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9/21/2017

Walter Mitty

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By Ahmed Latif

As an avid reader of The New Yorker it is no wonder that I am also a fan of James Thurber.  His wit is always relevant regardless of the era.  He writes to satirize human nature.  His 1939 short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, is a thesis on the imagination and the functional instigation of boredom brought on by the modern urban lifestyle.  The mundane life of the titular Walter Mitty is emancipated by the very human realm of the daydream.  Mitty is aloof and silent; but he is also driven mad by the crushing blandness of his life.  He finds salvation through imagining his destruction in incredible adventures.  These wild adventures do not add spice to his stubborn life, but they are the in fact the only spice of his life. 

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9/8/2017

Cartwright Everything

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By Ahmed Latif

It was a sunny day but there was nothing beautiful about it.  Harold called me out to Cartwright Station just on the edge of the city, in the part of the suburbs we’re supposed to call quaint.  I arrived and found this heaping mess of misery thrown into my lap; thrown by Miss Fortune herself, what a dame!  

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7/19/2017

Hello Doctor or Should I Say Dentist

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By Ahmed Latif

1:03 am Sacramento, California

The emergency personal line for dentist Dr. Brudenbaker rings in his home.

“Um, hello?”

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7/16/2017

Cement

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By Ahmed Latif

​Cement, the 1925 Russian novel by Soviet writer Fyodor Gladkov is a powerful amalgamation of raw emotion and disconsolate intelligence.  It brings to light the human cost of an ideological revolution.  The story tells of a young Red Army soldier returning to his home following the Bolshevik revolution against the Tsar’s White Army loyalists.  Gleb finds that life has changed in every way and not necessarily for the better.  He must deal with his new job at a cement factory, his post-traumatic stress disorder, a crumbling social order, and the changes the revolution brought to his relationships with his wife, daughter, and friends.  

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6/2/2017

Der Process

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By Ahmed Latif

​During tough times, readers and audiences often seek an escape from the banality of life. The turn of the twentieth century was unequivocally a disconcerting time of transition for Europe. It is in this context that Franz Kafka captured the complex surrealism and absurd loneliness of urban life. His writing functioned as a condemnation and a vindication of an era that provided no simplistic answers to pressing social questions. Anarchist overtones, Marxist critiques, and deliberate existentialism; all of it dark and none of it clear-cut.

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2/1/2017

The Dream Library

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By Ahmed Latif

In the shadow of the Jerusalem Tulip,
Every melody is broken and inadequate.
Every scar is a triumph over a nightmare.
And every dream is given a proper burial.
We stumble into the library to die on the shelves.

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2/1/2017

A Foot In The Trap

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By Ahmed Latif

The people, condemned before the revolution commenced,
Perched on their balconies watched the city burn all around them.
Blood drips from the altar and floods the sinfully silent streets.

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1/22/2017

Lilacs on the Mausoleum Floor

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By Ahmed Latif

A funeral attended by sculptors, composers, and the soulless.
The choir have no notes and no hymns to read.
The tenor grows meek when the aria begins to bleed.
A sarcophagus etched into the contours of my face with tears.

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1/19/2017

Seeds of Utopia

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By Ahmed Latif

As playful as the morning, witty and wistful,
I saw your ghost twirling in the day moon’s light.
I lazily conjured a cozy little dream for us two.
I plucked my harp to songs of Leningrad in the spring.
Your ghost and my spirit danced on the terrace.
We spiralled and spun
Like concentric circles drunk on straight lines.
There is nothing to regret,
The pain will leave such beautiful scars.

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9/6/2016

Patient Titans

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By Ahmed Latif

A lugubrious aria
Held in glowing chains.
Days drum like tachycardia,
Imprisoned by growing pains.

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2/28/2016

Why I Hate the Word Facetious

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By Ahmed Latif

In the English language there are words like ‘facetious’; they are an ugly package in an ugly wrapping.  Why is ‘facetious’ ugly you ask?  Well, if you must know, this is why …

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2/4/2016

If This Is Xanadu

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By Ahmed Latif

This is commissioned by and dedicated to Ibrahim & Aisha. It was read at their wedding ceremony.

In 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan, a poem he got in a dream. The dream was about a paradise, a heaven on earth called Xanadu.  The poem was published in 1816.

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10/6/2014

My Weekend War

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By Ahmed Latif

First read the books of Bushido in ascending order.
Toques in the summer taunt the delirious weatherman.
Lobster dinner and a novel, approach freedom at record speed.
Sharks have an impeccable sense of self-loathing.
Not a game, it’s the manifestation of practice.

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9/6/2014

Seven-Arm Octopus Love

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By Ahmed Latif

The Seven-Arm Octopus or Haliphron atlanticus is one of the world’s largest species of octopus.  This mysterious giant of the deep possesses a hidden eighth arm.  It only becomes visible when the octopus finds a suitable mate.  The eighth arm uncoils from under the right eye and reaches out for the mate…

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6/2/2014

Freelance Streets

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By Ahmed Latif

A residual of a memory clings like sunrise on a dirty street.
If you could hear the horns howl, you wouldn’t mind it.
But it’s all too dangerous, colouring outside the lines we never drew.
Clichés and inevitable turns of the screw mock everything haphazardly.
I hate sprained ankles because of their lack of coherence.
Trying to function as an urban soul is a challenge to linguistic metrics.

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5/30/2014

Counter Theory

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By Ahmed Latif

Not a history lesson but a street corner rebellion.
Alternate between the current and the untold.
To be immersed in truth, first we mirror malice.
Expose the underbelly of a thought to make it complete.
Hunt for anarchy but dream of the Republic.

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4/5/2014

Club Rules

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By Ahmed Latif

A flannel shirt revolution politely asks the sun to shine.
The moon drowns in the ocean of consensus,
So this discord is a tsunami of independence.
Directionless antagonism is still meaningful.

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