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 jewelled 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 timorousky 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 vivid hues, 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 that you’ve 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.
Had to share this bit of a silver lining in my tropical monsoon sky – my poem, “Veins” got longlisted in THE PLOUGH 2023 POETRY COMPETITION out of over 2000 entries. Launched my writing career such as it is, two years ago and this is the first formal accolade that has found its meandering way to me, so I’m quite chuffed. Here’s to creating more shimmering scraps of poetry and prose, and to occasionally finding the universe conspiring, encouraging and smiling down too🙏🏼🌸
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your soft smile We’ve said things to each other we didn’t mean Tearing and splitting the vital seams Of the fabric of our togetherness I know that I have felt desolate, helpless We have sat in silence, cold as frost The glow of our closeness long since being lost Somewhere along life’s bewildering way I let your warm hand slip away
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your gentle smile
Through the years we have journeyed on Along the same path but each on our own Forged by our children, we treaded their dreams Only seeing shadows of you and me Still together we walked into middle age But it’s been a while since I really saw your face It’s been a few years since the air around Was filled with your familiar scent and your sound Somewhere, somehow I lost the quickening string That bound us together through thick and through thin
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your lovely smile
But I know you’re still here, your pulse still beats warm Even as we’ve both whipped up raging storms They’ve whirled inside, while we’ve pulled away The terrible loneliness adding to the fray I know that we are a great distance apart But I can still feel you in the depths of my heart Let me find you once again in the mists Of sepia memories, reminiscences Let me hold your hand as I once did before Let us walk together, in step once more
I lost sight of you, dearest for a while Let me love you again, let me make you smile.
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.
It’s so soakingly humid That I swim on the pavements I glide Through the waves of moisture Like an eel, No, like a duck in water Submerged, breathing through new-fangled gills A chimerical, mystical thing The stuff of science fiction and ETs In a universe of visions and dreams Morphing, dissolving, changing Even as I wade on
When I bring a glass to my lips To quench a thirst that sits Uneasily, timorously in my throat There, but not really there More habit-driven than the need To drench a parched desert inside my skin I swim into the water Like a goldfish, lips turgid Gut kicking against the liquid intrusion But the impulse of living Compels me to sip, sip, sip Until I think I’ve had enough
When I dress in the morning Each garment feels like cellophane Stuck tightly to me, I’m cling-wrapped Even though each begins its day airily Lightly. I look at myself in the mirror My forehead is already wet In the heat of protest Against the layers I must don Linen - lying-in wait to suffocate Cotton - caught-on my liquified bones Fabric, propriety, a proper-riot Of ceaseless stickiness More fabric, more properness I ignore the tangled wrangle within I now wear also my morning smile Even as my upper lip glistens With the sweat of struggle Ageless now, muscle-memorized I step onto the pavement To swim, swim, swim In my designated line.
I see my shadow lengthen With the ebbing of the day I feel it suck up all the sadness From the bowels of the earth With its purple, glistening hoard Of melancholia and hopelessness I move ceaselessly, restlessly I will my never-stopping feet To sever the tortured bond That my swelling shade has formed With the darkening world around But my shadow just spreads out Ever further on the ground It suckles at night’s dreary breast Absorbing all her suffering So that nothing should remain In earth’s mighty store of pain With its ravening tentacles My twilight shadow reaches in Never faltering in its aim It will not stop it will not rest Until it has gorged itself On a sorrow that is infinite It’s bloated edges Endlessly dredge The gloom from earth’s wounded veins My shadow ripples and it writhes Waning only when daylight Breaks the tragic coupling Of the shades and sadness of nighttime.
Theme: Growing pains with the arrival of a new brother or sister
“I don’t want a little sister! And I don’t want a brother too!” Said Adam with his cheeks puffed out He was angry at the news He did not want to share his toys Nor share his mother and father With another child who would Live in his home forever
And so he stomped and huffed and puffed And said “Nooo! The idea stinks!” His parents looked at each other And quietly tapped their chins What were they to do they thought With their one and only child Adam never behaved like this So angry and so wild
“Darling son, it is but natural To have a balanced family With a brother or a sister Who can grow up and be Your best friend, your playmate Someone you can love And you will always be our Adam Our precious, oldest one”
But Adam still felt moody And went up to his room He couldn’t find his happy smile So he wore his maddest frown He looked at himself in the mirror His reflection stared right back His pouty face looked so silly Hahaha! Hoohoo! He had to laugh!
When little Amara came into the world And his parents brought her home Adam looked at her for a while At her cheeks and her tiny nose He touched one small chubby hand And when she held his little finger He laughed his happy laugh and he knew That he already loved his baby sister.
She’s caught in the rush of hurrying feet Snippets of conversations Of laughter, exclamations She’s caught in a tidal wave Of teeming, streaming life She’s caught in the swell Of people of voices, of sights and smells Riding the vital wave Pushing ahead Her silk scarf catches the breeze Of swelling, surging humanity She feels it pull Floating just a little in front of her She quickens her step Her feet instinctively keeping up With the urgency of life She feels something In her gut, the pit of her stomach A ripple, almost a laugh! She inhales deeply, she can’t place This sudden lightness of being It feels out of place This morning, mourning She had felt like lead Now like vapor she rises up Colourless, clean In that moment she’s someone else Propelling her body like a comet Lighter, brighter almost serene
She arrives at her gate 8A The same number, the place Where this very morning She had buried them She had forgotten For a few moments Who she was She was desolation and grief itself Wearing the bruises of loss Mourning only this morning It all came back dawning As she came to herself As her blood remembered And curdled inside A freezing, heaving cauldron of chills She sank into the depths of her seat 9B There was a sequence Monumental, compelling To her agony She had to remember She couldn’t forget Her world had ended When she had buried her dead.
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.
A lit up sky The stars shine A bit too bright tonight A glittering mask To hide behind Their fatigue lies cloaked On the other side Here for the world to see They shine endlessly Their brassy edges Invisible, unseen But on the other side Hiding in day-light De-lighted They just seem Like ancient divas Bested by life But by habit and by pride Still cutting through The famelessness The agonizing namelessness Their jagged lightning Stumbling through the firmament Tearing at the vaulted heights One more time One more time Just one more time To light up the sky.
Mahvash Mohtadullah - The Roaming Desi 