13th January 2025

I was on the bike,
On a cat food shopping trip, 
Singing a song,
Trying to get it right,
About the day you died
And if your baby, 
Whom it was addressed to, 
Knew about it,
The day you died,
And how on that day
I cried and cried
When all of a sudden
I began hitting myself on the chest,
Hard,
Repeatedly,
In full public view,
To stop the wound in my heart
From bleeding again.

The next thing I knew,
I was riding that bike,
Aimlessly.
Directionless.
Going around in circles.
Confusion.
In.
The.
Brain.
Clouded.
By.
Muted Pain.

I did not know,
What I was doing,
Was looking for a deserted place
To cry my lungs out
To the skies
At five in the evening,
In this bustling part of the world,
An impossible task.

The next thing I knew,
I was back on track,
On the bike,
On a cat food shopping trip,
Destination marked clearly in the head.

Cats die,
All the time,
But the pain 
Never, ever, dies.

27th May 2024

Exactly three weeks ago, 

Two hours before dawn,

On a Tuesday like today,

You gasped your last breath
And left this world for the hereafter.

This is not a memorial,

No photos, 
No virtual tombstone bearing the usual cryptic markings,

Na da,
Nothing.

The gods who took you away,
Sometimes they do it for the creation of a new song,
Other times for the creation of a new poem,
Or a new post for the dead cat memorial blog,
Will get no such pleasure.

Not this time.

Let them kill all the cats in this household.
I'm done with memorial blogs marking the deaths of cats in this household.

Never again.

You were like a daughter to me.
They knew that,
Yet they resented it.
Why?

Because God is a jealous God.
Didn't you know?
Weren't you told?
You cannot love anyone or anything more than God.
You can, but there will be consequences.

Oh, yes, I can and I will,

Consequences or no consequences.
Let them do their worse.
After all,
That is who they are,
That is what they do.

11th February 2024

The gunfire has receded

From intense to sporadic,
A sign of rebel withdrawal

From the city streets and alleyways

Back to their lairs and hideouts

In the jungles and the forests

Of tropical Malaysia
Until the next round of festivities 

When the next Emperor God 

Takes his rightful place 

In the sky

And everyone rejoices
With shell bursts way up high

From howitzers and mortars

And an RPG or two
And sometimes multiple blasts
From an MLRS too.

12th November 2023

 

Weep not, O Palestine, 

For your children are not dead

Nor are your women dead

Nor your men,

Slaughtered in the name of jihad

By the thousands,

For they are martyrs,

Martyred in the name of Allah

Who will be welcoming them in paradise

And crowning them with dignity and honor,

The highest that can be attained

 In all of Islam.

Rejoice, O Islam, 

Rejoice, O Muhammad,

For ten thousand new martyrs 

Are on their way to join you 

In paradise,

On board the train which bears the souls of martyrs

And transports them to heaven

Where eternal bliss and the highest of honors,

And in the case of the men,

Sexual delights in the arms of seventy-two virgins,

Awaits them.

Bless him, 

The ticket inspector who punched your tickets

As you waited to board the train,

O Palestine,

And thank him

Instead of cursing him,

He who displayed on his ticket inspector's uniform

The star of David,

For it was he who has helped your martyrs,

All ten thousand of them,

Attain the highest of honors 

In all of Islam.

God bless martyrdom! 

God bless the Shaheed who is martyred in the way of Istishhad!

Allah-u-Akbar!

Allah-u-Akbar!

Allah-u-Akbar!

11th November 2023

I gave you a whole room where you could be all by yourself,

For you and your babies,

And how do you thank me?
By spitting in my face

And taking your precious babies elsewhere,

Not once but twice.

The neighbors have complained,

Not once but twice.
"Are these your kittens?" they said.

"Take them away," they said. 

"We know not what to do with them," they said.
Not once but twice,

And now you have done it again.

I gave you a whole room where you could be all by yourself,
For you and your babies,
And how do you thank me?
By spitting in my face
And taking your precious babies elsewhere,
For the third time now.

Enough!
Henceforth, you will no longer be welcome in this house

Whose open doors and welcome mat you have spat upon

For the third time now.

You will be shooed away on sight.
If within reach, you will be caned on sight.
If out of reach but within air soft pellet range,
You will be shot on sight.

Until the day you submit to me,
The Hand That Feeds You,
And bring your babies back.
No longer will I be the hand that feeds you.

Not as I have decided
But as you have chosen,
Thou fool of a mama pussycat.

27th October 2023

Just look at you.
God must've been so pleased with himself the day he made you,
He would've declared that day a holiday.

Just look at you.
God must've been so pleased with himself the day he made you,
The look of satisfaction on his face would've lasted from sunrise until sunset.

Just look at you.
God must've been so pleased with himself the day he made you,
He would've summoned everyone from the four corners of his kingdom
For a day of feasting and merriment.

22nd August 2023

I could watch you read the news

Every day for the rest of my life,

Observing the movement of your lips 

As you spoke in sync 

With the movement of your eyes

And I would not be bothered 

If the outside world was burning

And mountain slopes were crumbling

While people dazed and stumbling

Were wailing with their voices

Reaching to the skies

For I would feel so blessed

To be watching you

In paradise.