I’ve grappled with my relationship with my daughter. I love her unconditionally. However, the first 7 years of my relationship with her are a blur. Mental illness and an unhappy marriage with her mother made it impossible for me to be as mentally present as I wanted to be. Coupled with my own self-esteem issues …
*Trigger warning* *Contains references to suicide* This has been one of the most incredible weeks of my life. I opened my heart to someone special. I did it without wanting anything in return, other than the desire for a more honest friendship. I poemed the fucking shit™ out of people. I grew closer to my daughter. …
More poetry. I wrote this one with my loudspeakers in mind. I’ve had them for 25 years, they’ve traveled with me across 2 continents and over 12 homes in that time. Loudspeaker I sit calmlyReady to receive signalsAnalogueDigitalI don’t discriminateFrame carved from woodInterior carefully calibrated electronicsGreat engineering never goes out of fashionGood vibrations run through …
As promised, more poetry, this piece is called Haroon and is about my name. Haroon Origin storyNo spider bitesDropped in Luton, via PakistanEast end matriarch named meRight-hand man of a tongue-tied prophetReligious narratives are the roots to the branch of this treeMusa and HaroonMyth or realityDon’t knowDon’t careI’ll turn myth into realityTook damn near four …
This is the first poem I’m sharing on my blog. I will continue to share current drafts of poems I am working on. Feel free to leave feedback or if things were not clear in the comments. It’s all love. I welcome what you have to say. Here it is: 7 Bar Loop Loop the …
I cut ALL my hair off. Shaved it to be more precise. That must sound like the most ordinary thing you’ve read in a world saturated with Internet think pieces. Tell anyone who’s known me for a good chunk of my life that I just shaved my head and they’ll choke on their cornflakes. Let’s …
This morning I woke up and all I could think about was my recent visit to the supermarket. During my visit, you couldn’t find an egg or a loaf of bread. The shelves were so barren you’d be hard-pressed to find a bread crumb or a speck of lint on them. I was disappointed, but …
I’m having a fascinating journey as a writer right now. The past several weeks have been interesting. Some days I’ve lacked inspiration and other days I’ve been furiously jotting down ideas that I want to come back to. Recently, I was reading a book called “Feck Perfuction” by James Victore and an idea popped into …
Far too much of my adult life has been shaped by what others wanted for me. My parents wanted me to have an arranged marriage to a (British) Pakistani girl. I did that. It ended in divorce. Badly. My parents wanted me to get proper qualifications and do “respectable work”. So I got an undergraduate …
“Love is an act of sacrifice” This is from my favourite poem I’ve written over the past 3 years. It was inspired by the closing lecture given by Robert McKee when I attended his Story seminar in May 2019. This line is poetic. Beautiful. But now I have to put it into practice. I’m sitting …
