Gülistan

This is an autobiographical and fictional collection of poems and narratives exploring my distinctly Indian perspective, welcoming readers to a world of raw beauty, true emotion, and sometimes painful reality.

Life is an individual journey—taken collectively, so I fantasize . . . a lot!

The baring of these personal truths, the sharing of our encounters and the nature of our viewpoint, however, is what creates a sense of community and shared experience that fulfills us in ways we cannot replicate alone. It is the paradox of being human: our aloneness and togetherness at once integral to whom we are. For me, baring my soul to the world, releasing these intensely personal thoughts and feelings, is a freeing experience. Within these pages are solace and inspiration, happiness and sorrow, and a warm feeling of connection and shared understanding. Free verse poetry and flash fiction, it relies on a stream of consciousness and (hopefully) ethereal connection cascading into awareness rather than preconceived rhythm and rhyme. I have tried to artfully craft poetry and prose of myself and my homeland and have tried to bring smiles with the conversations of grandchildren on these pages.

I am hoping that my words portray my emotions with resonance and beauty and with fearless honesty.

Here are a couple of my poems to tease your fantasy with.

Apoptosis

My grandmother always said
Winning is not the end all and be all~
By winning, we sanctioned avarice.
We need to learn and be wise
Wisdom lasts and lasts.
But we gain wisdom by losing
And by yielding, we become the sky!
But what of dying?
The deaths I have known
Of people known and unknown
Of loves that were here and gone
All in split seconds.
And soon anything means everything
What is left of dying?
A heartache?
A wail that tears the sky?
A sob that echoes through the night?
The shell of a body loved and lost?
Each cell shriveled and disintegrated?
Such games a human gets to play
All in the name of fate!

(Apoptosis is defined in medical lingo as “death of cells.”)

Cabin Fever

I turn to poetry in times of sadness, darkness, loneliness, and many other times. It is delusional really to be so into my moods that I have to write poetry. Most of my poems are love poems. They don’t rhyme, there is no name for them, and I do not follow any rules. I just write whatever comes to mind. Telling me to write a certain type of poetry literally chokes me.

If you had my eyes
you would see this river
going south, feeling the sky at its horizon
and holding the wind on its breast
If you had my eyes
you would see it hiding behind the little hills
you would see the flowers lower their gaze
along the bends of our dreamlands
If you had my ears
you would hear the hush of dawn
the turtle doves on the windowsill
the cicadas buzzing and the sound of water
lapping on the riverbank
If you had my heart
you would come to me
breathe my breath
and know the fragrance of jasmine in my hair
If you had my heart
you would not leave me alone here
but take me outside and sing our songs
and talk to me about our love
And if you had my heart
you would let your thoughts surrender
to the rush of the river, the road, a piece of sky
anything~
to get me out of here, my love!

—Zakiah Sayeed