Kind of quirky, a tad controversial, a little whimsical and chockfull of farce
Sit with me today my love
We don’t have to talk
I just want to know you’re here
So I can feel your warmth
The day’s been difficult and sad
My body throbs with pain that’s new
There are little jagged holes
In my desolate heart now too
I thought that I would go to bed
Lie with my grief a while
But that kind of lonesomeness
In its visceral rank and file
Is not what my aching heart yearns for
While in its darkened nook it weeps
So sit with me for a bit my love
Let your tenderness cloak me.
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.
For my beloved sister who is swept in the constant tides of farewells and then meeting-again-for-too-short-a-while. And for all the other parents whose fledglings have taken wing, may you continue to find your joy and serenity.
They are the quickening parts of you
That you bestow upon the world
Beings that become other people
Independent. Adult.
Then there’s the anxiety and tumult
Of letting them go
From the safe radius of the home
From the proximity of your everyday touch
From the protective circle of your sinewy arms
Each muscle a testament
To years of being superhuman
A perpetual hero, a champion
And now you also have
Your own growing pains to bear
Of them not being there
As they make their start
In places you can’t be
Coming back to rest
To lay down tired heads
On other pillows, other beds
Their childhood rooms
Stirring softly with their scents
But my dearest, don’t despair
These aches pass, they morph
They bloom into other things
A kinship deep as all the seas
A bond of care that is more even-keeled
Conversations, confidences, the sharing of dreams
They are out there now
Let them live and love
With all their might
You’ve done your part
They know the tree
The orchard, the seeds
That they’ve sprung from
Now let them go
Let your fluttering, bursting heart
Give them wings to fly
Fly, fly, up, up high
Into the vastness of the sky
Let them whoop with joy
Let them go
Where the soul moves them
Out into the brilliant world
To take a little bit of it
Make it their own
Let them imprint it
With their hearts and their minds
Let them be quirky, let them be kind
Let them be funny, let them be full
Of passion, of hope, of tenderness
Let them roar and cheer and also tear up
At life’s beauty, excitement, its bruises and cuts
Let them show all their own shades of loveliness
Let them add to the shimmering throng
Of all that’s vital, new and strong
And you, dear beloved
With your empty nest
Now filled with books
Or paints or pets
You who have begotten them
Stand fast and true and wise
Behind them. Cheer them on
As they sing their own songs
In the great choir of life.
I had a dream last night
You were in it
Fuzzy, unclear
But the hook was there
That had plucked you from somewhere
Inside my head or maybe
From some deserted place in my heart
It wasn’t an act
Of which I was aware
I had no say
In the furtive way
You appeared around me again
Even if you were phantasmic, chimerical
In that time, you were real
A swaying, decaying bridge coupling
The physical and the figmental
It left a bitter aftertaste
In my mouth when I awoke
I brushed my teeth
With renewed vitality
(My dentist would be happy at least)
I spent the day going over the locks
I had put around certain memories
These escapes
Even in my dreams
Made me restless, agitated me
When I was awake
Tonight I will have my dose
Of vitamins and minerals
(They promise all sorts of well-being)
So that when I dream
The bolted doors inside of me
Keep holding their integrity
But even if they lose their might
Releasing spectres of the night
I know that in my waking hours
In dissecting and determining
The cryptic whys and wherefores
Of night-garish visages
Invading, distressing me
These dreams, these unbidden images
Have already lost their sting
They have shed their whipping wings
To fly at me when I’m asleep
Through all of my monster-proofing
And so deep down inside
Something tells me that tonight
I will dream of other things.
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 leaves
In their swaying 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
Lips everywhere
Spilling the same prayers
As with our souls bared
We fuse, we unify
With something new in the air.
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.
Life is like a box of chocolates
Someone once said
Sometimes you get
The caramel-drenched centres
That melt in the mouth
Like liquid satin, swishing on your tongue
In silky, sweet tones
Caressing your taste buds until
Languidly, unhurriedly
They lavish one last nectarous kiss
Before disappearing
In ambrosial bliss
Down the tunnel of your throat
At others it’s the bitterness of a centre
That’s dark - 90% cacao
That unleashes on your tongue
Spearing, laughing, spearing again
Inflicting a bitter-sweet pain
Just enough for you to stop and think
To wonder if this is good
A revelation
Of taste, an experience
That’s bold, distinct
To recall, to remember when
You’re short on inspiration
Or whether in fact
It is an assault no less
On the mundaneness
The safeness
On your everydayness
Plodding on your tongue
Like a thug that’s sold
His essence, his soul
To the gods of gastronomic
Absurdity and virulence
I look back, the rhyme is longer
For the bitterness that lingers
In the mouth; but I have also realized
That my taste buds have conspired
With my mind to bind
Most of the time
To memories that are wholesome
Sugared, caramelised
So even when I pick
A chocolate from life’s mix
I hope for the sweetness
The toffiness, the bliss
But I also sit in readiness
For the wave of bitterness
That sometimes takes me in its grip
But always itinerant
Shifting, moving on
And so I too go on
Savouring
Every piece, never wavering
From the cholocate box of life.
You Are
Too different
Too controversial
Too weird
Too quiet
Too absent
You Are
Too passionate
Too frigid
Too pushy
Too gregarious
Too reserved
You Are
Too opinionated
Too invested
Too indifferent, disinterested
You Are
Too much but
You Are
Also not enough
These arrows used to fly
East and west
Between the bazaars and the mosques
Down and up
From my beating heart
To my silent mouth, forging
Right angles containing me
In burnished boxes glittering bright
But in the moorings
Of all these paradoxes writhing out
Like strident dirges from treacherous lyres
Howling of brimstone and hellfire
Now I hear only one thing
I only hear that one constant thing
YOU ARE!
In the refrains that ring
Thunder and break
I hear it sing:
YOU ARE!
In all that cacophony
In the clarion calls of propriety
Pounding, rounding endlessly
From the steeples of society
That is all I ever hear now
🌸 YOU ARE! 🌸 YOU ARE! 🌸 YOU ARE! 🌸
Yes I am! I finally am! This is me
And that is all I ever need to be.
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 its 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.
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.
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.
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.
Mahvash Mohtadullah - The Roaming Desi 