This is the first of a series of 25 poems I am working on for a project. Too Busy to Cry from yesterday is #10. In Afghanistan the Neekmar is the man who scores the poppies to ensure the proper amount of opium is leaked out from the poppy bulb for maximum collection. He uses a three bladed knife like this. The white liquid that you see coming from the poppy in that picture is impure opium (likely 15-21%).

If you don't want to know what the poem is actually about, then stop reading. I leave everyone to find their own meaning if they choose, but this one requires a lot of other knowledge about the culture of Afghanistan to work. The poem is on its face about the production of opium taking the one pretty thing in Afghanistan and turning it into a perverse version of itself. Opium is turned into heroin and sold, but there is no sale without a buyer, and so the buyer is complicit and Western society is partially to blame for this whole issue. But there are other images there, Pink Chiffon is one of the varieties of Papaver Somniferum (the opium poppy), but Malalai of Maiwand is an Afghan folk/war hero. While the Neekmar works in the field, the Mullah works in the Madrassa. And the madrassa is where children are trained into radical Islam to become extremists and terrorists. Again, the most beautiful and pure thing in Afghanistan is taken and turned into a disgusting semblance of itself. And Western society plays its part in making that happen.