Somewhere where I am not

People call me crazy, a mad woman
and I tell them that how my mind takes me to different places and washes me in different cultures

around different people Somewhere I am laying underneath the dark starry skies where all of me is consumed by the mystical moist air somewhere I am waiting for trains 
for people
for rains Somewhere I'm dancing in a silk slit gown for a lover and somewhere I'm singing songs of woman hood,
somewhere I'm a misunderstood woman walking out of a cheap pub and somewhere I'm puffing cigars with whores, listening to their melancholic stories
It's hard to stay in one place when my heart jumps to reach for infinite

My Beloved Departure

We live in a place for years and not document it's streets, the culture, the food, the people, their ideologies
the history and the art
the scents and the seas 
the warmth in the breeze 
and on departure we wish to soak all of it in, 
we creep around the pillars, 
we stop and stare at the land like it's gold 
with so much sand it glitters, 
we drench our selves in scents, in ouds and in lobans, 
we smell more like the city than ourselves 
and I think that's the thing about departures, 
they uproot our soul and plant seeds of treasuring, of longing and memories.

Women in the Sahras of Arab

women

under the massive palm trees 

where the mystical moist air blows

and their shiny skin glows

wearing holy scents and long skirts

bare feet drenched with desert sand

women

lay in the sahra

sand in the hair

facing the sky

romancing the stars

fingers in the air 

tracing constellations

talking about gods creations 

women

giggling, weeping, loving

alluring the whole nature

and you sit on that majlis,

slitting ripen dates

sipping kehwa

talking about how

women 

allure men

 Women In The Sahras Of Arab,  By Madiha Shams Khan

Doors that hold us

Will you open the door when my heart will harp your name, will you look at my hands and see how I held your smell your touch your stories while I walked through a storm, dived deep into an ocean my palms never tired of holding your pieces in a fist, tight pieces that I rushed to put together sitting next to the fire place my body drenched with rain water my eyes moving madly, constantly, my body shivering, my fingers shaking while putting your pieces together just to create an illusion of your love around myself will you open the door if I pour my eaten heart out, can you heal this piece of flesh, can you give me a part of yourself that no one has seen tell me how have you been Doors that hold us - By Madiha Shams Khan

Scents - of the sinful and the holy

Slow, she wakes up on a cold winter morning,

wrapped in white sheets and light of a holy day 

untying her oiled braids  

and the knots in her heart

soaking her body in

old fashioned lavenders and scented sandalwoods

slow, the sound of sweltering water

running across her body

like rivers and oceans 

and a sea where the moon cries

only to drench her long locks  

slow, the transition of her bare soul 

into a woman covered in long pherans, velvet, maroon

and antique rust earrings,

their shadow play like an old moroccan lantern 

slow, she walks across your home 

holding the oud stand, like a flambeau,

scenting every room, every corner 

but soon you say, 

oh she smells like a girl covered in sins,

perfuming her body

and asking strange men to light her cigarette

your scent, you say, soak me in your scent, you say

slow, she gives herself away

slow, along with her skin, her soul, she gives away

slow, you let her in,

her luring eyes, her sinful red dress, her long rebellious hair, her chewed cigarettes,

you let her in, woman of your dreams

but there is no mercy

men, you are so thirsty

slow, you say, obey,

slow, you crave a different smell, you say

these holy ouds, these velvet pherans

these lavenders, these sandalwoods

are womanhood, you say

you preach, she prays

you're bound to her spell

her smell

her scents,

her scents will drag you to hell.

Scents; of the sinful and the holy  By Madiha Shams Khan

“Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast” - Amir Khusro

Our bodies covered in Pheran

our land covered in blood

while burning Oud on a Friday morning

pouring Kehwa from a samovar

or drinking from the Jehlum river
our souls harp shiver
i see a heaven

that is mourning over its own funeral
they've raised hell in Maryams's arms

there is red snow fall and red chinaar

and when our birds fly
their broken wings fall

I see broken windows

and I see broken dreams

and somewhere far across these valleys

I see

a young one

picking up the forbidden fruit and not the gun

azaadi

I see

colors

I see the never ending sky

and with these broken wings

we still learn to fly.


Kasheer -By Madiha Shams Khan

To all the countries/ cities and lives effected by conflicts and their daunting aftermath

May the human race realise that love is the only war worth fighting for
May we see white flags and white doves
May we all learn to love   

Typewriter on a monsoon evening

And days when I don't gaze into the sky for too long or feel the wind in my hair, days when I sit and harp on a memory realizing that how time passes us all by are the kind of days when the typewriter kept in front of me makes me realize that our stories are going to be full of flaws and that our words are going to be misspelled, our sentences won't come with perfect punctuations and that we won't be able to go back in time to rewrite anything at all because
we are the typewriters that can't erase the mistakes they make. 


-By Madiha Shams Khan