Three Poems

I
In the silence of the heart
Entered the assassin
And murdered the flower
That bloomed unseen.
He tore it petal by petal 
And his hand slowly ran
with cool liquid fragrance.
Flowers die like lovers
Pining and desiring,
Unrequited and burning,
Tombs of lingering sweetness.

II
Silent twilight under the skull.
Crepuscular crickets chirp
And dusk-singing cicadas drone,
Myriad rasping knives slice,
Slicing up a big nut bone-white.
The ceaseless creatures hum
Like monks in fierce meditation.
Lucent neurons fly off the brain 
Like ricocheting electrons,
Flustering thoughts darkly stalk
As shades would dim corridors, 
Half-formed, glimmering, melting, 
Nascent, evanescent
Under the skull in silent, shrill twilight.

III
Waiting keeps a different time.
Its clock isn't made in town 
Nor has the maker an address 
But he'd sure deliver an empty dial face 
When you sorely seek to fill in 
The boundless space
You brood on and on endlessly
Till you wake up to your fond illusion.
Waiting keeps a different time 
On weird phantom calibration:
Its seconds ride the hour hand
Its hours travel a desolate land
And its maker is a juggler of sand
And the hourglass a miracle in his hand
where the grains trickle without an end.

Masud Mahmood is a Professor of English, Chittagong University.