Author: Umme Salma

Sometimes
My heart rhymes
With the rain
With the pain
Which you pelt
Like stones
on the devil’s terrain

You
Who
I loved
With all emotions true

But
blue nights
Waved
the fights
Through narrow creeks
Words grated the guts
Sounds jarred the nuts
The house, a pile of bricks

Since then
Like a pecking pen
I cok cok cok
Pain puts my soul
In a tanduri chicken coal
Shock shock shock.

===x===

Umme Salma, 30/10/2025, Toowong

If everyone says so
Where will we go
If everyone says
The authority is right
Then who will fight
The unjust the injury
The red tape fury
Which clouds the power
Threatens to shower
Over the helpless?

Isn’t there a saying
That you must have
Among you
a people few
Who must
Call towards the just
Resist the bad
That grows like a fad
Among a people ?

Then why you are
Retreat not to suffer
the duty the burden
Clean up the thorns
From a human garden?
If you do so
You actually throw
The helpless the sufferer
Amid the ocean
They swim and sink
Sink and swim
And embrace the water
death- blue dream…

Pls don’t do so
Don’t say unflinchingly
The authority is right
Instead, with all the might
Resist, desist, and fight
The injustice the wrong
that like a multi-pronged
Noose throttles the poor
Tramples the innocent
buries the human
with the pandemonium song…

Umme Salma, Toowong, 14/10/2025

Will I fall asleep or stay awake?
Will I smile or weep?
Will I remember or forget?
Will I pet the pain or let it go?
Will I connect the dots or alienate them?
Will I embrace or break the brace?
Will I mend the wall as “good walls make good neighbours”
Or leave it broken for things to haunt?

The woman wonders

The woman wonders

Because

In life or death
In love or hatred
In light or darkness
In the home or diaspora
Whoever she seeks to hold dear
The clasping string is hurt and cut
Whoever she takes to be her pal
The lovely lace is worn and torn

A brother opens the oyster sore
A lover uncovers the reefed past
A partner reveals the cavernous deal
A relative unearths the cavitied vessels

which stabs… stabs… stabs her ruthlessly… ruthlessly… ruthlessly

Pains break us open to let the light enter
Rumi says and plays with the woman’s soul
Like Coolangatta waves play with the dead snails. 

Umme Salma, Toowong, May 2016.