Author: Umme Salma

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.

Our agonies will never wither
They will come one after another
And fold us into nothing one day

Will our happiness wither?
No… no … They won’t too
One joy will follow another
And one day will unmake us

This routine plays with the girl’s heart
Like the dark bamboo bush, playing with the evening light
Like the white swans that play with the slithering snails

Many gushes of tears gather
Several flashes of smiles heap
In the girl’s deep bosom
Holding on to them,
The girl pants and says, “I am fine, I am okay.”

===X===

Umme Salma, Toowong, 2022

My father lives in’ Merica
And I am in the remote bushes
My married father and his wife
And my brothers with spike hair
And sisters with ponytail
In the twenty second-floor
Seeping their souls into the lovely misty cloud.

With dry eyes
I live here in the wild foliages
‘Very soon, very soon … all processing on …
She’ll leave ….’
With watery eyes, dadu gossips to all.
Young men loiter around the house
And wink at my shadow, a golden chariot to cross
The fuming white Atlantic.

My responsible beloved father lives a life
There
Leaving my mother inside the silent earth
Calls and sends dollar
With assurance, ‘Very soon … very soon.’
Years after years. 

Umme Salma published in Transnational Literature

If you bid an early adieu
A black cloud covers the sunny view
A white snow freezes the mobile carp
Sorrow gathers on the eyes’ plateau.

If you become my saree’s colour
I can let loose the wild anchal
If you become my home’s dear
I can fade away in your core

Please don’t go
Whirling a wild sorrow

I pray hard
for love for you
Every day of every year
I put holy rites on my palms
Keep begging for permanence
in Maghrib prayer

The sun goes down—the last day of the year
The black night signals the next, the new
I keep moaning, ‘Don’t go, don’t go…’
Hold me, cold me in your dusky hue.

Umme Salma, 2016, Toowong