T E R R O R I S T

As the world begins to dehumanise me, here are some words on how I feel.

T… E… R… R… O… R… I… S… T…

They call me a terrorist, but I don’t know what it means,

So I sat down and made a checklist of me,

The ‘E’ in Terrorist stands for ethnic minority,

Arab? African? Asian? I’m Pakistani,

But no not just that,

You may have heard of a triple threat,

Well the 3 ‘R’s in terrorist you should never forget!

Religion, religion and RELIGION!

Faith is dangerous ammunition.

Don’t forget to dot the 'I',

And the ‘I’ in terrorist may be referring to me,

But I think it’s referring to the eye which decides what you see,

If it’s Sky to Fox News or even BBC,

They tell you what I am,

And you believe them over me.

‘T’ is for terror, because I am terrified of you,

You made me guilty before innocent and it’s hard to prove,

That the ‘O’ is for ordinary, because I am just like you!

Now the ‘S’ is for steal as you take my liberty away,

The 'S' is for sentence, passed in an unjust way.

So now I know why I am a terrorist and there is nothing I can do,
If only I was white with blonde hair and eyes of blue…

R.I.P all those who have died as a result of terrorist attacks and all those who have died over ignorance of what a terrorist is.

Typing Blind

I turn off the lights to type blind. My eyes manage to make out black squares lined up in front of me; the keys. I tap violently hoping that the cause of my melancholy may erupt out of my soul and onto the paper so I may face it head on. I wait and wait for it to burst out demanding a response to its harrowing questions. Still... nothing. I find myself in an abyss, where there are only these keys, this sheet of electronic paper and I. I being a combination of my eyes and my brain and possibly my heart, but not my feet nor my legs nor my torso nor my arms. They feel like mere hardware. I do feel a strong connection with the lump of flesh pulsing in the left side of my carcass like chest, a strain in my brain which may or may not signify some part of I and the lenses of my eyeballs from which I create this perspective. I become a robot in a not so well oiled machine, rusted away from the mundane. I am the tin man, but with added woe… tin woeman. I breathe in slightly deeper than normal and it is as though I lifted a brick with my lungs. They sizzle back into their programmed rhythm, like balloons with pin prick holes expelling the good so quickly out of them. I turn around and stare into the darkness expecting something or someone to stare back at me. I then remember, I am no longer in wonderland. As I hold fire on the keys, I stop my breath like a halting train whose driver has seen a hazard. I shut my eyes and feel a tingle across the lobes of my ears, and in that moment I become my eardrums. I listen to the deafening thunder of silence and as it becomes almost unbearable a distant car hums down the road greeting me in passing. I sigh… I am back where I started.