Equipment Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Don’t sell them out, Doctor!
Apothecary, don’t make beds
Of your children of it, play swings.
Since you lose heads, by thievery,
Inability and ignorance and apathy,
And the gains of my tails –
Or the severed limbs of daughters,
Have to be operated upon,
But don’t break them often.
Dispenser! I plead thee,
For there is nothing in my dispen-
Sation for your satiation, Mafioso!

For I have given up holding
Two revolvers by my waist.
But this time have mercy,
Don’t sell them out and in your
Register add some photos and marks,
Of verification. Because you may,
Point out at the falling stone walls
Or a junk of corrugated stolen sheets,
From colonial times and say,
That this the operating table, and that
Is the machine of x-ray, or the scissors
And scalpels used to fleece sheep,
Because you wear goat’s hair,
To repair broken bones of poverty.

Sadiqullah Khan
Gilgit
August 5,2015.