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

It was a soft summer afternoon, the one where the wind feels like a familiar kiss as you do the dishes after a big family feast held outside in the garden.  That is to say, in a very long winded way, it was an hour to sunset and the temperature was 19 (Celsius of course because I am not a neanderthal) and there was a light breeze.  It was the kind of afternoon that I imagine the corrupted youth of Athens longed for.  The kind where they lounged around and spoke of all the things they saw and never understood.  And the only person that told them the truth was Socrates.  

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.

By Ahmed Latif

In the blind eyes of Justice
Fog conceals tears of black onyx.
Carved from a mountain,
Varnished with a human fragility,
A statuette stands as a testament 
To the horrors we commit against ourselves.

By Ahmed Latif

Under whichever sky I lie,
Under wherever dirt I sleep,
I am forever marked
Not by the fangs of the wolf
But by the pain of the sheep.

By Ahmed Latif
​
A ballerina in a music box spins herself into a frenzy,
A pious, dervish-like frenzy.
Drain the light so the children could play.

By Ahmed Latif

Not a crafted image but much more flawed.
The scent of that endless guilt and those nameless dawns.
Toothless smiles surrounded by a convenient amnesia.
An unquenched curiosity and an unbridled enmity.
Home, an idea besieged by the sea.
Dreams of the sea always ended with me drowning.

By Ahmed Latif

The first time I read Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece I was on Winter Break in my second year at university.  I was familiar with the story - everyone is - and thought it would behove me to get some readings done for my English Literature Survey course while on Christmas Holiday.