Category: poetry

VERSE | THREE-PART TRAGEDY

On By Mahvash K. M.In mentalhealth, poetry, truth, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment

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.
Image: Fine Art America

VERSE | THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE AIR

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, truth, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments 
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.
Image: DB Waterman

VERSE | SMILE

On By Mahvash K. M.In Joy, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
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.
Image: Mike Savad

VERSE | THE PASSION FLOWER VINE

On By Mahvash K. M.In hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
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.
Image: YourStory

VERSE | WALKING ACROSS THE STREET TO THE PARK

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, socialissues, truth, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment

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.
Image: Ramona Pintea

VERSE | SOME DAYS

On By Mahvash K. M.In hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
Hope visited me today 
She brought Grace and Calm 
I looked at them comfusedly 
Why had these three come?

I was lying in my bed 
With Dejection and with Dread 
I’d been in their company a while 
They had spun their grisly web

I had lain in its hoary mesh
While its tendrils reached within 
Shutting out the daylight hours
My world was dark and grim

The ache that they had released 
Had also roused Masochist 
He clutched me now in his eerie hold
I just couldn’t break that spell 

The rushing, gushing tides of pain 
Numbed memories that played 
Over and over in a loop 
Relentless, without a break 

My heart bled from the holes that gaped
Wider with every wave 
Of agony that swept through me 
I had no desire to be saved 

But now there was Courage too 
With Love she looked at me 
Grouping together in my chest 
They held hands with the other three

Their other hands lay on my heart
Staunching the essence that fled
Out into the ravening veins 
Of Dejection and of Dread 

A gentle warmth spread through my flesh 
I finally saw some light 
Flitting, peeping, twinkling through 
The blue gauze in my eyes 

Hope and Calm and Love together 
With Courage and Grace today 
Came to sit with me a while 
As in my bed I lay.
Image: Mireille Laroche

VERSE | BUTTERFLIES

On By Mahvash K. M.In Joy, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
There have been extra days of rain 
Delaying the heat of the approaching summer 
In spontaneous, joyful
Shimmering showers 
It has streamed down or drizzled for hours 
There has been a surge of butterflies 
Yellow, brown, blue and white 
Flitting all over the place 
Happy for a few more days 
Of life and vitality 
I see them floating among the flowers 
Cavorting in spring-lavished bowers
Treading warm currents of air 
Over pavements where the cracks 
Are speckled with dancing weeds 
Over an emerald oasis of grass 
Loop-de-looping when they pass 
Another bloom 
That’s sprung up between the blades 
Glorious, serendipitous
Delirious on springtime bliss
They somersault back 
To bestow a nectary kiss
On soft, dewy petal lips
Beating gossamer wings
Evanescent, paper-thin
Revelling in bountiful life
The inevasible heat 
A distant ordeal 
For now in their bejewelled flights 
The spring-born butterflies
In pure rapture will remain 
Celebrating the extra days of rain.
Image: Fine Art America

VERSE | FORGED

On By Mahvash K. M.In hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
I was lost 
I took the path 
Less trodden, I tossed 
Away the ease
Of normalcy
I walked away 
Off the street that carried feet
Teeming, streaming busily 
Easily, its metalled gray 
Smooth and safe, predictable 

I’d felt strong, invincible 
I walked away 
Aimlessly, Trail-lessly, 
No signs, no familiarity 
I walked I walked 
Directionless, solitary 
On and on I walked and walked
Until doubts and insecurities
Snaked hoary tendrils around me
But I walked on until my feet 
Were bruised and cut
Until they bled 
Until I wept

================================
Until I had forged a road ahead 
==================================

It now lies cleaved and gravelly
With little grooves 
Once stained with blood 
And squelching mud 
Filled up
With wild flowers now 
Sun dappled through swaying boughs
The path ahead of me 
Now gleams with its own lambency

I was lost 
I left the path 
oft-trodden, I crossed 
Into uncharted territory
Where the wilderness roamed free
Lit up by the gleam of stars
And the warmth of cherished dreams 
There I carved my own way 
Hope-hewn, Grit-laden, Endlessly
It now stretches out in front of me.
Image: Aja Trier

VERSE | PIN PRICKS AND PAPER CUTS

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, truth, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments 
There’s a shop down the street
Where you can buy consciences
Gentle pin pricks around your heart
For when you want to sense something 
For when you want to feel 
A tiny paper cut, a delicate weal
Most times you buy a numbness though 
Cloaked in velvety greys and yellows 
They’re tailor-made to fit around 
Your never-racing, constant heart 
And your ever-racing, chasing mind
The greater you can muster 
Put down on the counter 
The finer the swaddle
To enshroud your qualms
To feel the vaguest of twinges 
Of right and wrong
When to see and when to be 
Sightless, without sound 
Unconscious, uncurious, asleep
In the thick, creamy fabric
Numbingly, comfortingly bound
Gut-driven compass buried deep
Six feet below the ice and the snow
The tsunamis, the floods and the hurricanes  
The droughts, the disease, the misery
Interred in darkness, entombed underground
In the meantime there’s a shop that sells 
Custom-built, free-of-guilt scruples in town.
Image: Fine Art America

VERSE | THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, serenity, verse, womenwriters, writing1 Comment 
When life gets hard as it sometimes does 
When the weight of the world is pulling you down 
When you want to hide in the depths of your bed 
When you don’t want your feet to touch solid ground 

When you want to close your eyes and just disappear 
And hope that in some dimensional shift 
You can escape the world that surrounds you here
That you can find the cosmic ether that fits 

When you have to part your hesitant lids
And the effort is excruciating, difficult 
When despite your aching, your most ardent yen 
There’s no secret exit, no miracle 

When you bring your hand up to your sleep-shrouded face 
When you glance accusingly at the lines 
When you wonder if ever they would become 
Prophets, purveyors of better times 

When you finally rise and breathe deeply in 
When you feel the pulse of your blood again 
When the vestigial coolness of your room 
Brushes up familiarly against your warm skin 

Then know that although the odds are stacked 
Up sky high, crushing, overwhelming 
That the universe still holds you close to her breast 
That there are still songs that she will sing 

So when life gets hard as it sometimes does 
When your heavy heart has robbed you of your smile
Slow down, pull back from the rush of life
Dearest one, take the road less travelled for a while.
Image: Forest Path by Jillian Crider
Image: Forest Path by Jillian Crider

VERSE | THE FACE IN THE SHADOWS

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, serenity, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
There’s a face in the shadows
Downcast, serene
A quiet glow drapes
The rest of her
As she sits cross-legged 
On the floor 
She holds the cosmos in her prayerful hands 
I want to see the face 
so full of quiet grace 
I want to understand 
Where the woman gets 
Her stillness from 
I tilt my head to see 
More clearly 
And then two shimmering orbs 
Rise from under their lidded veils 
I hold my breath I’m no longer 
Watching from the outside in
I float I glide out of the place
I’m light as a feather 
I rise up there’s no tether 
To time and space
To anything I have ever known 
I float on 
And I drop 
The sharp edged angst that I had held 
In my chest and in my head 
And it falls
Away from me 
I stretch out my arms 
I rise and rise 
Into the infinity 
Of those glimmering eyes 
Through twin portals
To my paradise.

VERSE | FIRE QUEEN

On By Mahvash K. M.In hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
There’s a girl in the sunset 
Her hair is ablaze 
Her dupatta streams 
In the arid breeze 
I can’t see her face 
I catch my breath 
She stands there still, so still 
I see the horizon seethe and rage
Scorch her in its red-hot rampage  
I close my eyes
I’m afraid to look
Afraid to see the heavens burn
Afraid to see the ashes blown
Of the girl that is standing there alone 

But then 

My stinging eyelids fly open, I see
She’s still there
She looks back at me 
The blaze of the sun 
Now a shimmering red
Halo around her head
Like a crown. She won’t go down 
When her world careens
When her world burns all around 
Grey smoke rising from the sea 
Of charred, asphyxiated dreams 
She stands there serene
She gathers the light around her being 
She smiles, she gleams
She is the fire queen.