Rizwan Akhtar
(2016, Islamabad)The end of art is peace. Seamus Heaney
The protest seeps in walls and holesof the city —
police shower bullets bodies bend and scamper
bricked-soul, mortar-heart a skeleton of guns hover
over intruders barbing tongues to no end, behind cordoned pickets
they sway under Dionysian spellthe country is run by make-shift oracles —
out there in the middle of human headsyou are a Teiresias dithering in divination
though not meant to take sides and yetyour charming spin on words
of poems firing discontentbellistic in intention and diction
an army of latent expressions commanding drastic ends
in squirmed soliloquies and borrowed conclusions
a parliament of language snoressquint-eyed, cocked-hands your bored readers scatter others drowse over interpretations.