Life goes on wrapped up in days Amd months and years And then something small, inconsequential Peeps out of a grainy abyss It emerges unshrouded, unexpected And the fragility That is also life, folds up The soft blanket about us And we feel the chill Of new news, the icicles Of probabilities, plausibilities Pierce benumbed flesh The fragility of life Touches us with light fingers, it tries But our hearts beat like the delicate wings Of butterflies at the end of spring We feel, we reel we come undone For a while or longer and then The chill settles into our bones Wistful companion for a season That somehow takes root While summer and autumn flit past in their time Winter settles into our boots In the lines of our palms And behind our eyelids like iodex balm Tearing now and then at flesh and veins Amid the dead quietness it brings Of endings, a resting in the dirges it sings Winter becomes our climate within And we toughen our skins With hope, nostalgia and other things And somehow we survive, we go on Wrapped in hours and days and years Until it happens all over again.
This is an unlovely ode to drudgery of all kinds: professional, domestic, emotional and mental. This is also a bit of a kick to the steaming underbelly of corporatocracy or political capitalism. For those still in its grips, tomorrow is another day, and then another, and another …. This is to deep breaths, cathartic vocalization and despite it all, inner peace ☮️
I sit here with my tea It is past dusk, nighttime has come My day is done, the drudgery For now, has been overcome I know I should call it living A productive life, goal-driven One that should give me belly warmth The kind that you find In food that hugs your soul While it slowly dissolves Into dreams and hopes and Forging on; wanting more; The bar always moving up There are no rests, there are no stops
But Drudgery O Drudgery! When I call you out for thee That word becomes cathartic As it washes off the aches The tiredness, the ire The fresh and dutiful daily inks Of brimstone and hellfire It’s like a song, a one word air It fills the air with daring A momentary “damn it all!” No fear of anything Celestial, terrestrial or alien
Drudgery oh drudgery! I have been taught to revere thee In your sugar-coated entirety But to speak of you Honestly In all your tri-syllabic impiety Is to seek out fate When she should be Left alone Picking at her murphied* bones
And yet Drudgery Och Drudgery There are days when I acknowledge thee For what you are: A stinging thorn in my soul A worldly curse, a profanity And that is when I perceive An adroit lightness of my being. When I call you out, I feel A joyful whoosh of relief My hapless spirit is airborne Again, and I am fortified For another day spent in your arms Ceaseless, easeless Drudgery With a name that’s yet a purging charm.
Image: Jacqueline FaheyImage: Douglas Arthur
* The title of the poem is an adaptation of Karl Marx’s critique of political economy - Das Kapital
* Murphied: The word is derived from Murphy's Law (Whatever can go wrong will go wrong). Victim of bad luck and circumstance.
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.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 