Today I woke up to clouds Sitting in the morning sky They’d been there a while They looked cozy-comfortable Their greyness was all shades From the smoky pearl of sparrows eggs To the steeliness of granite They were contented in just being There was no bloated turgidity To their form, no urgency To spend themselves To waterously end themselves To cut their rain-sodden wrists To release the essence from their seams In a tryst with vanity Of azure blue visions and dreams
These clouds they rolled in differently Serenely, so quietly They lay claim upon the sky Wiping out all the sunlight But there were no thunderous sighs No jagged lightning in their eyes No weeping sheeting pouring rain No genesis, no annihilation
These clouds they swept in differently Stirring up a little breeze Cool, it brushed against my skin There was no banshee trapped within Wailing of storms and other things The darkness lingered for a while It left a whisper in the breeze A silver rustle in the trees Then gently, gently it went by.
For all the times when writer’s block has dammed the flow of words. Like a beaver it plugs the essence, but like a force of nature, the floods of creativity bring those dams crashing down. Again and again, hope shimmers at the end of every one of those bottlenecks.
I feel out of touch A tad bit rusty Cranky and creaky Tinny and such The words clump together With a grind and a grate I wonder if a month away Has dulled my tapestry of verse Shimmering skeins that advance and traverse Embroidering and stitching Notions and qualms Into billowing storms Into rippling, sashaying ribbons of calm Bewildering phrases that make me guffaw Festering sentences painful and raw In bobbing waves with lacy edges In crashing, lashing, tearing deluges In twinkling stardust upon my page My blinking cursor running away With the train of my thoughts to the drum of my heart Laughing, singing, assuaging an ache Grieving, weeping, caught in the wake I wonder if my keyboard, unstirred, unscathed For two score nights and forty days Has borne my quickening string away.
I get out of bed, slowly, numbly The morning dopamine has not kicked in In fact, I have no sense of it I sigh … that’s never a good sign It’s going to be one of those days again
I turn off the AC The gentle hum that had filled the spaces Where my happy hormone should have been racing Stops. I blink slowly I look at my bedroom slippers Their shadowy forms Like yesterday’s leaves Plucked off by the breeze Lie on the ground
I get up and look at my curtains Drawn together like knitted brows Beige-blonde brows in a frown Censorial, dragging down I can’t bring myself to touch Those sulking folds To draw them back In the ritual Of morning time
I sit on the stool in front of my dressing table I look at the woman Staring back at me Barely visible, her outline perseveres Reminding me that I am still here I watch her for a while Feeling nothing - vacuous space And then I see something glimmer At the back in the mirror
The prism that I had hung up A vestigial piece of love From a chandelier that has long since Ceased to grace the space above Had caught the first ray of light That had tried to flow Into my chamber of shadows Teasing, romancing it Holding, embracing it In all its radiant rainbow hues
I turn around towards this scene Of sudden brightness I get up, pull back the curtain Just a little bit. The colours Fall in shimmering streams Across my feet I lift one up and then the other I slowly dance with the rainbow of colour My blood gushes warm, I have to smile It doesn’t seem like another dog day after all.
I sit with my tea The silence sits with me Deafeningly Piercing my eardrums With its wordless cacophony
It has made its forever home In the lounge where I now sit alone It’s been there a while Years of rooting itself in place The air, the space Is soundless, still Like the world in night’s numbing vigil I look around for something Anything to cut through the dead air Its atoms conspiring With the silence that sits everywhere
And then I see it, a little plume Floating, dancing in the room From my mug As the tea steams up Severing the bond of silence and air The desolate, deflated, joyless pair Their essence once filled With people now gone The moist vapor wafts in Reaching into spaces Where images, reminiscences Lie inert, forsaken Loosening, thawing, warming them
I take a sip of my tea I feel my spine tingle Familiarly As I’m wrapped in the arms Of rekindled memories.
The very edge of the building The one of glass So fragile by day and in the cloak of night Catches the last light Of the setting sun Sharp-angled, it thrusts its shoulders Into the fiery horizon Brave, unmoving It makes a stand It will endure even as its heart Of delicate, shattery glass Throbs behind curtains of lace Fluttering against its radiant face Glittering, it plucks at the setting rays Shining swords drawn against The darkening skies And tomorrow’s daylight Until twilight when it will remind The concrete world again That it still stands It still prevails, gleaming, upright.
She puts it down in front of me A bottle of water and a glass With a straw (Not plastic - Greta T. Would probably be somewhat happy) I especially ask for it, I know It reeks of faux gentility To sip one’s water from a glass With a rim, sculpted for your lips To gently settle on it and draw Up The water. But the straw Has replaced that intimacy Between the aqua glass and me It wasn’t always like this This distancing of my lips But unending hopelessness Pandemics of malaise Scrooched time and again Upon the rim, insidious and grim Where there should have been Pure bevel, clean, pristine Or at the very least Conclaves of mellow disease That didn’t bleed dry and deplete The very life blood out of me So now you know Why I use uncoupling straws Indifferent, cool, gappy (Paper-made, eco-friendly) An arms-length defense strategy To keep myself malady free.
O Beauteous one This is for you For all the times that you have bloomed When all around have burrowed deep Into the coolness of earth’s breast Hiding away, biding their time Until gentler, lighter climes Bestir them in their loamy beds But you, O Intrepid one You have always overcome You have worn your gem-like garb In ways that made me catch my breath Racing, chasing to my heart Wondering if you’d shimmer on Or if your time here too was done But you wore your jeweled crown Glittering in the scorching sun I looked at you, O Enchanting one As you cavorted with the breeze Those molten gusts upon my skin I gulped in then, the oxygen That sat timorously in the air But I was pulled By the oasis that surrounded you Perfect, paradisiacal Unsundered by the elements There you danced so full of joy I came to you pulled by the spell Of your vividness, O Alluring one You swayed your head Spangled whorls overspread Across the fretwork of your boughs Mesmerized I reached out Into your magic latticed web You pricked me then, O Bewitching one Your thorns were invisible, hidden I knew then that your glittering grace Your wild gumption to face the sun Aren’t just in the softness of your blooms But in the armor you have chiseled from The tempests - stormy and searing I looked at the ruby that had sprung On my fingertip that you had stung It dazzled on my glistening skin Its precious seams filling my lungs My essence and throb, O Wondrous one I found that day in the scorching sun.
Spring turns to autumn which moults Into winter. The winds blow cold And the skies are a myriad shades Of grey. The trees in their glades Stand stark and naked. Their leaves Now mottled, dying underneath Trampling feet. Hurrying feet across Paths well trodden and paths that are lost In the gloom. Winter’s dirge Fills the spaces in between to merge With the mist. She throws a blanket On the quiet world. And then she touches My cheek. I turn my face away and she spreads Her arms. I’m enveloped from toes to head From right hand to left. I stand still And let her feel. She takes her fill And then undoes her vapory hold. I finally see The path stretching clear ahead of me
Dedicated to the memory of all those young people who struggled to fit into the norms dictated by their communities and who lost that battle. May the second wind in your sails be glorious and joyful.
I’m going to tell you a little story Of a girl who loved too much Lived too much, hoped too much They said, she was too much! She was a queen, a young one But she had that zest for life That is so rare and beautiful That is also so ominous and direful
The story goes that she was born In the wrong place at the wrong time Nothing seemed to feel right in fact She was told to be someone that She wasn’t. She was taught, against her will To be the clone of a fantasy That had persisted for centuries
And so the queen crumbled Atom by atom, bit by bit, little by little She fell apart like a young sapling That has been buffeted and knocked about By righteous winds whipped up By those who were afraid of her Of our queen getting out of the box That they had so faithfully built for her
She finally broke into a million pieces And she plummeted She had once known how to fly like an eagle To soar up to the top of the world But that memory was gone, pounded out And so she fell Hitting the ground six feet deep And that is where she now sleeps.
Note: This poem was long-listed in the 2023 Plough Poetry Competition
She looks at the leaf Its serrated edges holding together A cosmos of possibilities Of alternate realities Of burgeoning opportunities She looks at a vein A cholorophyllated pathway of dreams A vital, verdant, emerald seam Running like a stream From the heart of the leaf to one serrated edge
Nearest To her wrist
Where her own veins have seared a path Specific, stark Chiseled from the magma of predestined fate Pre-blessed, pre-set, per-fected Once a rolling ocean of fluid dreams Now quiet, grief-stained, shadowy seams Of still water that never skips Never dances, it stays gripped Even as it drips In the finite space of one blue-purple vein
Literal and Satirical definition: defective sight in which objects/ other opinions/ other people cannot be properly seen if not close to the centre of the field of one’s view.
It grips me in its narrowness Blurring out everything else The serrated edges of my self Fade, become invisible I only get to feel One urgent, solitary reel Of fickle life at a time Drenched as it is in endless Waters of love or rage Seas with no horizons No frontiers, no boundary lines These swells take over me In my entirety I can barely breathe The deluge almost drowning me My heart and mind My tears and smiles In that moment are replete There can be no more In my stores Of pain and joy They are empty, hollow, done The universe too Knows when it’s enough And that is why I then see Only a sliver and no more Of life’s excess, its extremity Its climax, its nth degree Through the narrowed and diminished lens Of my shielding, sheltering tunnel vision.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 