Idaisle: The flight of a bird trapped in the wrong cage.

Inked in the shadow of words while duveting his lashes in-between the pages of A Man into Woman by Lili Elbe, Nehaal lulled his tempestuous desires to be a Helen at least and clamped shut his eyes leaving behind the tortuous snaky streets where Identity was the sole question all above.

In the Hours of idleness I often sketch you 

with the paint of my blood

with the strokes of my love

I wonder do you do the way I do?

He knew he was about to enter IDAISLE-- his most favourite resort where only Neelum ruled his territory and no Nehaal stood in between them.
He stretched his limbs and found juvenile droplets had already awashed his sobs amidst tears and balmed the swollen marks which he had carried after severe beatings from his peers after being mocked as a hermophrodite . He stepped forward and a lake of white crystals reflected his face having all-male side whiskers and pitch-black moustaches hiding his mole glued to the apple curve of his lips. While touching his brawny muscles , He realized the lithe suppleness of willowy feminine muscles had extinguished and he had been transformed into a herculean man ,whose thought he always hated even in dreams.
Buttering with bemoaning frenzy he muttered. "Neelum Neelum where are you?," the word curled up all over the amazingly masculine voice. He found her laying there, gazing up into his eyes as the sun melted in them.
His dilated pupils had worn a wreath of honey fire and the two tiny orbs were devouring on her very soul. Finding her shadow beneath the lake he instinctively ran a hand over the water bubbles, curved those blue dews of his another self around his neck and filled his pitcher to its brim to get baptised in the aura of Neelum . Neelum moved forward and stampeding gust of wind hung open her rosary pink veil, disclosing to his eyes ,her burnt skin scars, ragged holes. She smiled and behind her beautific smile there were cuts, welts and wounds.
The searing intrusion made his eyes roll in their sockets and the moment the water of IDAISLE's lake grabbed him, "Neelum," from a shadow transformed into an echo rising higher and higher above the frothy herd of clouds Neelum flew upwards to some world he never knew. She flew higher and higher until she was a tiny speck of gold against the clear blue sky and then came parachuting down.
By now he could see only Nehaal's reflection in the frozen ice-blue stream where pulpy crimson berries had doodled these verses

After conquering my desirous zones

Or even if I fail to hold my shards

Or if Ganga of this ephemeral love turned me impure

Or if I lost my identity In the transfixed moment of mortality

I am very much sure

With Blind eyes I will to your country come back

Nehaal's surroundings slowly materialized in front of him: the stream, the fresh grass, branches laden with red apples hanging over them. It was as if he was recovering his sight after a blinding flash. Nehaal didn't want to move a limb - or even a muscle. Under his closed eyes, he could vividly see the apples hanging in bunches over them. But he could also hear a cricket chirp somewhere far away in the night. The heavy breaths he heard were his own and nobody else's. He had a mattress underneath, and no grass. He reluctantly opened his eyes into the darkness of his room and wiped his sweat on his sleeve.
Slowly his lips curled into a smile: he had finally found Idaisle where he was Nehaal, a firm man , the way he was born. He could defy human differences and confrontations but he was not supposed to forget that he was created to maintain equilibrium between his masculine brain and a feminine heart and dominance of either could end up into chaos

Copyrights reserved to Paras Ali and Maaiydah Aslam /2016 (The story is a work of collaboration by the two writers mentioned above)

Poesy under the thunder of Sanity

That night I the Hermit decided to visit your abode
Mustering up my words I rushed towards your roads
But you a saint, thought I was a mere miscreant
And he supposed
I am a sinner holding a chalice of forbidden fruit
No sooner his lips spelled mantra
Than dashed open sky's vexed beads
Salt hung open over the pale blizzard
Tearing the dermis apart of the serpentine sea
The needles started to drizzle
Hearing the saint mourn, the droplets chased me
And smashed to smithereens my  tiny bits
My white-collared dreams mutedly crackled
Like Fall does with the dearest melodies of wet leaves
Scattering my notes inside the void
The saint called me a 'Punished Paranoid'
An Eden of hell descended upon his streets
Setting me topsy-turvy making my heart bleed.

I wish dear Saint you could never have judged me on the scale of sanity
I wish you could sense
I came to your town to write on you a piece of poesy

Copyrights reserved to Paras Ali/2016

My Mother vs. Nature

(The poem is inspired from the writings of Khawaja Musadiq , the talented voice of Kashmir)

The Duchess moon stands speechless
Inclining it's mighty head over the rivulet of my tears
Beheading from my flesh the crown of memories
The stars I assume sing high
Mine and her devastated folklore
To the children of sky
And the comets like flying lanterns
Flutter its feathers ever so hard
Knowing even my forest of dreams has recently burnt
Why i can not see wrinkles on the cloud's face?
Why the hair of maiden night are still white?
Why no downpour could reshape the sequinned night's curves?
Is nature an inborn immortal princess?

There are two women in the world I have closely noticed
One turned old in her prime youth
Counting drop by drop my droopingly dying dreams
And the one is still young
After drinking from my veins the anguish of my wounds

Copyrights Reserved to Paras Ali/2016

I wish the Flower could Fly

No snow flakes had buried it's lustre
No dews had left it's vision blurred
No spring had compressed her into a nectar
No fall had imprisoned her in yellow fetters
If the fuchsia flower had Falcon like feathers

Copyrights reserved to Paras Ali/2016

To the West

(It is sometimes the people we work with, change our perspective towards their entire nation and the momentary encounter with them makes us see the other side of the picture. I like to dedicate this stanza to the brave citizens of Afghanistan)

Thirst has left my throat dried to death
But you would find me distancing myself from your lake
Hunger has set on colander my starving flesh
But you would see me throwing back the crumbs of your tempting food
Birds are preening their wings while bathing in your pool of jewels
But you would see me holding my roughly trimmed feathers to myself
Do you know?,
what stops me move ahead?
That is indeed, as a bitter matter of a fact
Your avaricious eyes gazing towards my broken being with sympathy

Copyrights reserved to Paras Ali/2016

Perplexing Notions of Self Image

What is life??

It is probably walking vehemently on the maze of bewildering questions with a soul of a drunkard who is too tipsy to comprehend how things happen? what they turn out to be? and when this drama oscillating between knowledge and ignorance would get fixed?

During this grand journey between bigotries and clashes few things weigh us down to its pinnacle that is the awareness of our own image. The image we built around us becomes so much a public property like our dreams. We can not escape the fact that the howling truth of sustaining this identity within us seeps deep in our skin and inwardly the anguish of lying to ourselves keeps us drained. We wear a closed jaw smile but does it escape the echo of of neither dying nor living ego?

I suppose never.

Beneath the veneer of steel teeth, guarded by the semblance of copper ribs and cloaked by the best façade of human history  the wounds of injured self image yowl like a trapped wolf bicker with its bars in the hours of solitude. The powerful claws of rumour, slander and verbose attack hang on our galaxies as if they are ominous  dark comets, magnetically pulled by Earth. We are forced to turn Earth, no matter how strongly we know the mirrors of our character run deep in our course and this is how the pointing fingers take hold of our scattered ego

When I was a child I thought answers followed me every where I travelled. I thought Dove out of acute helplessness asks the cat to stab on her neck. I had a firm belief that carriages on their grand migrations were robbed because they spilled open to the dark stars , their magical mysteries. I used to think a multicuturalist was on the verge to lose his idiosyncrasy because he himself opted to linger among unknown zones.

Then I grew up and the notions of  free will coining our fate changed. I saw two wars: one which I fought for my Image and other which I battled with "What People would Say?" . This battle was not confined to our faulty actions rather it was something else, something undiscovered.

Did I outwit or conquer the laws of conformity?
My answer is " I wish Life could answer the knotty Questions"

Copy rights Reserved to Paras Ali