Zahid Hussain is a writer and social entrepreneur. He is a regional poetry performance champion and has regularly featured on BBC Radio. In 2009, he launched the Manchester Muslim Writers in response to the lack of support for Muslim writers despite the need for the authentic voice of British Muslims to be heard.
Zahid Hussain teaches creative writing to children and adults and mentors a number of new – and published – writers. He is a member of NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) and the SOA (Society of Authors). He is also a trustee of BTEG (Black Training & Enterprise Group) and Ecomosque (Salford).
You can follow Zahid on Twitter @zahidsays
***********************************
wedged into the bloat of Mankind, it lurks
coiled in the caverns of our insides
and it snares without hooks or nets or clamps
until all of our blood is occupied
and bellowing out, breaths become a blink
ground down by the weight of a dying heart’s pulse
and snaked into the body’s tributaries
the dried blood-tide ropes its territory
its naming has never contained it
no sound has delayed it, and yet we deny it
judging its victims, sinner, demon, beast
until it snatches one of us; too late we know
it has the seared conscience of a desert rock
and born deaf and dumb and bound to nothing
it forever strafes its code in spaces
whose first and final tourist is silence
and despite all the lines of ink we scribe,
it imprints itself and imprints itself and imprints itself
on every nation’s flag; yet it begs no translation,
because death has swallowed all our tongues.
ShareThis
