
a kind of asserted and germanic asphyxia
sometimes you hear the voices of the rootless,
through the primrose, littoral walls,
asking you to stand by and just witness
their warm polemic
Your complicity isn’t required however,
just a retreat into the quiet,
shaped by orchid whispers and
attendant, august
now tangible to the eye.
You are defeated every time
by what you utter for forgiveness,
the fulsomeness of death
motioning
you more than you should allow,
granting you a notoriety,
like
the high blue of the mosque,
its mute and gargantuan
eye
brooding over labyrinthine
ribs of silver,
prayer dwelling beyond the brick,
like an exponent of retreat,
at your nave
sounding
the wave of your compulsion,
regretting your commonness,
your mundane subtleties.
Poet’s Bio: Afshan Shafi lives in Lahore, Pakistan and has studied English Literature and International Relations at The University of Buckingham and Regent’s University London. Her poems have appeared in 3am magazine, ditch, Full of Crow, The Toucan, Mad Swirl, Visual verse, Black heart magazine and others. Her debut collection of poems ‘Odd Circles’ was published by Readings (Pakistan) in 2014. She is the editor of the forthcoming Abbreviate Journal.