Category: womenwriters
VERSE | COME DOWN-SING-DRUMS PLAY
But you have to wed
There is no other way
Unless of course I’m dead
He’s family, my sister’s son
Your cousin
You’ve known each other
Since forever
Yes, he used to be my brother!
LIKE a brother when you were little
He’s not your brother
Don’t say these bizarre things
‘Bhai hai! Khair hai, chai bana lo’
That wasn’t said so long ago
By you mother, ammi, ammini, enemy
That was then and this is now
I have a child
Sing, drums play for you
A son is born, sing!
My child, so beautiful
Come down sing drums play for you
Sing drums play, come
Down-sing-drums
Play for you, come
Down-Syn-Drums
Play for you, come
Down-syn-drome
Pain for you, come, come down….
This is now and how it shall remain
My child, golden
Beautiful, so beautiful
So angry, so tearful
And also so dry-eyed, so agonized
So angry all the time
He screams again
I close my ears sometimes
I disappear now and then
I look away from his little head
Swollen with tears, angry, unshed
But I had to wed
There was no other way
He was family, her sister’s son
Now my son my son, my beautiful, broken son
There was no other way
I had to become the bride
Unless of course I had died.
VERSE | PALMS TOGETHER
Palms together
Cradling the chakra of your heart
You give of your essence to the world
You pray for healthfulness
For the fruition of dreams and things
The prayer travels from your lips
Like a flock of migrating starlings
It moves with purpose and with aim
Of ardent supplications
It then joins hands with other wraiths
With other ghosts in the gold-green ether
Of immaculate petitions and pleas
That linger in grace fulfilled, replete
And also those that hopeful remain
Floating like fireflies, lighting the way
For other prayers that have lost their way
In the cosmos of blessed invocation
Palms together
Facing the chakra of my solar plexus
I send my own missive into the universe
There are no words to this appeal
My gut sends the scriptless message for me
I’m not quite sure of what it is
I close my eyes and soundlessly
Wordlessly, I send out my energy
To take on what form it will
In the maya of our collective dreams.
VERSE | HOPE PEARLESCENT
It is the bee buzzing round the last summer flower
It is the lightest drizzle on a scorching day
It is the rainbow after it has stormed for hours
That has ravaged everything in its wake
It is the bright little smile on the face of a child
Selling elastics and incenses on the street
When you roll down your window at a traffic light
When you leave her with a kind word or three
It is the weed growing through age-worn furrows
In a cement sidewalk, swaying in the breeze
It is the faithful, steady unbroken flame
That warms the heart of a dying candle
It is the single green leaf on a tree that’s ailing
It is the silent prayer
That leaves your lips
Even when all about you is despair
It is the next step ahead on a broken path
Eyes lighting up a horizon that has fallen dark
Hope is sometimes just the littlest spark
It is feeling like you just can’t go on anymore
It is also your blood gushing stronger than ever before
It is the frame that you pull out of a drawer
Into which you put photos of those that are gone
It is brushing your hair
Pulling it into a bun
It is clipping your nails
When all’s said and done
It is reading this verse
Sitting alone in the quietness
It is laying yourself down in your bed of sighs
It is your throat constricting, you breaking inside
It is also awaking to thunderous skies
Their wetness brimming in your aching eyes
Mangled hearts that still throb in the ebb and the flow
It is you that’s still here
Though you’ve bled and you’ve bruised
Hope pearlesceht strings through all of those.
FREE VERSE | SOMETIMES GRIEF
Look at me… See me
I couldn’t. Everywhere I looked, it was there, looming like a mountain, shivering with the bones and moans of people gone. Rattling its presence constantly. I felt it reach desperate fingers through my veins, slowing my blood to a cold, desolate crawl. Then, roaring through my ears in floods that threatened to rip through the corners of my eyes. My parched eyeballs burned until I couldn’t see.
See me …. Feel me
I couldn’t let myself feel its broken form. Jagged and sharp, it would cut through my flesh everytime I looked at it. No matter how fast I fled, it caught up and gripped me around my chest. So tight, I couldnt breathe. I gasped for air, taking in big choking gulps. And then I ran again. I ran and ran until I couldn’t feel.
Feel me … Hold me
I couldn’t let it engulf my senses, to stir up memories that howled in my head. Its own throbbing soul pitched wretchedly inside its quivering tortured layers. Layers upon layers of purple-grey. Like bruises that just don’t heal. It kept hitting itself bruise upon bruise against the walls of my ribcage until every seam was tattooed with wounding inks. Until it lay prone, ragged and torn. I couldn’t look at it, I couldnt hold it.
Look at me … See me … Feel me … Hold me
Hold me … Feel me … See me … Look at me
I looked at it then, and saw a face there, distorted with pain. So much pain. It was mine.
I saw it then, fold up its battered layers and quietly crawl into my heart
I felt it then, as it tenderly claimed my body, seeping into every atom of my being
I held it at last as it became whole, unbroken, divine. My grief finally belonged to me.
VERSE | PURE
O blue blue sky
How often have you seen
Grown men cry
And children console
Kneeling, hand on a ravaged knee
Balled inside grieving bones
Sunk deep within fractured tombs
Their bare stares full of wonder
Rare, untouched by such things
As sense or consequence
Or contrivance or pretense
Guileless they just gaze and gaze
Eyes wide and bright and beautiful
No little cups brimmeth over
No tears spill
They just watch, they take their fill
There is no shock, there is no awe
Just the truest bluest won-der
One that you may have felt once
O blue blue sky
When for the very first time
You saw all of creation, heaven
And earth perfect, unsullied, pure
From eyes that were of the bluest azure.
VERSE | LOVE ODES IN THE 21ST
Live in the moment, write a verse
Sing a song for better or worse
For those that are still around
Still aground, that still abound
Purrs New Zen in dulcet tones
Cease to scruple, seize this time
This time, say it out
To the ones whose breath still vaults
On quickening wings still topside
Of the cosmic vault up high
But En-meshed and-mashed in
So many things still intertwine
Seethe and sizzle, yours and mine
In gleaming lips and blistered minds
O’er crowds of marigolds and mines
In perfect storms come rain or shine
In eggshell treads, blessings and all
Around the holes within our whole
Where things leak out, eke out, grow cold
Love poems can’t fit in, flit in
To spaces filled with oxygen
Rushing in and then out
In bouts, in routs, in-halations
Love in poetry is pos-thu-mous
Past-the-mists of life’s bliss
Waiting pages like watching sages
Stay pristine, unscripted. Cleaned
By life-sodden exhalations
While lungs and wrists and hearts replete
With forgotten dyes wait to spill
Nostalgic ink in clots and things
In what-if meanderings, when
No more breath is left to draw
Shrinking wraiths on windowpanes
When the dearth of death is overcome
They sink their teeth into the sheets
That flutter for their odes of love.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 