Moonshine

Moonshine,

My mother captures and collects it in a crystal cup

The light of a fortnight

A promise tonight

This lunar-light cure

In the Land of the Pure

Moonshine,

Afloat in still water

After it gushed into homes, uninvited

White and light, like crops of cotton

On water-logged earth

That’s ready to burst at the seams

Of feeble lives stitched back together

In a pretty patchwork of crescents and stars

Moonshine,

Splendid silver, emblazons wheat fields

Here a hundred little moons lie

In the shape of bare hands and feet;

The colour of snowflakes

From the Persian foothills

Flutter, flicker and fade

Into the night

And in the place where this moon shines tonight,

Religion is inherited like a family stone-

In tightly sealed boxes that resemble coffins

Like the ones carrying little Hazara boys

Two by four;

Hands, feet and more

Here, there’s much to bequeath

Some borrowed beliefs

Some British accents, some Afghani labour

American sitcom, Chinese money,

Plenty-

But mostly faith unquestioned, supremely obscene

Obscenely supreme

Oh moonshine,

That ignites the night

And scars the daylight

That bellows, that bawls

In the bellies of blasphemous calls

Like fire through windpipes,

Like acid on a woman’s skin,

Like a hundred biblical homes on fire

Moonshine to drink, moon shine to see

Moonshine, please

Intoxicate me