SANTIAGO ALI

SANTIAGO ALI

IN THE ART OF THE MOON

Tired of life's literature of

Catharsis

glorious tragedies of an

Olympia

Sapien's  shallow and stagnant pride

that a gladiator ever earns

The  conch is blown

Calling exile winds back  home

Stirring the silver of the sand

When whirls in a tidal crescendo

This is the renaissance

A true art of life

Where fittest is the one who

Is pierced

With as many arrows as the number of beats  a heart can afford

To meet the other half

Of "You"

The remaining part of the

story

Where you are burst opening

from your skin

And mounting upon heap

Of your bones

So that you see ,

You are not what You "Are"

But what you were Conceived while

In a cosmic womb

Holding a candle along the length

Of your arms that is

Burning at both ends and

You stand on a thin red line where

Walks the choir of life

The ones with four feet

Those with wings

The swimmers , the crawlers

The hunters , the weavers

The ones with venom

Others with nectar

Starry dandelions carrying

messages from

inhabitants of other earths , other skies

Through an eyelet in the eye of

the reality

I see elephants flying in the

Liquid of the sky

And dolphins climbing tree that hang from sky

Only love will read you the remaining

Chapters of the story

Engraved upon skin of your scars

Love will turn your face

Awestruck towards the other half

Of You that is

Flowing in the salt of some sweet eyes

Lovers are never friends

They are either as close as a

Beast is to your heart

Or

as remote as gods are from your flesh

A  DIALOGUE

Who are you?

A traveller lost in between

journey and destination

Who are you?

A thirsty one drowned in a mirage

In the sea of sand

Who are you?

The pain of the fragrance

Disowned by the rose

Now at the mercy of a wind

The wings of a colour

Peeled off a butterfly in captivity...

Who are you?

The first drop of the rain

I am the last drop of the ocean

Walking upon an unclaimed piece of Earth uncontrolled

By any law, any regime, any religion

Who are you?

A beholder

beholden to the nakedness of an eye

I am the love, lover, the beloved

The fire that light the sun, the dew

where a lonely moon floats

In the river of night...

Who are you?

I am you

Who are you?

I am the tear fallen from the eye

Shed at the irony of a Sin that was not Original.

THERE OUGHT BE LOVE

Amidst crackling bones of solitude

in the lone thundering silence of the universe

I am standing upon a

grain of earth

sole witness to the weightless

worth of the infinite drama of existence

in the wandering and desultory

colors of light years that

Went unlived by life

Uncelebrated with no history

at all

There ought be love

So sprouts a sudden garden

from the virgin of a land

So flies a light in the

heart of the fragrance

I am dying to burn out in the flame of a moth......

To reach the heat of your lips there ought be an intimacy

a bosom of ecstasy

whither salt on skin is licked by the sweet sweating of a saffron plougher....

With eyes closed a thousand

eyelets are awakened

blossomed to have a

glimpse of what is unknown

yet very much our own....

There ought be a

moment in the

whole of a lifetime

when so overwhelmed with the knowledge that I am breathing

the same air you have exhaled

while looking into the setting sun

perhaps thinking about me.....

Oh would that

a single moment in a whole lifetime when I am drowning in my own gulp of water

knowing that you sat by the river

and wept saffron tears

SANTIAGO ALI

SANTIAGO ALI: Santiago a political economy graduate from Pakistan has chosen the poetry as one of his tools to make this world a more beautiful in his own right. Calling himself an Exile he writes about love, anthropological ecology and The War.. Ancient myths and Renaissance literature and art being his permanent sources of inspiration.