I have lost the rituals Of faith. But my devotion has Become stronger. I no longer Am afraid or confused by questions that Whirl around in my head Never to be brought into existence Their very substance damning Pounding, hammering a path to (h)elsewhere I now wear a cloak around My shoulders. It holds a super power A texture all its own. When I’m alone It reminds me of who I am It fosters my introspection It champions who I want to be And then I feel No other burden of pretense Or suspense No fear of consequence For being so much more And ritualizing less I have no dire need to find my Hallowed steed to gallop on with Me holding on, bound for paradise This life, this blessed life is mine To treat with such passion Such tenderness, that earth Our beautiful earth Itself becomes the Eden I seek My paradise is under my own feet.
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.
Inspired by the vastness of our universe, and the impermanence and fragility of our own little blue green planet.
The moon hangs low like a key lime pie In a firmament strewn with golden gleams of zest The sky like a cosmic porcelain platter Holds this sweet perfection in a state of rest
I sip on my tea as I sit back in my chair And look at the glimmering stars up on high My mind is a telescope of infinite scale My soul, a radar that amplifies
I see nebulous orbs dancing around I see their frigid friends standing their ground I see the little ones and the gargantuan greats I see the middling ones jostling for space
I see luminous worlds move in grandiose arcs Leaving star dust in their celestial wake I see comets race into indigo depths Gleefully chased by their blazing tails
I see weighty old stars in their twilight of being Collapse in a mighty roar of ultimate endings I see embryonic knots of vital masses Heating up at their core in hopeful beginnings
I see torus-shaped, shard-textured asteroid belts Circling around an oblong of planets I feel the formidable power of gamma ray bursts As they cannonade up vaults of ink-silver granite
I see pulsars and quasars whirling around Solar winds spreading out in feathered plumes I hear the happy hum of the cosmos above me Like a foetus hears her mother from inside the womb
I collapse the telescope of my mind I shut down the radar of my soul I look back down into the eyes of our Earth Now blurred and smudged with eventide kohl
I don’t hear the hum of her kinetic voice Nor feel the tenderness of her warm embrace I don’t smell the bouquet of her fragrant skin Nor see the glow of her beautiful face
The cosmos continues to dazzle and shine To skip and to leap, to dive and to fly While our own little world continues to be The storm in our teacups, the dust in our eyes.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven… But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.” Elizabeth B. Browning
This is a tribute to all the women in fact who are oppressed, reduced and shamed in the name of religion, and who still find the strength and dignity to go on another day.
O Talib*, O ye self-professed Learned One,
I have something to say to you. You can whip up monsters from the air and call them your Shariah*. You can torture and mangle “your” women, break their spirits and their bodies and call it the Word of God. You can wear your imperious lungee* and as it swishes around in the wind, you imagine the very angels dancing around you. You grow your hairy beards, and hide your malevolent grins behind them. You rumble and you roar and that is your devotion. You maim and you kill and you call that Divine intervention.
But then secretly you also glance at your reflections and you see what we all see: imperfect, angry, reviled men trying to validate their existence in the only way they can - by wiping the planet clean of the scourge of the Double (H)Ex*. But then you pause with the greatest effort known to the Men of God and you think: How can we annihilate this evil, garbed in soft flesh if we are to propagate and procreate? How else are we to add to the rank and file of Allah’s soldiers?
The conundrum is excruciating. So you continue to brutalize and ravage just short of pushing her six feet under. Just so you can crush her under you instead and make her pay for staying alive. To bear and to beget your many sons. To nurture and feed your rabid army of the Men of Allah.
O Ye Men of Allah,
I have something to say to you. Hear me.
I am the Daughter of the Universe; the Yin to your Yang, the ultimate balancing act of God’s will gone wrong in your hands.
Hear me. We will be who we are: the proud women of Afghanistan. Our honour lies serenely, supremely, completely in the depths of our own eyes, not in yours.
Look at me. Don’t hide behind your fragile male bravado. Look at me. Don’t turn your suddenly shameful eyes away.
Look at me. Look at me.
Look at me as I rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you kicked aside. Look at me as I look at you. Look at me and see what you have become. Look at me as your heart Drains … Shrivels …. Breaks …. Burns in its own hell.
Hear me, my voice will echo through my sisters even if mine falls silent. You will Hear me.
Look at me, even if it is at my corpse as I go to meet my Maker. You will Look at me.
For Allah hears me. For Allah sees me.
Allah stands behind me as we both look at you. As we both await you.
The “Where is My name” campaign. Laleh Osmany campaigning to have the mother’s name included in the birth certificate.Her study centre was bombed. But Shamsiya, a Coal miner’s daughter still tops in Afghan University entrance exam“A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.” – Marge Piercy
* Double (H)Ex: Word play on the double X chromosomes that all female mammals possess. Hex is a spell or a curse.
* Talib: Scholar; Learned one.
* Shariah: Islamic law derived from the teachings of the Quran but mainly from the Prophet Muhammad. It is not a list of rules but rather a set of principles on aspects of life, including marriage, divorce, finance and rituals such as fasting and prayer.
I wake up today There’s a keening in my heart It sits there familiarly Waiting for me To take its hand and walk with it Feel its ardor, talk to it Make it wholly, soully mine
But the lethargy that is life Has been pulling for a while At my seams, they’ve come undone I cannot find it in me now To acknowledge this someone This something that looks at me With glowing eyes, dark and deep
I stay aware of it But like a balm I keep it topical Let it rouse me for a while With dreams of higher things Dire things, of touching lives Even a few, maybe just two Or even just one …
But now I have also learnt To preserve myself That strain of goodness Stands no chance In the dulling sludge of circumstance And a will that’s willowy Bendable, collapsible And so when it stares at me A cosmos of possibilities I look away But I stay aware Of its unsettling symmetry
It’s easier this way As the days spill Into each other Unremarkable I tell myself at least I’m not Doing anything to hurt the lot Humankind, neighbours, the child Snotty-nosed running wild In the streets where a mother sits On the pavement resigned Circled by dead dreams and things Spaces that once gleamed with hope And all the while I tell myself At least my intentions are good.
The blue-purple sky today Has spent its moisture-ladenness It is now cloaked in quietness Its sadness it has put away In some clouded corner that Will hold it, hide it tenderly For now it wears a lighter heart Star-smeared, it now gleams Wetly with nostalgia A tender melancholia I look at it as it glimmers Stalwart in its eternalness Its timelessness, its ceaselessness I yearn for that serenity That noiselessness, that peacefulness I take in a ragged breath All my grief sits in my chest Heaving, cleaving achingly Endlessly, relentlessly I look at the resolute sky At its crush of dewy stars Valiantly twinkling at me And I look away Tonight I don’t feel brave enough To let the shimmering cloak of night Take me into its embrace Away, away from my sad place. It moved its glutted grief today The sorrowing, water-laden sky And I have in my wretchedness Made it my own this starry night.
Oh look at that beautiful dragonfly It’s turning somersaults Its peacock coloured gossamer wings Perfect, without fault! But you didn’t catch the fleeting glimpse It bestowed upon this scene You were on your phone lost in Digital worlds upon your screen
Did you see that butterfly Just sit upon my arm Brown and orange-yellow wings It was full of golden charm! You missed its quickening beauty As it said hello and went You were caught in your own loop Eyes down, heart still, head bent
I had to hold my breath there That scene was so sublime The grand eagle swooping down And then soaring back up high! Where, where? you ask me now As you look at an empty sky You were fretting, agitating As nature sprang her wondrous surprise
Glittering dragonflies, murmurations Eagles in majestic flight A shower of blossoms, a ladybird loveliness Nature exulting in life Magical, mystical, shimmering marvels Surround us at all times Some of us get to revel in their beauty Some stay trapped by Sentinel Time
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.
I sit here, open my laptop Look out at the sea From the terrace of an iconic hotel My work venue as a freelancer, a digital nomad I write, what does that make me? The titles meander endlessly Senselessly
This little bit of serenity This deliberate grasping of nature’s stillness Has become a habit now Preserving my sanity My emotional equilibrium if you will Before I dive into my world of responsibilities And regulations that keep changing Anew with ever more creative indignities
It’s time to reapply for the visa The one bestowing a residency - some permanency Is still ephemeral, a dream So I keep doing my tawaf Perambulating around the aspiration Denied to me Meanwhile I look for other little oft-trodden paths Like visit visas that are stark And tie and bind me into a cell Purgatorial, ‘twixt heaven and hell
I can’t put down roots I cant roam free That is for the other folks The ones with passports Thin as wafers, pristine Devoid of stamps and seals That pull you into parentheses An afterthought, you’re one of the horde Picked out from discord, erratically For a while allowed to be A part of regular humanity That throngs its shores In NY caps and Bermuda shorts Dollars and dollars Lining their seams Blissful, unaware of what runs in the veins Of those who smile and smile and gleam Who enthrall and beguile For a while before going back To the crumbling shacks That once were homes Pulverized by landslides and floods Now pulled together by mud and stones
How do I know? Because behind the smile I’ve seen the pain Heavy and sodden like monsoon rain Of the tuktuk drivers, the servers, the valets Whose three-wheelers bear me week after week - ceaselessly Whose lattes I sip while they look out at the sea - pensively Who stand there smiling, ready to greet - endlessly Their eyes have welled With tears, with fears; so have mine I know, I know and I understand Pariahs all of us in this land That is meant to be our home That has since become a tomb.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 