All The Way

All the Way and Back (Not Quite)

All the way
Beauty
Children play
Mini traffic jams
Real big trawlers
All the way
Children coming back
from schools
railway lines
phone lines
electric poles
Train stations
In strange places
eucalyptus trees
dust
Zak CNG
Shahzade driving a yellow van
Green turret of Your mosque
Truck hotels
And nothing
Plains and glimpses
Of Kabul
Trees
Ahista/Slow
You’ve come to Al-Jameel
Old buildings
And a girls’ college
Underground passageways
All the way
Closed to heavy vehicles
Green colored gates
Bougainvillea
Chalk filled stream
Incomplete plazas
On GT road
Three women
Through the fields
In an imperfect file
Modern English Institute
On a wall of drying cow dung piles
Empty gorges flow sand
To the streams
Marble factories
And warnings
All the way
Mounds of refuse
Rows of unbaked bricks
Shaidu and some long
Forgotten memory?
Choosing tours
All the way
Pipelines go underground
River flow over ground
Right beside me
All the way
"Oh now feel it comin’ back again
Like a rollin’ thunder chasing the wind"
Roadside restaurants
Colorful boats in low tide
Ae kikriyan
ae talian o jhoota
Assan chhor ditta babul de weira
The Sind
And junctures where
Rivers meet
Khabi aona factory
People in the fields
Upright sacks of nothing
As sheep rest under trees
And silence, which is free
Read those reeds
Flowing through the mind
Plastic clad fingers
“I looked ahead I’m sure
I saw you there”
Bypasses and junctions
Motorways and roads
New places to see
And thoughts to think
All the way
Remember you
And how you drank
Your tears away
Flaws in perfection
Reeds, reeds, reeds
A sea of reeds
And what song do they sing?
Inherent unhappiness
The fast forward scenery
Swirls of cirrus clouds
And change of roads
These rites of passages
Never known
Earth sucking eucalyptus
Line the road
“When we dance
the angels will run and hide”
Middle Punjab plains
The setting sun behind
A last wall barring light
Dregs of the day wash away
We are going around
Trying to find a way
Out of the high stonewalls
Stains of salt
On ferrous soil
A glimpse of the moon
Through the window
Shifting landscapes
Receding trees
“I just wanna get closer than
close to you”
A white snake crawling through
The heart of Punjab
Patterns move on its skin
[Bye]
Haseenoun ka smuggler has passed us by
“It's quiet now, and what it brings is everything...
Comes calling back a brilliant night, I'm still awake
I looked ahead I'm sure I saw you there
You don't need me to tell you now, that nothing can compare
You might have laughed if I told you
You might have hidden a frown
You might have succeeded in changing me
I might have been turned around
It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York never easy
I saw the life fading out”
Dry riverbeds and emptiness of the sea
Low lying fog
Smell of the burning logs
Desert lights
Yellow reptilian line
Moving along the bus
Light reflects water
Reflects light
Hollow sound of silence
Coughing
Empty check in counters
Tired passengers
Porters walk around me
Crisscrossed ceiling designs
Empty rows of seats
And a blond colored in sadness
A man sitting sleeps
Kids on the internet
Too hot, too cold
Daughter and father duo
Hand in hand
Diaper change
Tough guy in a peach colored shirt
“Sanoun pata tere dil wich chor nee”
Interminable wait of those
Ready to depart
Ten exhausts in the ceiling
Light fixtures, ten of these too, amazing!
Plastic green backed pacifier
Our only man gone berserk
“Oh… don’t leave home”
If I cry…
Sunrise over the same sky
And I am smiling


19-20th November, 2004

Wrote this on the way to Thailand. From Peshawar to Lahore, all the way to Bangkok. (: