Morning with fade lights
Birds fly with hidden plights
Vehicles adorned with red lights
Announcing the curfew for Valleyites

Wake up with sweat face
The nightmare I thought was the real pain
Streets with forces and barriers
Screams for the justice carriers

Ghosts with high heels
Feels like a threaten wheel
Sounds of horror what they make
Nobody knows what will be the next take

Shops and hopes shut their face
Feels again to face the barren race
Weeping hearts and lifeless souls
Compels us...

I have long been born for now
Weary of space and hour
Knitting the shards of existence
Into silence
Around a turbulent self
Roaring and screeching
Ever over reaching
The strongest walls of mortal fancy.
Bind me then!
I refuse to hold
Myself, within me.

I am a claim
Of blood and fire
Fluttering upon ripping outcries
Rolling in the bloodshot angry eyes,
Bellowing poignant from a Himalayan height
Shattering the vacant corridors of might.

I was stripped in the baking sun,
Electrocuted on the...

Gather the pieces rendered asunder
The day morose city melted
Against a bruised gaze,
Glints of vision punctured
The only unaided eye
Battling rivers, in the days gone by.

Moments conspired, thus was it meant
Miles became dumb, skies bent
Bearing out a slashing silent scream
Horrendously levitating steam
Child of an undeciphered, drowsy dream.

Shall I ever talk
Of those rheumy eyes
Sunk into a decrepit sleeve
Abandoned in virtue, dissipated in sighs.

Shall I ever talk
Of wilting stapled...

I am a plastic caterpillar
Crawling from under the dawn
I welcome the gloomy moonlight 
like the guests of freedom
I am the one who breathes the night
with lungs of love
that shivers the light and the dream 
you can wake by

I summon the darkness to grow the night
Dear child you are known and sane
I am unknown, a strange name, an empty colour
I am a plastic caterpillar
I divide divinity
I give birth to flight of feet
I take the winds on the edge of my nails
I blow my secrets away
I...

From home, comes a dead body,
wrapped in late September breeze, overtly displaying
its left arm, dangling like a branch of dried apple tree,
away from sunlight and warmth,
eating from scare winds and all pervasive shades,
bearing no fruit and no seeds anymore;
from home comes a horde of living men; In trains and buses,
looking for a bed, living baffled under the hot piercing sun,
sleeping decomposed over the sweat dripping nights,
wallowing dusty with the turn of afternoon hours;


From home...

I liked your face, bronzed by time and burden
I liked the gleam in your eyes—of truth, of fight.

When you asked me: How does a free Kashmir look to you?
I was only looking at your sculptured hands

I wanted to hold your hand and tell you
about all my dreams--wordless, clockless.

When I saw your worn out chapals and your carefree feet,
as if still dangling in the ancient waters reflecting a promise

I wanted to ask, what do they mean to you—earth and freedom.
Your eyes when filled...

The poem is written by Ikram Ullah from Srinagar. He says he was influenced to poetry by the turbulent times in Kashmir during 2010 civil protests and most of his poems are based on Kashmir.

Who set my City ablaze

And ran, for us to chase.

In the midst of this haze

They've run away, for us to amaze.

Petrifying each of us under this glaze

Horrified, our expressions are agaze.

 

I looked around and saw hearts broken,

Some people bawling and some shaken,

Others flabbergasted as if...

It was a year ago that I left Valley after working with Kashmir Dispatch. Hailing from Mumbai, the Kashmir visit changed my perspective about the conflict and the people who have immensely suffered.. Mementos is an introspection, a reflection of the reality in Kashmir.

…of clipped wings
and clawing strings
that restrained
the movement of their dreams.

Of charred pieces
of wood from houses
burnt around
their drowsy screams.

Of flowers wilted in their kernels
having waited too long to...