Perspective

^{_{© Gregory Colbert}}

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
– Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

How can I viably write about war
when it will only end in why
and what for and glum inertia 
for the striving third world 
children who’ll never know
what childhood means.

Somewhere
in the privileged first world
a sentimental Romeo plays the piano.
His only problem –
how to make inroads
with the citrus-perfumed
temptation waltzing his way. 

He wonders if
she’ll leave with him 
at midnight.

He is crestfallen
when she leaves
with his friend.

Ah well.  
First world problems.

_{^{© N Nazir 2022}}

Written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Prompt: Viable, 82 words, Shay’s Word Garden, where we are given inspiration with singer/songwriter Tom Waits (words used: sentimental, Romeo, piano, temptation, waltzing, midnight, crestfallen), The Sunday Muse (images as shown), Poets and Storytellers United theme: war and peace, and Ragtag Daily Prompt: Citrus

Sometimes You Choose Deliberate Optimism

_{^{Lisa Fonssagrives standing on the Eiffel Tower, taken by Erwin Blumenfeld}}

A gesture.  Goes on stretching and stretching.  The brick has a charm in the world of ideas.  Careening into the future.  The jazz of lip syncing during the early stages.  Of romantic design.  Is it raining, ohhhh.  Listen, let’s rendezvous.  Clouds will come and go, days will ebb and flow.  Yes, dogs may dream in black and white.  But technicolour abounds everywhere.  Get over it with your minimalism.  Sometimes, there is maximalism.  Open your viewfinder.  Use a wide-angle lens.  The landscape is a curve veering into the abyss.  Minutiae collects together to form a larva of brilliant existence.  I pop bubbles in your face with sarcasm.  Hey!  Check out this effing view!  It doesn’t take a brainiac to know what hardcore beauty looks like.  It is.  Ek stasis.  

_{^{© N Nazir 2022}}

Written for Shay’s Word Garden where we are given inspiration with Creem magazine (words used: brainiac, brick, charm, hardcore, jazz, romantic, stages, veering), The Sunday Muse (image as shown), Poets and Storytellers United (slightly off-prompt), Ragtag Daily Prompt: Design

Is that the Queen’s English?

^{_{© Cornell Capa 1972}}

Your move. King? No, queen. Wait – there is no queen. Knight, it is. What were you saying? Something about ecstasy? No, I was talking about the expectation of absurdity. Oh? Like when society expects one thing but your soul demands another. It’s the nonsense of things being various. Like gingerbread in summer? Or ice cream in winter? You could say that. What I mean is, no one writes letters any more. The soul wants letters. Instead we are saturated with the toxic thoughts of the masses on platforms that suck out our souls. Mmmmmm, interesting. I suppose people have an overwhelming need to share. Your move. I need a moment…. there. Do you think we ever really know who we are? And that’s why we talk? In order to discover? I think we’re always on the verge of becoming. Yes, but do we ever? Perhaps not. Not if we’re still here. I’m glad to be here. Even though everything seems broken. I know what you mean. There is still beauty in the world. There will always be beauty. The luminous beauty of maths, for instance. Or the ping of understanding between hearts when they open. Yes. A good joke is also beauty. Wouldn’t you say? It depends on the filter of your lens that day. Mmmmmm. Anyway, it’s your move…

_{^{© N Nazir 2022}}

_{^{© Cornell Capa}}

Written for The Sunday Muse (images as shown), Shay’s Word Garden, where we are given inspiration with the poetry of Amy Lowell, Poets and Storytellers United, and Ragtag Daily Prompt: Luminous

Statuesque in Liberty

I changed again in the night
a flight to a mayan dreamscape
not mine, but 
a spidery vortex of others.

I flitted this way and that
as is my wont,
tweaked a scene here
pulled a string there
for dream lords are not so different
from time lords.

We all but stop the nightmares creeping in
though of course
there’s always a realm for boogeymen.

Finally
I enter a fantasy
at the other end of Yonderland
and watch as an opera of rainsong
falls in thundering symphony 
from the petticoats 
of the newly escaped 
Eurydice.

_{^{© N Nazir 2022}}

Written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing prompt: Opera, 95 words, The Sunday Muse (image as shown), Poets and Storytellers United (Prompt: to write from the point of view of a TV character), and Ragtag Daily Prompt: Flight

Beyond Limbo (An Aerial Poem)

^{_{Erasure Poem #34, watercolour & gel pen on paper, © N Nazir 2021 (Sourced from Sum: Tales of the Afterlife by David Eagleman)}}

The fauna of angels,
tinkling.
The sky like paper
in disarray.

God is crazy
He is on a siesta.
He has gone awol.

Perhaps
He’s in the jungle,
as smoke
like a footprint in air.

*

It’s incredible
how we ascend
in the end.

We pivot
on a new universe,
one that wagers
our existence.

© N Nazir 2022

*shared also for yesterday’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: labyrinth

*RIP Taylor Hawkins ❤