Category: Foot in the Mouth

VERSE | THE AB-SIND CLUB

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, funny, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment

This is a fond tribute to all the microscosms of colonial design and demeanour/ architecture and attitude that continue to faithfully roost in various cities across what was once the coveted Jewel in the Crown.

I’m having a day that’s making me feel 
More sterile than a beetle on its back 
I’m walking on the thin side 
Of breaking down, losing sight 
Of my psychedelic, privileged life 
I need some of the forgetting tonic 
That Pir Buksh so expertly whips up 
That makes me happy, schizophrenic 
With every sip and every glug 
I drink the potion, and I duly grow 
My Abs synth-esizing my lost bravado 

Suddenly they’re all like flies 
On the periphery of my eyes 
They cease to make me wince and curse
They cease to be a part of my universe 
I sit back, bark an order 
In Bloodhound, German shepherd tones 
Throw a carcass, throw some bones 
Throw a tantrum for good measure 
The club becomes a pyramid 
I’m at the top, the very apex 
Those hoisiting it upon their shoulders 
The club like a majestic boulder 
Matter not, they sit there 
Like a pile of boring underwear 
They’ve seen it all but you don’t care
They keep it all precisely together 
The erstwhile jewels in their imperial leather 

“One more!” I shout in thundering tones 
“Absinth me up quick bartender!”
Before I lose the precious threads
Of the delicate lace of elegance 
Pir Bukhsh gives me some more manna
From the counter in the shadows 
And I swallow and I glide
In the throes of happy amnesia 
The absinthe in the Ab-sind club 
Makes me feel so damn superi-a
Heavens be praised I’ve had a day
Like I’m lord of a castle in the UK
Indeed, the last few hours have made me feel
Like a hero in a Bollywood reel.

VERSE | BIRDS

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, funny, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
I’d become an avid bird lover
Since the pandemic hit my town
Ere I never could relate except
As a beholder looking on

But then this pair of mynahs
Intrepid little things
Well one was bravheart, the other a mass
Of nervous fluttering 

Decided that my balcony 
Was a good place for some treats
So they would pay me visits 
For some raisins and some cheese

I came to home number two
Carrying my avian love with me
Cooing pigeons in all forms
There frequented my balcony

Their rolling gait, their gentle sounds
Quite stole my heart away
And so I wooed them as they cooed
Treat-luring them everyday 

By and by the guileful birds 
Dropped their adorable avatar
My chairs and tables were endowed 
With their organic pockmarks

Now gently I admonish them
When they flap into my home
But they think I’m requesting more
Of their nitrogen-rich guano

I’m now a not so avid fan
Of the expelling, flying flock
My OCD has on my glee quite
Turned back the blessed clock.
The parents had brought their fledgelings to my home a second time. A bit of a soft initiation into the real world 🌸

NEW BOOK RELEASE | SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, Joy, newbook, poetry, serenity, truth, verse, womenwriters, writing3 Comments

Dear friends and family,

It is with great excitement and pleasure that I introduce my second book for the grownups – my book of poetry and essays titled SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS. The book will be available across bookstores in Pakistan and Sri Lanka at the end of December 2022. Friends in SL can currently order it from the Jam Fruit Tree bookstore on Galle Road via call/WhatsApp to 072-7268078.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This is a collection of poems and essays, humble opinions, rumblings of the heart about the joys, the truths, the pain, the controversies, the funniness and the wonder that criss cross all our lives in one way or another. I have compiled them here because too many times, we are witnesses to profound beauty, love, dreams, desolation, prejudice and injustice and yet, we forget.

The contents of these pages range from the sublime to the ridiculous; from soaring on the wings of ecstacy to struggling with overwhelming despair; from the capricious joys of matrimony to the dubious delights of singledom; from the profound ecstasy in a mug of steaming latte to the ardent disappointment in a less than perfectly brewed cup of tea; from the comedic to the somber and from the customary to the controversial, this collection of poems and features encompasses them all.

Scraps of Poetry and Madness is a phrase borrowed from that literary Wonder Woman, Virginia Woolfe. For in this collection too, there is a stream of raw and strident, passive and ruminative, joyous and grief-bound, mad and glad thoughts that run like a melody through the entirety of its spine; and like a sore-throated bulbul (who also has some good-voice days) I have sung them all for my readers.

VERSE | NATIONAL (S)CARRIER

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, poetry, satire, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments

A bit of a funny ramble about my recent flight from Karachi to Lahore.

I travelled on a plane today 
And felt compelled to write 
This verse of my experiences 
On PIA’s domestic flight 

Let me start with a whinge
The seats have no leg room 
Even the petites are overcome 
By claustrophobia and doom

The stewards and the stewardesses 
Seem like they’ve just had enough 
Of meeting, greeting passengers 
Their demeanour is kind of rough 

But that’s ok, we’re a nation of
Tough minded women and men 
And there is a tad more softness
For the elderly and the children 

It was a daytime flight, post luncheon-time 
So folks had had their meals 
Some nodding off with gaping mouths
Others snoring with extra zeal 

The plane jerked forward and began 
To taxi on the concrete 
While the stalls held two or more
Full bladder emergencies 

Off we lifted off and then 
We climbed up to the clouds 
There was a bit of turbulence 
There were loud prayers from the devout 

As we levelled off the crew
Started on their inflight missions 
Soon the plane transformed into 
Zubaida’s Desi Kitchen

And of course everyone there 
Ate a second meal 
Food is integral to our 
National look and feel 

Soon the air was rent with 
Loud belches and with sighs
The pungent vapor wafting ‘tween
The seats and in the aisles 

An overhead bin flew open
With a painful, turgid groan  
A fit finale to the meal that had 
Endowed its own bloat 

The icing on the cake was
The toffees on the tray 
And our disembarkation
In a half-civilised way 

One prevented a stampede 
Of desperate humanity
One a choti meethi* offering 
For PIA’s eccentricity.
* Choti Meethi: :small and sweet” in Urdu

VERSE | BLUNDER WOMAN

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, funny, poetry, verse, writingLeave a comment 
I was in a hurry, in a mad rush 
The morning was crazy, yes one of those 
The alarm had belted shrilly out
But I was dead to the world, comatose 

Dreaming of wishes being horses and Bookers  
Until the clock struck ten and then 
I threw off the duvet, leaped out of bed 
Limbs all awry like a headless chicken 

Here’s a little aside: when I’m stressed 
My hair also declares a mutiny  
Acts up like it’s the raging heroine 
Of its very own show on prime time telly 

And so it was in this agitation 
That I knocked my elbow on the door 
I cursed like a sailor who’s had too much ale-er
Deliriously, frenziedly I swore 

I vented as much as a random string 
Of choice expletives can enable 
The rest of the rage I swallowed away 
As virtuously as I was able

Then the ultimate decimation came to pass
I stubbed my wretched left little toe 
What chanced to happen in the heat of my passion
You really wouldn’t want to know 

Suffice it to say that on that day 
The angels filling in my Wicked Gal page
With brimstone, hellfire, the sinfulness of ire 
Had a field day, ‘twas their advantage 

And so ‘twixt my shoulders and my feet now
A funny bone doesn’t exist at all 
I try to be sweet-talking, kind and good 
Until the next time I slam, stub or fall.

VERSE | CAUGHT RED-SALAD!

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, plants, satire, verse, writingLeave a comment

This is my Alice in Wonderland type of journey through my bowl of salad. Some trials (including of the dietary variety) are best undertaken up close and personal! Also thrown in some existential angst for good measure. The title of the piece is a play on the phrase “Caught red-handed”.

I pick my way through little bits
Of bright green, the shade
Of fresh cut grass
I then pass
A scarlet flower the size of my head
It sits on the ground like it’s dead
Or perhaps waiting 
Anticipating 
Food? Me? Like the Venus flytrap?
I shudder and go on 
It agitates me that I’m alone

I look up
There propped 
On a frilly green tree
I see
A brown green dome 
Velvety on the outside 
Is it a temple? A den? A ploy to lull the senses
Full of pretenses
Of warmth and safety 
Waiting slyly for unsuspecting prey?
I shiver and go on

I’m borne on fogs 
Of peppery wet air
I stop and stare
At uneven bricks of black and white 
Stacked haphazardly
Here and there 
Are these stairs to heaven? alien art? remains of ritual sacrifice?
I can’t tell … but oh the smell!
As I step through a hole
Soft and pliable, the pong
Makes my eyes water 
I falter for a bit 
It it a giant fungus? A virus? A disease? 
I step through gingerly — 

“Good afternoon ma’am. How’s the salad”
I’m startled, awakened from my reverie
I look down at my bowl
Where I had been traipsing 
Thumb-nail small
In a fearsome fantasy 
That my despairing mind had woven
In garden salad tapestry 

Lettuce, tomatoes, olives and cheese
Untouched, unloved, salt-pepper doused
Waiting for a forkful raised to my mouth
Sit patronisingly, self righteously 
In the bowl, staring back at me.

VERSE | THE WHINGE

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments 
Today has dawned as one of those 
Days that makes me gripe
I sit up in bed thinking of all
The things that I don’t like 

It’s useless today to try and be
Tolerant and benign 
So here’s an unlovely ode to things 
That get on these nerves of mine 

I hate early mornings
And tepid cups of tea 
I abhor geckos on the wall 
Even if they’re nowhere near me 

I can’t stand milky coffee 
But I cringe when it’s too strong 
Too much sugar makes me gag 
Too little pulls me down 

I so hate the humidity 
And what it does to my hair 
Like an alien in residence 
Waving its million arms in the air

I deplore breaking with the 
Predictability of my grind 
First my latte, then some work 
Then some angst if you don’t mind 

But I also hate when twilight sets 
On my day off from routine 
From the clutches of mundania
Self imposed as that may be 

I can’t stomach margarine 
For what it does to my intestines
Anaphylactic shock and awe 
Are then wholly, soully mine 

I can’t stand the loud caws
Of aggressive city crows
Scavenging, ravaging their 
Insidious way indoors 

But I also dread the day my
Neighbourhood mynahs don’t come by
I don’t care that my avian favouritism
Is then guiltless and alive

On these days I also detest 
All our erstwhile politicians 
I wish they’d all go and drown 
In the tumultuous Indian Ocean 

The Arabian Sea just seems 
Like a seriously dubious route 
They’d go Gulf country visiting 
And come right back home to loot 

I hate that I hate my life 
When my hormones are awry 
When everything seems absurd 
A frickin’ painful enterprise 

Yup, It’s one of those days again 
When I’ve woken with a groan 
It’s going be 24 hours of 
Whinge and hate and moan

VERSE | ICARUS, REALLY?

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, poetry, verse, writing5 Comments 
* ICARUS: One of the most famous tragic figures in Greek mythology, his story highlights the dangers of excessive pride/ fixation. Although he was warned by his father not to fly too high, Icarus became overexcited and flew too close to the sun, causing his wings (made by his father,from feathers and wax) to melt and leading to his untimely death.
This is a bit of satire on the old Greeks of mythology.
There was once a young woman 
She had this special thing 
One can’t call it love you see 
The Sun was her heart’s king 

She’d look up at the sky all day
In spring and then in summer
Winter woes came down in throes 
Not seeing him was a bummer 

But she’d then glue her sun-sick eyes 
Upon the tele-vusion
Watching classics and Sci-Fi 
Of beaches and nuclear fusion

(Fission, I admit, is a grander term
But it’s a small explosion
Through staid old Fusion doth the sun
Make Helium from Hydrogen)

One day on her 60th birthday 
She’d had it with long distance 
She put her crafty hands to work 
She wasn’t losing one more instant 

She made herself some silver wings 
With aluminium and nylon string
And then up to the roof she went 
To flap, flap up to her king 

It was probably mind over matter that 
Got her five feet above the roof 
The Sun finally said “Icarus in your 35th 
Incarnation, you’re still a goof”.

VERSE | STRANGER THAN FICTION

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, poetry, satire, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
I look at the book
Have I read it before?
It’s a throng of short stories
My favourite genre 
I took it from the shelf 
In my own home 
So it has to be one of the 
For-sure-read tomes
Still, as I glanced
At the back cover blurb
Nothing jumped out
Not a line, not a word 
I looked at its front 
Multi shades of grey 
The image glimmered
In its dusky array 

I opened the book 
I had to recall 
A story, a plot twist
A mystery resolved
In the 267 pages 
I held in my hand 
So I started reading 
Page one, it began:
That day Alisha 
Looked up at the sky
The purples and blues 
Looked terribly awry …
The rest of the story 
Unwrapped itself 
As I glanced through page two
Of the book from my shelf 
Yes I had read it  
The memory crept in 
Of ETs and UFOs
And otherworldly things

Of skittering creatures
That had huge heads
Full of insidious plans
To make us all dead 
Or not! Even in fiction 
They were polite
Giving us choices 
Being forthright 
Choices! Forthrightness! 
Now those are things
That are as alien now as
Well … human beings!
Laughing, I put 
The Sci-Fi away 
Our own lives were stranger 
Than fiction these days

VERSE | A SWEET ENCOUNTER

On By Mahvash K. M.In food, Foot in the Mouth, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writing4 Comments 
I looked at her over my coffee mug 
Stealing silent glances 
Looking her way 
Then looking away 
My heart had set up a regular cacophony 
As I stared at her secretly
From above the rim of my cup
That I brought to my lips to sip, 
The adrenaline instead making me chug
She sat there, serene and beautiful 
An ode to perfection itself 
Between the gulps I watched and drooled 
Oh lord! I felt like such a fool! 
I took in a ragged breath 
I had to calm myself 
I had to let the feeling pass 
To wring it, wash it from my heart 
I had to fight, wrest my hungry eyes 
Off that whetter of fantasies, that queen of delight  
That mesmerizing, will-defying Passion Fruit Tart

VERSE | RODS AND CONES

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writing4 Comments 
Day breaks and I’m asleep
But I can tell it’s dawn again
The light touches my retina 
Through the barrier of my skin
It gently feels its way around
The darkness behind my shuttered lids
Then it sits itself down
Waiting for me to let it in
To start its morning ritual of
Dancing with my rods and cones
The caper sometimes morphs into
A red hot duel that is fought
Electro-impulsively in my brain
Where the battleground is wrought
Or we break into a marathon run
Away, away from every one
Flowing with the adrenaline 
Out of the arteries, into the veins
I lead it where it needs to go
Some days we waltz, and on some
We antelope it out the door
Day breaks, I open my eyes to see
I’m wafting, floating into infinity

VERSE | I LURRRVE YOU!

On By Mahvash K. M.In Foot in the Mouth, poetry, truth, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
This is for the ladies. Amidst all the funniness abounding in the verse, there is a subtle message of self love and self reliance.

Here’s hoping that we can always read between the literal and figurative noisy lines that may be thrown at us in the name of love. And that our peace of mind and our sense of self worth always supersede other enterprises of the liver (jigar) and the heart!

No offence to my male family, friends and acquaintances - these are truth-telling times!
He said I love you 
Like I have never loved another 
I said you’re 48 and you’re still 
Looking for that perfect other?

Surely you’ve felt something in that realm
You have walked down lovers lanes 
Were you perchance arm in arm 
With your tonic and your gin? 
And not a woman whom you’d consider 
A partner and a friend 
No, she was always just a trip 
A means towards an end
Each bedecked your evenings out  
The “I love yous” that left your lips  
Were whispered as sweet nothings 
In between your boozy sips
And now you tell me that 
You’re in love with me too 
Except it’s not your usual form
You don’t know what’s happened to you!
Maybe your three-month romances 
Would extend to five with me 
But the Shallow Hal* in you, pal 
Is still waiting to count to three 
And then your extra special 
Trademark escape artistry 
Will take center stage 
It’ll be the same old page 
From your book of Love for Free 

That day he said I love you 
Like I have never loved before 
I said dear boy you wouldn’t know true love 
If it speared you in your gall bladder
…. and why I am undoubtedly the man of your dreams!”
* Shallow Hal: A 2001 Hollywood Rom-Com in which Hal, a shallow man who only dates attractive women, falls in love with Rosemary, after being hypnotized to see the inner beauty of women, not knowing that she is obese.