KASHIF SHARMA-PATEL

Three Poems

an epic everyday

an epic everyday. everyday.
the pleat and suspender hold carriage
and shape – wine like coffee –
treacle – nigerian guinness – black is
beautiful – the word [_____] –
where – champagne cigars –
– mod genius –

[the interlocking speech of 
poet–myth–band]

writing processed. everyday.

My mind blank from words

Iranian looking lads – stuck in
valleys and sheltered from time –
lumber down and let
spirit flow

amber balm, or the road to paradise turns inward and out

listen to the fig,
sap milking, rash forming
sit for coffee – ჭაჭა –
onward to khushi
and oily recollections with a new one –

sit back in the decaying yard
recount loss and england
and work and pay.

lather and grind
advancing fabulation, advanced
instrumental [ ]case / by case
the ear worms, of the folk –

blackened thrash

O dear friends

sit in the drink, amber balm

working through, bird of paradise,
little swell, of life and image,
and carnival memories, rum punch daze
kashmiri edens

Khayal [Excerpt] 
VII

john moschos travails tales
on the galley / for the sermons
the niche headed east,
fires of mithras and guru nanak 
secreted in baku –
the geological striations where
shota seeks the dark creature
al-quds. the grid. bulldozer.
portal. josaphat.

oh a foolscap scarpering up the tigris,
a fricassee of incense and djinn-hood,
a syncretic licences, pediments and slated lawns
a khatchkar – iconostatic foreswornement 

Passing along. 

Continual blockages, along the street paved 
for passage and forgetting. Absent memories.
Breathing difficulties. Present meanings.

I dont want to think.

Escape to beirut. Like Faiz.
Escape from colonial statehood.
Escape from selfhood.
Escape from the word.
from speech.
toward the ineffable.

apse frieze architrave narthex phaeton

Kashif Sharma-Patel is a poet, writer and co-founding head editor of the87press. Their debut collection is furnish, entrap (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). Kashif runs a newsletter culture hawker  https://kashifsp.substack.com/