By Ahmed Latif

If you, my dear, are to know anything then know the curvature of your ribs.
I don’t know what I know.  I am uncomfortably comfortable with this unknown, but not the other unknowns I do not know.

By Ahmed Latif

Blue like the azure and profoundly deep seas of antiquity.
Red like the vermilion and earthy caves where the walls are decorated with the myths of our mad forefathers and our disappointed foremothers.
Such a beating it was, blue and red, not black and blue as you would normally bruise.
There was a bleeding poeticism to this violence, it appalled me.  But it appealed to my maniacal sense of rhythm.

By Ahmed Latif

The potential stands idle in amber.
The possibility conceals the palimpsest.
A lost trail whispers from amongst the leaves.
A faded dream lines the heavens with tears.
All that we had was a prelude to silence.

By Ahmed Latif

She is impoverished by hope and hounded by frustration.
We meet in tacit dreams and infest an overactive imagination.
She is sealed in an elegant prison in the countryside.
So in the sight of anything new, we stand petrified.

By Ahmed Latif

A seething solace I can’t afford.
Window-shopping for misfortunes.
A flightless sparrow feels slighted.
The sparrow spits on my predicament.

By Ahmed Latif

Time runs along the riverbanks
Barefoot as an escaping slave.
Time dances to the tunes of the river

By Ahmed Latif

She is fluent in dialects of ugly written in beautiful ink.
A touch of sand-kissed skin and greasy fried food lips.
The spirit of timelessness washed up on this shore, but it didn’t have time to stay.
We are robbed before the arrival of riches.  Shipping not included.
Neon bags of money in nooses hanging from plastic palm trees.
All these shrill thrills but no escapades tonight.

By Ahmed Latif

A pigeon perched on my concrete windowsill.
It’s been there since the days of the Pharaohs, I think.
     Or more like two long Orwellian hours of a heavy late afternoon.
     In the dying summer of a city stuck on loop.
     Hours that coax us out of our skin and into something a little lighter.

By Ahmed Latif

Sinister torrents of sorrowful tunes trickled onto the streets.
The string section strung along with the accompanist’s silent doubt.
Flutes were confiscated before they had performed a note.
The orchestra played this flood into a frenzy.

By Ahmed Latif

A Maltese tiger cub smiles playfully at the moon.
Her world transformed by a simple whistled tune.
This queen bee possesses the heavy scars of empathy.
Trapped in the wrong time, searching for an embassy.

By Ahmed Latif

Fools and finicky frolickers filibuster.
We rob ourselves of aching love stories.
An exile is only as sweet as the return;
Broken hearts are resurrected by the imminent pounding
Of those ostentatious war drums.

By Ahmed Latif

Well-positioned self-deception;
Such traps I carefully planted in my path.
Never to escape from this prison I built.
The fear, it swells and professes
That devising your own devices
Froths your own delicious demises.

By Ahmed Latif

Justice dissipates into dusty skies.
Authorities annunciate in approved tones
And paint in the delectable colours of apathy.
Neglect instigates the ubiquitous atrophy.

​By Ahmed Latif

Symbolically scourging simplicity suppresses a sprightly sincerity.
A capricious dance ends with the devouring of souls.
Complementary contemplation poised on the verge of poison.
Haunting regrets slip into the swaying ocean.

By Ahmed Latif

Distilled fog chokes the mountaintop.
Icy air soothes frosted limbs; a permeating embrace.
Still waters commemorate this vibrant solitude.
Buried under the roof of the world.

By Ahmed Latif

The apposition of grace and tragedy in yet another era.
An apothecary pushing his antidotes.
He is determined to undermine death
Using parchments burdened with a belligerent truth.

​By Ahmed Latif

Mindful of the palpable discord seen in blue skies,
The clouds invade with their granite light.
A grotesque beauty witnessed by playful eyes
Flutters upwards in its unfettered flight.

​By Ahmed Latif

A fluttering smoke dances coquettishly.
Motes, in absence of light, float foolishly.
The smell of dawn thickens the darkness.
Timorous thoughts tantalize the tigress.
Epics and laments enliven the tale.

By Ahmed Latif

From a circle to a sphere.
From inadequate to incomplete.
From freedom to fear.
Now that my love is obsolete.

By Ahmed Latif

Self-portrait of a sleeping man.
Flowers plucked from the sand.
An answer once uttered in a dream.