Letter from Eternity

Burning incense of longing drifts sleeplessly from the swaying pot, and I walk underneath these clouds of cold smoke, gazing into the distance. Racing eyes trace your reflection and focus defocus on your shimmering aura as I wait endlessly in this city of souls for your return to me somewhere in eternity.

Suspended particles of your image float, scattered through space, connected through invisible arteries, in a collage holding together pieces of your memories. Colors flow like tears falling from the earth into the pond of the night sky. Curtains of this heavenly aurora soak and glow with them as if a million gems were enflamed with the candlelight of a melting moon. An endless array of flower laden oil lamps hang in the air above the clear blue sea. Look at the stars descend and ignite them with a hazel flame tinted to the radiance of your eyes. My immortal pearl why do you sleep in mortality? The angels are calling you home. Borrow their wings and fly away. Let them guide you to me this eve.

I have been living in you eternally like a river always flowing into the ocean of your life. Even when you don’t see me or hear me I am with you, in you. The distance is not too far I promise; this dream is just a waking away. Just close your eyes and let go the arms of patience. Feel my embrace as you travel into timelessness. In the darkness of the night as our hearts romance hear my whisper comfort your solitude. Speak to me as you look at the moon and I’ll look at it from across the heavens and talk to you in riddles of the soul. Just listen to your heart in matters of the heart and you will understand all that I hold. And as it rains just open your arms when I carry clouds of our latent desires. I will fall with each drop of rain embracing your skin. I’ll run down your cheek, absorb into your heart, and breathe with your heartbeat. I’ll move through the strands of your hair whispering in your ear my insatiable thirst in all these years of silence and distance.

Eyes stilled on the horizon, feet beneath water, I await the promise endlessly and for the moment when eternity falls for you; for all these skies to turn back into doors of our time, mirrors of your reflection, shadows of your soul, and pictures of your smile. Just trust in me and rise, like an invisible droplet of rain, from the ocean. Wake up beside me. Let me walk by your soul and fight these storms. I will bear each tide of fears as they fall from moments of uncertainty.

Another step into the sea and I feel these waves curl through my toes and the trickling bubbles of time that paused as we walked through them. How I long for you, your touch, your feel as I cross this open sea into the distance. Will you meet me at the horizon where the sun of mortality melts into the sea of eternity? Or will you let me fade away like a dying matchstick that singes for eternity under the flame of longing?

As I swim the flute plays love and the violin cries desolation.


Junaid Afghani
23rd Sep 2007

I am your dream

Covered in a book untouched, unwritten
I am a tale that never lived
I’ve been in darkness and am I to blame
If light never touches me
And if I don’t exist to life
It shares my blindness equally
When you recall me you feel my nothingness
Inside your heart and I am nothing more
Than a tear that never fell
To discover its identity
Should I disappear if you forget me?
Like you I desire forever forevermore
Release me and pour me into existence
I want to carve my own reflection
To live the dream that you live, in innocence
Of not knowing that I am but a dream

Junaid Afghani

21^st Feb 2005

Plight of the Traveller

Captured by shadows I walk the hallway, cutting through the darkness that hides my treasure. She has waited long. The corridor watches me pass, each door calls me in. Incense of cold jasmine creeps along the walls incessantly, and I can feel her aura. As time walks on our dreams it leaves painful stains on our reality, and if I pause over this dense smoke I feel it sinking me, calling me. If my feet don’t walk with my heart they stop with it. I have returned. O’ where are you? The silence and loneliness haunts me. I sift through dust and web, to the hall. The moonlight dines at the table, alone, waiting eternally for someone. Plates set, seats placed, and the scattered petals of a dead rose that had given up living on her tears. I walk to the window and the moon veils its face to reveal those eastern eyes. Shadows cast and the curtains tremble at its beauty and faint with its cold breathe. Sometimes they reach out to me, like lost souls in search of a guide and sometimes they rest in fleeting vain as though weakened wings of a caged bird. In the courtyard sits that bench. Oh memories of beautiful nights; of heart and soul, and your divine touch, and our intricate dream in your subtle words.

Tonight stars scatter across the cold blue dusk and envy a comet glowing in the distance. Silvery clouds sleep in the lap of a velvety horizon while the moon sails in the vast navy blue sea. Our shadows still walk on sand but they leave no footprints. Our reflections still play with water but they don’t disturb a droplet. Can you hear the echoes? These waves are singing. A touch, a tender kiss, and they rise to the endless sky. Then turning into tears, they sparkle, fall, submerge, and die. Oh why do these waves of melancholy carry your sweet essence? Why can’t the moon smile every night? Why didn’t we wait for the sun to decide the road(s) we would take? Why do eyes make greater promises than words and fail to keep them? Why does loneliness speak when I don’t want it to? Why have I lost myself eternally in you?

I feel like a teardrop that leaves your eye not knowing if its birth is a result of a joyous reminiscence, or a broken piece of heart. That what travels and knows not its road or its value before death. Is my destiny, like yours, evanescence, my purpose a faint memory? I turn these empty pages, this empty book and for the night the pen refuses to compete with the candle. It breathes “If only” as it dies. The flame shivers and the candle sheds another tear.

After The Rainfall

Wandering innocence floats like a dream
Lo vapors crayoned into a misty cream
Night blankets o’er a lonely road
Twinkle, glimmer a rain drop’s shiny coat
Trees arch like an old king’s corridor
Twirling leaves sway and bow, in elegance
Two birds twitter acquaint on an old chimney
Sleeps a nigh cottage in quaint olive green
And I in lieu impersonate my shadow
Tracing his steps under the gliding lamps
All that is to be felt vapors into thin air
Time absorbs such ethereal fragrance
And stills, music droops from the willow tree
Touches the river ere it quivers the heavens

Junaid Afghani
3^rd Oct 2004

180º

Thou callously call the bat blind, for
It sees the sky below the sea
And man it is who hangs upside down
Like an insect, his eyes and he
Crawl along the mud roof
To comfort a complacent perception
Afraid of reflection, afraid to reflect
The uncertain endlessness beneath

Junaid Afghani

28^th Sep 2004

White Doves

White doves, driven by the waves, flying to the moon
Captivated by the moment, deny rest and reason
Not until they capsize head over heels
Do they discover that the moon has an orbit
Roses for the Luna - from the stranded shore
Heartbroken by the sky – are calmly kept for the crypt
Like lost souls they wander in the navy blue seas
Their silken moonlight robes drifting and heaving
Mellow harps plucking strings and echoes of times long lost
Crying in the distance, fading in the frost
Its just silence and eyes, dreams and despair
And reminiscence, from where it begins to where it dissolves

Junaid Afghani

31^st March 2004

A Dying Ember

Unlike the coin that tosses fate and hides its darker face
Every angle I toss and turn, shimmers then fades
Feelings dull reason and for a reason do feelings seethe
I give life to love and buy it back to breathe
O’ dancing inferno, I fear my lustful desire
Your crimson lips, golden hair, and eyes sapphire
Should I give you all that I have and cease to live
Or should I not and live to die
Maybe I should burn to dust and submit to my flaming love
And scatter my ashes to tell this world that I died to live again

Junaid Afghani

8^th Dec 2003