The Charcoal in the Dust

By Nadia Aftab

The writer provokes thought envisioned in the inspiration of inner meaning presented through a spiritual perspective. There is also a quality of sobriety in the somber realization of the ongoing battle between emotion within man, from the depths of sorrow to a sense of elevation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524595210

Nadia Aftab

The writer was born in Scotland and currently resides in her hometown of Glasgow.

Book preview

A CROWN IN TURN

Let not the crown be worn upon the mould of mud [1]

For sensibility slips inside the dirt [2]

A pride insignificant that eyes perceive not

A curtained intellect whose issues are manmade [3]

But the revenge of a humbleness gone

Is a pen inked to page

The cruelty of an innocence lost [4]

[1] Mould of mud; The human being.

[2] Rational of the human mind is overtaken by the overridden ego of the mind.

[3] Manmade; Outside of Spiritual text/ Religion.

[4] Referring to a humbleness lost, i.e. The innocence of a humble character compromised.

A FAVOUR WITHIN THE CELL

To awaken, to perceive

The chains that hang upon the soul

A moment of clarity when resistance stands upon fear

I smell the familiar of victory in the first call to declare

The anarchy of a fruitful rebellion where freedom lacks choice

But an affirmation to compel the beginning

Of a long awaited thrill of dignity

A MOMENT

The actress, the short black hair

The three part drama

The open crevice to cleanse

Where water trickles upon sun drenched stone walls

Basked in the Parisian air

The tale, the bottled white musk

In the mirror and I

Wherein time meant for me to blossom

But I told it to wait instead

A SKIN SHED

Travelling past trains of joy and fear, heart abated

The trembling of footsteps too near

Streaming through roads destiny carves

Where life stands, the taking-of gravitates above [1]

Fearless let it come

Weaving as though a whistling wind

Through woods of bark and leaf

The rooms emptied, the soil awaits

And death itself

As though a skin shed for anew

[1] Reference to death; {‘The taking of’ life}

A TIME PASSED BY

The sea, the noble marble floor

Whereupon angels collide, where reason sits aside

To thrust open the back doors of distinction

The thrones of the past upon each wave

Where empty chairs of gold remember the eyes

Of kings and queens to observe the grandeur pass by

The frozen plaque upon the wall of time [1]

A moment thin [2]

Now gone with the weight of a new age [3]

To remake in jest, the seriousness of the strictness [4]

Of a ritualistic monarchy [5]

[1] Reference to a time when Royalty was of a grand scale and much anticipated by the masses {unlike the present day and age}

[2] A moment no more.

[3] Taken over by another era {of the present unlike the past}

[4&5] Keeping up with rituals rather than upholding the relevance or importance of the monarchy.

AFTER THE BULLET SHOOTS

What occurs after the bullet for hearts to suspend

And tears suppress in frozen anxiousness

When reality conducts to aim

Yet death comes not to relieve

And words inside the wounds travel to arrive

In the taking of surety

Where vibrations inside echoes imprint upon conscience

To remind of what lies under the battle of words

Where words arrive like bullets

And emotions shot down to feel

ALONG THE ROADS

Vast is the earth with no direction told

Empty is the mind without belief solidified through thought

Blank is the page without meaning proclaimed

But the earth, the mind and the page pave paths into their space

To restore the constitution of meaning

Snatched from the hands of nothing

A victim is the earth of the violating wars of men upon its vacant lending

A victim is the mind of illness from thoughts thought out to hard

A victim is the page of lies imprinted from the heart of black

Yet freedom lingers on the outside of every prison

Even the wind succumbs to an entrapment of enclosure

Streets are paved upon the earth where pavements mark their lengths

Schools of thought emerge in the mind like a light above darkness

And the page a confirmation

Of either a Divine Criteria or freedom of choice

The war upon the earth, the blood soaked valleys of its soil

The war of the mind

An imminent conclusion between logic and