Category: Emotions

VERSE | THE DELUGE

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, Humanity, Pakistan, TheNews, truth, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
Wars rage across the globe
Black tender weaponized, legalized, expedited
Back into western folds
Pockets lined with silver and gold

And the rain falls

Billionaires wearing t-shirts and jeans
Their assets splitting at the seams
Go to the moon 
To float around in zero gravity
With their mugs of civet coffee

And the rain falls

Priests and rabbis and the clergy
Preach from pulpits blood-streaked 
With people sacrificed, ostracized, cast aside 
As God is their witness, we all see

And the rain falls

A woman takes in an elder drenched
In torrents that wrenched
The next meal and rent
From his shaking hands
He cries without a sound
His tears surge into the floods
Rolling down
Crimson-hued carrying blood
From the mountains to the sea
As the country drowns.

Image generated via illustration software

VERSE | THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, Humanity, poetry, Sadness, truth, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
I wish sometimes that I could 
Pause this mad, sad world of ours
Just make it static, less erratic 
For a few peaceful hours

I wish sometimes that I could
Travel to 1945
Put a spanner in-genius things 
That now maim and unalive

I wish sometimes that I could 
Get into the minds of men
To fathom whence the ego-angst
Comes seething, storming in

I wish sometimes that I could 
Put my arms around the babes
As ceilings and beams are pulverised 
Sealing off all escape

I wish that I could look into 
The eyes of the “chosen” hoard
As they rape, ruin and raze
In the name of a furious god 

I wish that I could for a while
Wield the zen of the universe
To open up her veins, to let 
Her essence truly gush forth 

I wish that I could make our world 
A softer place to be
Cotton-balled for a little haul
A pearl-feathered reprieve

I wish that I could wish and sometimes
Wishes indeed came true
But every time I open my eyes
Reality flogs anew.

Image: Lakshay Jakhar

VERSE | THE DAY YOU WENT AWAY

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, Family, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
The day you went away 
Something died inside me too 
I thought that with time 
In the pithy wisdom of poets
And cure-alls of self-help books 
In the endless cycle of the days 
That I’d come back to life 
To some semblance of pulsing life 
But I didn’t 
And that’s ok 
Isn’t the end of self the next terminus anyway?

The formidable ego that relentlessly keens 
For fantasies of euphoric times 
Trapped in snow globes 
Frozen for life
Crashing like cannon balls
Into raw hearts that survive 
That part of me died 
But that dead part of me 
Buried somewhere 
In the thick of my atoms that ricochet 
And my lungs that tirelessly inhale
Is now also my quiet side
A stoic, eternal, abiding thing 
Cloaked in 
The resolute infinity
Of ceaseless serenity

In that sepulcher of my being
There is no distraction, no noise 
No daunting end-times tunnels of light 
The lifeless part of me
Is nerveless, unfaltering 
Impervious to everything 
Everything but the little flame 
You left behind when you went away 
Glowing softly just beyond 
The stillest, deadest part of me
For me to gently find my way.
Image: Aashee

VERSE | IT HAS TO BE

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, Faith, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments 
They speak and words 
Fumble from mouths 
That wish that they 
Were speaking out 
Of something else 
Of the obvious 

It has to be 
It has to be 

Humanity has otherwise 
Lost its wings 
Its feathers shorn 
By barbs and stings 
From treacherous planes
Rockets blazing 
By the ugly might
Of vetoing 
Might it be 
Those hearts still beat 
To other things 
Resembling, faintly even 
An evenness, a balancing 
Of fickle acts, good intentions 
For a time, lost in a storm
Treacherous, unsteadying 

They speak and words 
Come stumbling out 
Of throats that lie
In tender flesh 
Fleshing out sweeter things 
Like hearts that throb 
On other planes
And blood that sings
Of vital things 
Could it be those
Soul-stirring thoughts
Have lost their way 
In heart’s hollow 
They pulsate
Knock-knocking 
On its ribs

It has to be 
It has to be.
Image: Malak Mattar (Palestinian aritst)
Featured

VERSE | SENSORY SAUTÉ

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, poetry, serenity, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
I resolved to write egged on 
By echo-braised recipes
Of grating voices and bitter hearts 
And chopped up memories 
They tossed about inside my head 
Seize-sizzling, beet-bloody 
Of you is who I tried to write
As bits of you fell in
In-cisor cut, unholy messed 
Out and in of my sight 
I took my pen
The scene was set 
I would write of pent up things
Of audacious consequence
But my pen lent itself more
To gnawing contemplation
A cooked-up imagination 
As it bickered in my mouth 
The words they just sat there 
Headless, fleshless, boneless, bare
I chewed again upon the pen
They leapt aloft and hovered then 
For a bit before they bit 
Me on my purposeful lip
The drop of blood 
Drop.ped on my page 
There was no plot there was no stage 
There was no more righteous rage 
For them to come off eloquent 
And so I laid down the pen 
Let down my resolute bun
Bun-dled off my peaceless pique 
Pick-ed all of myself up then 
Set free an ex-heal-ation
I don’t think that I’ll try again.
Image: Annis Woods

VERSE | WORDS

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
Each time I put them away
In some silent corner of my being
Locked away 
So they don’t rear 
Their grief-gorged heads
When it’s not their time
Nor their day

And then you begin 
A conversation
Those things I’ve been meaning to say
Rattle the locks that hold them at bay
I let them out
They race for my heart
My eyes smart

They scratch their way
To my mouth
I let them out
Hesitating with every one 
That escapes 
Wrapping itself around your shoulders
In a hug, a tortured embrace

Waiting for you 
To look at them, feel their grain
Their pain, hear their refrain
They float around waiting for you
You turn away
Their ragged breaths
Steam up the pane

They quiver 
In a final thrum of hope
Fallen, on the ground they grope
For a sliver of faith
But you turn away
Unhearing, unseeing
They disintegrate
Into nothingness around your feet.
Image: Jhon

VERSE | WEIGHT WHAT?

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, truth, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments

(This piece is about body image issues that so many women face especially as they get older. It takes a lot of character and guts to not let the negativity get to you. Again, this objectification is a product of our chauvinistic environments).

You’ve put on weight, wait! 
Does this mean that you’re eating too many sweets
Or could it be that you’re finally getting old
Old, rolled, holed into the box
That’s been built for you, no u-turns
Nothing you can fox your fading way out of
You’re done.  Stay in the shadows, woman
Know your place
Face the truth of tradition
Perdition
Hard-wired into your being, your biology 
Know your place
Or we’ll remind you 
Laughingly, ribbing along the line
Where we can jest or malign

I’m caught off guard, but I’ve also been 
Wrought, fraught, taught
To feel bad for feeling bad 
To smile wide
Wide enough to swallow his sin and my own hurt
My eyes scrunch up, almost close
Those windows to my soul
Beclouded, beclogged, becloaked
Lest the world see the state of my heart
He feels bad for an instant, he reneges
Laughingly, now ribbing across the line
I feel worse that he feels bad 
My smile widens until I can feel it cut into my skin
His sin and my guilt doubled
Lancing at my face, etching unnatural lines
Into furrows that make me look 
Comic, demonic, they take their pick
On the day they feel a rage
Righteous, man-ifold and brave
That they then spill into the ruts 
Of my shame-shambled face.
Image: Zelal Guzlan

FREE VERSE | SOMETIMES GRIEF

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
Look at me… See me

I couldn’t.  Everywhere I looked, it was there, looming like a mountain, shivering with the bones and moans of people gone.  Rattling its presence constantly. I felt it reach desperate fingers through my veins, slowing my blood to a cold, desolate crawl.  Then, roaring through my ears in floods that threatened to rip through the corners of my eyes. My parched eyeballs burned until I couldn’t see.

See me …. Feel me

I couldn’t let myself feel its broken form. Jagged and sharp, it would cut through my flesh everytime I looked at it. No matter how fast I fled, it caught up and gripped me around my chest.  So tight, I couldnt breathe.  I gasped for air, taking in big choking gulps.  And then I ran again.  I ran and ran until I couldn’t feel. 

Feel me … Hold me

I couldn’t let it engulf my senses, to stir up memories that howled in my head. Its own throbbing soul pitched wretchedly inside its quivering tortured layers.  Layers upon layers of purple-grey.  Like bruises that just don’t heal. It kept hitting itself bruise upon bruise against the walls of my ribcage until every seam was tattooed with wounding inks.  Until it lay prone, ragged and torn.  I couldn’t look at it, I couldnt hold it. 

Look at me … See me … Feel me … Hold me

Hold me … Feel me … See me … Look at me

I looked at it then, and saw a face there, distorted with pain. So much pain. It was mine.
I saw it then, fold up its battered layers and quietly crawl into my heart
I felt it then, as it tenderly claimed my body, seeping into every atom of my being
I held it at last as it became whole, unbroken, divine. My grief finally belonged to me.
Image: Edgar Degas

VERSE | OUR HUMANITY-FREE DIET

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, poetry, verse, writing5 Comments

I’m in Karachi after two and a half years of Pandemic gridlocks, and it’s been a whirlwind of a homecoming. Besides grappling with the major and minor curveballs that my micro and macro environments tend to throw at me off and on, I have also been able to indulge in some nostalgia: found my little book in which I’ve put down a few poems that I’d written in my teens. Even at that tender age, external stimuli hit hard! 😅 Below is one of my verses from my adolescent days.

I was walking through the woods one day
With my thoughts in a turmoil 
Oblivious to nature was I -
To the trees and the grass and the soil

I was attempting to decipher 
The meaning of strife and war
Was it political agitation
For the enforcement of a law?

Or was it as I believed the cause
Of a moment’s disarray
Of a value old as age itself - 
The simple Human Way

Where was the compassion that
Bespoke the worth of one?
Had the shield of dignity and love
Been replaced by the gun?

Where was the pride in good deeds
Where was the humility?
Was everything really shrouded by
The veil of frailty?

Frailty of causes
And frailty of sense
Had the once true noble values 
Become a mere pretence?

I was looking for the answers
I was seeking a refuge
From the grief and the confusion that
Had overcome me like a deluge

It was then that I heard whispering
The soil, the grass, the trees
“You already have the answers
Now you only have to see

When man was made a brother 
Unto the other one
The moulding of a sacred 
Tradition had begun

So when war threatens to break this bond
Their spirit shall hold them fast
For that was always meant to be
Unto the very last”.

VERSE | HEARTBREAK

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, poetry, verse, writing2 Comments 
I feel a rage 
It’s not the flaming, blazing kind 
Nor is it the hating kind 
It’s disappointment mixed with hurt
A betrayal mixed with cheerlessness   
It’s a whipping, bruising buffeting 
It’s a faded, jaded trustfulness
It’s a crashing and a burning 
Without smoke, without fire 
It’s the turning into ash
Of something held so close 
Of something tender and so dear
Of a precious, precious thing 
Of a pearl old as the years. 

I feel a rage 
But in its manifestation
There is no acid hotness 
Only a painful heaviness 
That sits mostly in my throat 
Huddled there, straining to emerge 
In tears or in words 
I’m capable of neither.
Even as it squeezes me
Choking, asphyxiating me
In its throttling stranglehold
I’m hoping for some peace and grace
Hoping even in the throes 
Of this weary, bleary rage.

VERSE | A SWEET MOMENT IN TIME

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, Joy, poetry, verse, writingLeave a comment 
Sometimes while I sit, engrossed in life
My brow lightly furrowed, concentrating
On getting the task at hand done
Running my five miles in the circle of creation

I hear a rustle, a little whisper
Of someone on the periphery of my thoughts
I glance up, as if to see the vision
Of that someone that always flits across
My mind on busy days like these
Resting otherwise in my heart;
I glance as if that heavenly soul has 
Bridged our realms that are so far apart.

I look up, afraid to lose the thread
Of that feeling, that gentle touch
Of someone nestling in my core
Someone beloved, someone missed so much.
I look beyond into the blurry depths
Of my vision, desperately holding on 
To that fleeting caress upon my cheek
Gifted, bestowed by a precious one.

The atoms of day, ricochet and I blink
Once, twice. I am back in the circle of life
I grope twice, three times for that lucid moment 
When i was in the same space, alongside
Someone who most days quietly rests
In the warmest nooks of my being
A cherished one who on special days like this
Takes my hand, eyes twinkling as she beams!

I glance up, my soul surging with joy
For that precious moment, filling the void.
Sometimes while I sit, engrossed in life
I am touched by a beloved for a sweet moment in time.