Poet: Muhammad Nasrullah Khan
Theme: In today's absurd world, we have become zombies.
Burdened by the empty day,
I walk the lonely streets.
Leaving my tiny apartment to feel alive,
I find a city of smoke and dust,
populated by zombie-like people.
I see a bookshop hidden among tall towers,
a dark secret huddled behind facades of truth.
An old man in the doorway sits and stares.
Books are his old companions.
A lyric of the past disrupts the fervor of the moment.
Though he looks up at people, his eyes grow cold,
the way one looks at an insect.
I continue,
a street of houses stacked like cardboard boxes,
lives plagued by mortgages.
For the love of the cosmopolitan world,
they have created mongrels.
I turn the corner.
A man and a woman stand on the other side, discussing matters:
"Can I keep your company?" she asks.
"How much?" He leans in.
"$30 an hour."
The man strokes her half-bared breast:
“Not bad.”
They link arms and disappear.
I pass nightclubs, takeaways, and bars.
Aromas of greasy food and alcohol overpower me.
A cough explodes from an alley.
I spin around to see.
A silhouette among dumpsters and piles of trash.
Her bed, a box without roof.
Why do I live among this waste?
I ask myself every day.
The sun dies behind the skyscrapers
and I rise from the dead
I've become a zombie of the night
like others stumbling mindlessly through life.
I must withdraw disdain.
We are all the same.
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