Golden Brown

Last year I remember clearly the moment that my artistic journey hit a new stage. 

I wrote the poem 7 Bar Loop. I wrote this while attending a multi week workshop with Rachel Long. 

Rachel Long is an incredible poet and arguably the best poetry teacher I’ve ever had the privilege of studying under. She simply got me to think about poetry, creativity and my own writing differently. 

She single handedly got me to expand my creative, artistic and expressive vocabulary.

During the class she repeatedly came back to Terrence Hayes, an American poet who wrote a new book packed with Sonnets. His Sonnets do not adhere to the same structure as Shakespeares. There are NO rhymes.

But they adhere to one simple rule.

They’re 14 lines.

The other week I attended a poetry workshop run by Hannah Gordon of Word Down. I was asked to write a Terrence Hayes style sonnet. 14 lines, no rhyming. 

Here’s a link to the Terrence Hayes sonnet that inspired my poem….it’s from his collection “American Sonnet for My Past”.

Seven of the Ten Things

I’ll be doing more sonnets……however, this is my first:

Sonnet #一 (Golden Brown)

Golden brown. The Stranglers.
Omar. Married to tomato and
onion stew. Leisurely chopping
of onions releases a baptism
of grief. Wash my eyes and
wash my face. Baptism followed by
baptism. Apt. I forgot to bathe.
Dopamine dips do that daily.
The key is to accept, but not
succumb. Keep working quietly.
Onions learn to share space
with softening tomatoes. Alchemy
creates aromas. I create 
joy disguised as food.

Zaynub

So, I’m currently summoning up the energy to go through heaps of notes and drafts and ideas for drafts for the blog. There’s a lot I want to say, communicate and share. But this year’s events have thrown me massively off balance.

While I do that, to keep the flame burning, I’ve been performing and reading poetry on Zoom calls.

As I’ve run out of newer material that I wrote this year, I’ve gone through and found work from last year that I’m really proud of. Work that I hope to publish in my debut collection of poetry.

Until then I put things out on the blog as I’m a big believer in sharing creative work instead of hoarding it.

This poem is about and dedicated to my daughter Zaynub, someone who has and will continue to feature in my writing, my work, and my blog.

Here’s the poem:

Zaynub

Catalysed by opposable thumbs
Hips move
Hope is a groove
The future makes movement manifest in the present
This present was almost miscarried on the day of my birth
I can think of no greater tragedy.

Haroon (proud dad)

Written in Morden, South London

Love Is a Balm

I’ve been part of a poetry reading group set up by a friend of mine I used to work for last year. It’s been great fun sharing a lot of my newest writing with them, and being exposed to poetry in Hindi and Urdu too.

We get to choose between reading our own work and reading poems by other writers. I ran out of poems I’ve written this year and was going to dig out work by other poets…but glimpsing through an old folder I’ve found forgotten poems.

Like so much of my work it documents the changes I’ve been going through in the past year.

I’m working on my first collection of poetry that I want to self publish. I hope to include this poem.

Love Is a Balm

Love is a balm
Apply gently
to surfaces corroded by a lifetime of neglect
then to those who see you and accept you
Nuclear winter is imminent
We are each other’s garments
Ready to endure
A better world awaits us




Tomorrow

I had 24 hours left to write something that I could submit to Creative Futures’, a writing competition for poets and prose writers.

I ended up writing this poem and realising that it went way over the word limit that Creative Futures’ set.

I decided against editing the poem down to meet their requirements. I love this poem and the final stanza was unplanned, it is an ode to my close friend, big bro, and artistic inspiration, Ty. I’ve bolded all the song titles and italicised all his song lyrics I’ve weaved into the stanza.

Since Ty’s death, I’ve become aware of Soliheen, an early collaborator of Ty’s and he said something fitting about Ty and his passing:

“Ty had an incredible legacy and it’s on us to amplify his legacy.”

The weight of that subconsciously seeped into the final stanza and tied in with the theme of the poem “Tomorrow”. As I said in my last blog post “A New Perspective“, I am looking forward a lot more these days. The past is important, I continue to process it and heal from it, but I am now working in the present to build an incredible future. Enter my latest poem:

Tomorrow

Peer through a wormhole
Blink of an eye
Interstellar
Arrival
Formatted scripts only give a glimpse
Sci-fi like possibilities 
Lifetime neglect
Love left lacking
Heart yearns for a tomorrow drenched in love and acceptance

Gaslit past
Self-esteem burns at 451 Fahrenheit
Made in 1981
Swaddled in kerosene-soaked rags

Flash forward
Consent is a foreign concept
Trust betrayed
Innocence sullied
Mixologist blends neurodiversity 
Add a dash of lime
Ice optional
Blend
Deadly cocktail
Bitter after taste


Flashback
Failed cricket test

Flash forward
Cricket is communion
A people forever held back
Given respite through victory at Lords
Love gestates at home
Nervously I plan my future

Flash further forward
Pull pins from grenades
Walk away
A revolutionary act of self-love
More will follow

Flashback
A love of 35mm, 2-inch reels, and the word
Suppressed 
Self-love lacking
Decade long detour
Love rediscovered
No mean feat
Bread line diets can leave your spirit gaunt like

Present time
Love, ambition, hope
Quarantined but not secluded
Nurtured
Nursing the loss of an Awkward boy who told me to look Upwards
Studying his legacy
I edge Closer to a brighter tomorrow
Peering into the wormhole
I can see it
My stories travel far and wide
New youths
Enthralled by The Tale of a godfather now departed
The cycle of intergenerational trauma finally broken
A new cycle begins
My heart finally sings



A New Perspective

I really need to start writing more again. Well….I want to write more. “I need to…” is such a strong and absolute statement.

I know I’m starting to repeat myself, but I’m still grieving, it’s thrown my physical health off of balance. I’m also trying to figure out ways to bring money in as copywriting is taking time to yield results. I’m dealing with a lot and it’s getting in the way of my writing.

But when I write, when I bother to turn up and do the work, magic happens.

My friend and brother Alain “Fusion” Chapman runs an event called BMT (Black Man’s Time) which now runs weekly on Instagram as an Instagram Live show at 7 pm UK time every Friday evening. They run a free-write session and I decided to take part in one recently. This is what I came up with.

Affirmations

I’ve let go of resentment
I’m grateful for new beginnings
I’m grateful for the love I receive daily

I choose to craft a positive narrative about my future

I am ready to Create:
art
hope
happiness
love

I deserve:
acceptance
compassion

I deserve to be seen

I am learning to be generous and kind to
myself and others

Access to the muse, to the God within is
my divine right and I am open to receiving it now

Haroon – 29th May 2020

I didn’t know I had this poem in me. I was lucky enough to read it on the BMT livestream and Fusion made a point about how this represented a turning point in the years he’s known me. The optimism and hope is palpable.

I’m done being angry. The things that happened to me, abuse, trauma. None of it is my fault. None of it. But how I proceed from here on in, it is MY responsibility. These past 3 years I’ve been putting in the reps, I’ve got broader shoulders. I can carry this responsibility. I’m sure of it.

Anger and resentment are behind me. Fusion, someone I’ve been a fan of for almost 20 years loved my poem, it made him smile. This is what success looks like.

What Weapon Will YOU Choose?

I never turn up to battle empty handed…………

My Lover Is…

I’m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone with writing and was challenged in a workshop by this wicked poet, Desree to use an “extended metaphor” in a poem. My understanding of an “extended metaphor’ is taking one metaphor, and running with it for the rest of the poem.

You’ll see the metaphor I used in the first line, and I decided to use this metaphor as a metaphor love, a lover to be precise. Love and lovers are a theme that I really enjoy exploring and will continue to write about.

I’m stepping into a period in my life where I’m looking to explore love and sex unapologetically and free from the shame my upbringing associated them with. The combination of repression, coloured by religion, and culture, coupled with repeated sexual abuse during my teenage years at the hands of an older man definitely created dysfunction. It led to compromised decisions around marriage and what was and wasn’t an acceptable level of intimacy.

Shit, I spent almost all of my decade long marriage NOT sharing a bed with my wife and thought that was normal.

Am now working on getting past that and looking to a future filled with love and intimacy and

My Lover Is…..

My lover is like a warm beanbag
Taking me in
Accepting me, with all my faults
Adapting to my contours
Never judging 
She is inviting
Beckoning me to let her wrap around me
Her embrace like that of my favourite beanbag
Comfortable
Comforting
Soft foam like flesh
A balm for the cruelties, hurt and misunderstanding of the outside world
Sometimes I wrap myself around her
We adapt to each other
Each day is closed out pressed against each other’s naked flesh

Cosmic Dust

Recently my close friend, big brother, and creative mentor Ty passed away due to the Covid19.

I do not know how to do justice to his memory or even begin to convey the level of heartache I am feeling at his passing. I will be trying to process my grief through writing and some of that may or may not end up on this blog.

Until then I wanted to share this poem. I wrote it back in 2017. Ty had been criminally slept on during his career. I refuse to shy away from this fact especially right now where all of a sudden I’m seeing glowing tributes in mainstream media outlets that ignored him during his lifetime.

He had decided to take matters into his own hands and had pulled out all the stops to do a gig marking the 19th anniversary of the release of his debut album “Awkward” that was released on Big Dada. He had decided to perform the entire album, start to finish with a live band.

Anyone who’s followed Ty’s career over the years knows that he excelled at live performance, particularly when he brought live musicians into the proceedings.

I and so many of Ty’s die-hard fans could not wait for this gig. The gig was on May 31st 2017 and I wrote this poem in anticipation of the gig as I had been reflecting on his music and his friendship.

The first two lines of my poem were inspired by the following lines from Ty’s song “Closer” from his 3rd album “Closer“, the music video for which I’ve embedded below.

“Nobody ever said it was easy
and if they did they’re trying to tease me
I struggle with my demons discreetly
standing on my granddaddy’s shoulder
Trying to see more than I’m supposed ta
Can I get closer?”


The first two lines in my poem are a reference to the 3rd line of the excerpt from his song “Closer” above.

That 3rd line always pained me as it was Ty alluding to something that many of us experience and feel, but only he was brave enough to voice it on wax.

Here is the poem in its entirety

Cosmic Dust

My brother struggles with his demons discreetly
While I struggle with that
The flip side to wearing your heart on your shirt sleeve is you can’t be discreet while you wait for the wheel to turn
It’s jammed right now
And no matter how discreet I try to be
Unpacked emotions spill over in every interaction

I’m embarrassed
36 years on
I still can’t walk without crutches

My mother wanted me to be my father’s strength
I failed miserably at that

It’s all inverse
This prolonged adolescence
I need to snap out of it

Peter Pan syndrome

I was told I wanted to be a man in my 20s
And now a boy in my 30s

I’m a child in fact
I wish I’d inked Corinthians
Don’t care how many mocking & scornful glances it draws
It’s the one wish that has remained constant
It’s my totem now
Reminding me if I’m in that dream-like state the world strong arms us into 
Or if I’m truly awake

When I’m wake
I take long walks 
Powered by the voice of a mortal who was fashioned from the most magical clay & cosmic dust
I’ve shed tears while in the presence of people sharing their light
This person
He made me weep
Uncontrollably 
You’d think my vision was obscured through all the tears washing over my corneas
You’re wrong. 
Now I see clearly 

5th May – 2017

Trafalgar Square, London, UK

Ty – 1972 – 2020

RIP = Return if Possible

failing that

RIEP = Rest in Eternal Power

Loudspeaker

More poetry.

I wrote this one with my loudspeakers in mind. I’ve had them for 25 years, they’ve traveled with me across 2 continents and over 12 homes in that time.

Loudspeaker

I sit calmly
Ready to receive signals
Analogue
Digital
I don’t discriminate
Frame carved from wood
Interior carefully calibrated electronics
Great engineering never goes out of fashion
Good vibrations run through cables
Causing movement to my cones
Heart song bring lovers in the living room close together 
Cheek to cheek
I am the soundtrack to:
Birthdays
Bar mitzvahs 
Arguments
Make up sex
Break up sex
I’ve lived through it all:
Brit-pop
Hip hop
Trip-hop
Grime
Jazz 
Funk
Great engineering never goes out of fashion
I bend space and time
Connecting time zones, continents and bygone eras
I don’t discriminate

Haroon

As promised, more poetry, this piece is called Haroon and is about my name.

Haroon

Origin story
No spider bites
Dropped in Luton, via Pakistan
East end matriarch named me
Right-hand man of a tongue-tied prophet
Religious narratives are the roots to the branch of this tree
Musa and Haroon
Myth or reality
Don’t know
Don’t care
I’ll turn myth into reality
Took damn near four decades to roll off of my side and learn my true role
Speak up 
Speak loud
Never bear false witness
Here I am
Stuck indoors
Crisis turned opportunity
Clarity points to purpose
What is in a name?
EVERTYHING