B52’d

by Ahmad Masood

Back makes a beeline, I wake from dreams with formless words,
Grandfather sits in spirit on the bed and makes his prayer heard.
Angels and trickster Jinn sitting perched, they dance overseeing
Visions of moments of life within the playgrounds of my being.

Two schoolboys walk above my head, glowing like a chandelier,
Careless play of young hearts had gone unthanked far too many years.
Eyes closed, wisps of memory weave into crimson fabric in my mind,
Hole in the cloth where my tears keep falling; time makes jest of time.

Gone insane, the page now housing jungle gyms of hysteric prose,
The shattered clock ticks on the wall as I listen from the floor.
Now lorazepam and haloperidol become my yin-yang— my dose.
Enlightenment turns into the fluorescent-lit clinic’s locked door.

AHMAD MASOOD is a student at the University of Toronto; he is an undergraduate student studying philosophy, English, and sociology. Though the bulk of his work is academic, he enjoys writing poetry in his free time and dabbles in photography, story writing, songwriting, sketching, and shirt-printing as well.