The New Nation - Internet Edition

Journal of a Pessimist

Mahmud Shafique

I'm not a mechanical man.

The heart surges up with the melody of rose-blossoming

Like a range of mountains,

Deep within the groaning floats a cruiser.

Flocks of bombers rush out

Piercing the peacock sky

It seems a massacre is imminent:

A dense forest emerges out of solitude.

Reptiles loom withing the feelings

Meat gives the taste of marine salt,

Blood lacks store of prawns;

Hospitals go without drugs and X-ray machine.

Robot like doctors walk briskly

With stethoscopes hanging from their necks,

As if corposes of one hundred thousand martyrs have stood

In the line of patients denied medicare,

And someone is on his way home

With the glow of the blazing stars in his blood.

Is he an assassin too?

Awe-inspiring phone calls come floating

From within the eerie darkness,

A moonstruck young girl with unkempt hair

Goes to bed with sleeping pills.

And just waking up from a sleep at midnight;

I'm sitting with a sharp razor,

Should I run it round my throat?

Are the ten fingers of mine

Going out of my control?