Kind of quirky, a tad controversial, a little whimsical and chockfull of farce
Author: Mahvash K. M.
I consider myself somewhat of a serial corporate rut absconder because a sabbatical that was to last a year, has turned to eight, and I still see no end in sight. Before that, I worked in the Financial Services Industry. When I’m not writing, I’m fussing in my head, over ideologies of social justice and equality, with superhero twists! My stories and poems have appeared in The Rumen, Sequoia Speaks, Recesses, Every Day Fiction, Blaze Vox and Double Speak magazines. My poem, “Veins” was long listed in the Plough 2023 poetry competition.
Books:
The Girl with the Paisley Dupatta - (short stories)
Shimmering Scraps of Poetry and Madness - (Poetry and essays)
Curious Animals and Quirky Creatures - (Children’s Series)
https://www.facebook.com/Mahvash.Moht/
Had to share this bit of a silver lining in my tropical monsoon sky – my poem, “Veins” got longlisted in THE PLOUGH 2023 POETRY COMPETITION out of over 2000 entries. Launched my writing career such as it is, two years ago and this is the first formal accolade that has found its meandering way to me, so I’m quite chuffed. Here’s to creating more shimmering scraps of poetry and prose, and to occasionally finding the universe conspiring, encouraging and smiling down too🙏🏼🌸
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your soft smile We’ve said things to each other we didn’t mean Tearing and splitting the vital seams Of the fabric of our togetherness I know that I have felt desolate, helpless We have sat in silence, cold as frost The glow of our closeness long since lost Somewhere along life’s bewildering way I let your warm hand slip away
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your gentle smile
Through the years we have journeyed on Along the same path but each on our own Forged by our children, we treaded their dreams Only seeing shadows of you and me Still together we walked into middle age But it’s been a while since I really saw your face It’s been a few years since the air around Was filled with your familiar scent and your sound Somewhere, somehow I lost the quickening string That bound us together through thick and through thin
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your lovely smile
But I know you’re still here, your pulse still beats warm Even as we’ve both whipped up raging storms They’ve whirled inside, while we’ve pulled away The terrible loneliness adding to the fray I know that we are distances apart But I can still feel you in the depths of my heart Let me find you once again in the mists Of sepia memories, reminiscences Let me hold your hand as I once did before Let us walk together, in step once more
I lost sight of you, dearest for a while Let me love you again, let me make you smile.
I see my shadow lengthen With the ebbing of the day I feel it suck up all the sadness From the bowels of the earth With its purple, glistening hoard Of melancholia and hopelessness I move ceaselessly, restlessly I will my never-stopping feet To sever the tortured bond That my swelling shade has formed With the darkening world around But my shadow just spreads out Ever further on the ground It suckles at night’s dreary breast Absorbing all her suffering So that nothing should remain In earth’s mighty store of pain With its ravening tentacles My twilight shadow reaches in Never faltering in its aim It will not stop it will not rest Until it has gorged itself On a sorrow that is infinite It’s bloated edges Endlessly dredge The gloom from earth’s wounded veins My shadow ripples and it writhes Waning only when daylight Breaks the tragic coupling Of the shades and sadness of nighttime.
This is about all the women who are killed in the name of honour or privilege or archaic customs. Women like Mukhtaran Mai who was gang raped as per the ruling of the local jirga or court of the elders of the community. And Qandeel Baloch who dared to be bigger than the box she was born in and paid for it when her brother whom she financially supported, killed her in cold blood.
PART ONE: Pin me, skin me Kick me in my shins please Bring me buckling, crashing down Then grin as you haul me up Dust me down, make an act of freeing me When I’ve lost all my will to be me
Churn me, burn me Laugh in my face, spurn me Then adulate, adore me But airily, lightly Politically-correctly When I can’t feel your torment or love Or anything else inside me
PART TWO: Juice me, use me Mangle and abuse me Then write up columns flush with New found awakening A social issues deciphering All the while computing, Measuring, forecasting Your own index of hero-worship For calling out brutality Other demons, other sins Out of your realm of reality But you orate and preachify Because it is your deliverance From mundaneness, insignificance
Roar out, be devout Let your new found arousal Wash over everyone “Not all of us are like that” Shout it out, don’t hold back Declare it with panache You are righteous no one can forget Everyone else’s moral compass Is a fickle sickle, directionless You’re guilt free with that homily With your ringing voice and sacchrine smile You present it proudly to me When all I can see are lips and eyes A Leviathan dripping honeyed lines Onto a transfixed audience They watch and gently chew the cud Of the weed that they are fed By evangelical heroes of prime time
PART THREE: Boot me, loot me Strangle me, shoot me Then have a ball in my name Found a charity, earn some fame Let the posthumous heroine With her tomb-tough shoulders Become your newest Taj Mahal Let her catapult you to the top Always from her deadest parts A pillaged body, a spirit crushed A tragedy censored and hushed From her countless cuts and gashes She now hides under her eyelashes While YOU and YOU and YOU and YOU Rise like a phoenix from her ashes.
There’s something in the air In the way it moves around The living and the dead It carries a new sound Alien and profound It bleeds in and it seeps Reaching further than skin deep
There’s something in the breeze It has much to say In mystifying whispers The strange leaning of the trees In the writhing of the leaves Detaching from their seams By off-season guillotines Shimmer-sharpened by the breeze It moans against the skin In tongues we now don’t speak In tormented suffering But all that we can see Is the stirring of the blades In their darkened canopies
There’s something in the air A blinding glitter everywhere But the motes of light are still While a cosmic storm prepares A million miles away Thickening, darkening Marking time until It comes crashing, smashing in Sweeping us all in Its alpha and omega waves In beginnings and endings And lips everywhere Will be spilling the same prayers As with our souls bared We fuse, we unify With something new in the air.
A smile is such a magical thing Like a rainbow that has sprouted wings Its pots of gold shimmering In a dimpled firmament Lifting the day In its 180 degree euphoria It is that precious loop That adorns the mouth In latitudes of joyfulness Its bearings somewhere between The heart and hypothalamus A smile is a small piece Of heart that is pulled out Of its latticed, multi-ribbed house A little boon of bliss A bit of love set free Into the ether of the world That beautiful upturned arch Of rapture and release Stirring the organs and the feet Defying the pull of gravity I see your smile Framing your face I don’t know you but my heart lifts Drawing its own curve on my lips A gift bestowed for one received A smile is that magical thing.
Outside in the garden There’s a Passion flower vine Its little green tendrils Have curled here and there Where the shoots are fullest Lushest, most verdant They burgeon and grow Weaving circles of rapture Until they’ve spun around Seven times Lighting up the chakras of life And then just like that Their work done Of dancing in the sun They fall
Inside the house There’s a woman Her hair Is tied up in a bun She’s on the run With little tendrils escaping At the nape of her neck She’s rushing upstairs There’s a toddler emergency And then she races like the wind Into the kitchen To make breakfast And then she’s on the run again Appointments, to-do lists, errands To complete And then back to cook and clean To feed and coddle, kiss a bruised knee
The hours weave their set design Finite, regimented, organized But she has no sense Of their texture or lines The day is done and finally She sits down for a while Soft tendrils forming At the nape - one, two, three I hold my breath I count the whorls in the curls The longest one has six I look away A little thought flits up to me Unexpectedly, a sign Whispering secrets I don’t want to hear Of endings on the whorl-bearing vine
She smiles at me tiredly I wish, I wish fervently That the curls that gather Loosely around her neck Is just hair soaked in sweat In the labour of love I pray, I pray silently Into the depths of whatever’s out there God, the universe, ethereal energy For the moisture laden curls to weave Their mystical circles for a few more years Until they attest To a life well-lived, joyfully Until they wear their silver-grey majesty Before they finally Unspool in eternal rest.
I wish this verse was more wholesome and whimsical like Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, but that it is not. This is about women determinedly forging on across streets, bazaars, workplaces, government offices, neighbourhoods and communities. This verse is also not so much about the woman hopeful of change (God knows that’s going to take its time in our blessed homeland), but the woman who is stoic and steadfast. It is the woman who goes about her day despite the odds that pull at her body, spirit and soul. It is the woman who dares to bare her true self despite and in fact because society expects otherwise. It is the woman who walks in her neighborhood afraid yet brave. May you find your grit and your grace for the rest of the days of your life.
A resolute, meaningful Women’s Day to all my friends and family 🌺
I wear my track pants And a pink shirt, long It says “Life is a song” I wonder if it’s too loud Stoking thoughts like a gong A shout To the world of men that teams about The streets Eyes peeled For glimpses of variously clad Women that are mad Enough to sidle into the periphery of their sight And special leery gazes Trained like full-throttled tasers On women who dare To bare More than the hand wrist down Or a smidgeon of a toe around Which sits an uncomfortable sandal A Soleful reminder To walk cautiously To always look behind her To shrink as small as she is able So she might pass With a warning glance From the men sitting around Jenetic Judges of right and wrong
For the women who dare To bare There’s a special gaze For their fall from grace From the fraternity that mills about The corners of streets Superior, upright Pissing in plain sight Marking their territories For the women who dare to bare More than the eyes Downcast, demure Vacuous and pure For them there’s the death stare Cutting them down to size I’m one of those Who - Dares - To - Bare The woman within The whole human being Self assured, aware She sits in my eyes Unfaltering, dignified Even as her heart drums inside As she traverses that den Of wolves, dressed as men.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 