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.
Dirk: A bayonet or a knife. A generally cut-throaty thing.
She can either be an axe-wielding shrew Or a damsel in distress The rainbow between The two states of being Is ephemeral, the stuff of delusions Mirages and wild fantasy She can only be one of those things That nebulous, pearlescent intervening realm Rests in the shadows, forgotten Un-remembered, un-loved It sits in between The shrinking violet and she who staggers Hands full of daggers In the precipitous crags Of no-man’s land
The woman, that grande dame Living in the iridiscent silver sweep Of grace, softness and strength Connecting to the very cosmos itself Reposing in the upraised hand Of Mother Nature, she has a plan She’s not distressed and she’s not a man She’s all woman, passionate, warm She can move mountains She can whip up storms She’s also gentle and wise She’s the one who ties Fathers and daughters and sons In shimmering forever bonds She defines The very ethos of humankind
But she is a fairy, she’s unreal She lives in this other realm So close yet out of reach, and in this Our world she can either be A timorous tea rose or a mannish gal And so she has picked a side The flinty hoyden resides In her everyday garb She charges into streets She advances down corridors of corporate intrigue She launches strategic assaults Against her womanhood, her essence Her femininity To keep her wellbeing even-keeled
Sometimes … sometimes When the primordial instinct kicks in She yearns For her softness, her bliss For the profoundness Of being a woman But that fleeting notion Scatters with the burgeoning of the day Burdening her day She severs the thread, casts it aside She becomes, for the thousandth time A spiny, dirking porcupine And that is how she will stay.
I saw a tree lean in the wind Its leaves tearing, bolting ahead To sate the squalls that pulled at them I thought of you Of my blood careening in my head My limbs convulsing for release My lips struggling to appease The ego that would sunder me I saw the tree lean and lean I heard its leaf-tortured scream My insides churned with the memory I turned away I couldn’t stay And watch nature take my dismal tale Rinse it, recycle and repeat.
I can wake up on the wrong side Of the bed today I can let gravity pull at all my happy curves My smile, my feet that skip My stoical nerves I can despair today I can stare At myself in the mirror for an hour today I can have conversations with her today Openly, honestly Or maybe not I can look away while I sit In front of her looking at me It’s that kind of a paradoxical day Full of contrariness, of rights and lefts Downs and ups, shakes and nods Of sunny dawns and 8am thundery skies Of bewildering vibes and double negatives Of not being entirely unhappy with things Not unstill … but still, not entirely still
The kind of day that hugs you tight Holding you in the hollow of her hands And the next moment thrusts you away With a flick of her wrist. You’re stranded. Alone I look in the mirror trying to decide Whether I want to fret or if I want to fight Stew in my head or go at it The daedalean knot loosens bit by bit
F-i-s-t-i-c-u-f-f-s, a k—ick to the ribs Right-into-the-leathery-heart-of-things
I wage it out in a phantasmal bout Unfailing precision, all contact bulls-eyed Unfettering, releasing with every strike I’m Bruce Lee and Catwoman rolled into one Nothing’s enough. I go all out Riding the bracing rush of my blood Piercing through the eye of the storm
It’s Over, It’s All Done The Battle Within Has Been Won
I take in a breath Deep. Freeing. An all-organ sweep Another breath, reviving, serene The contrariety for today Has been washed away or dry-cleaned Either way By machinations of the mind On battlefronts designed On psychogenic frontlines Or laundromats for bruises and stains Either way, one way or another On the inside, the rumble is done I look into the mirror again Into the quiet depths of her eyes The morning rain has played its song The world is a patchwork of dappled sunshine The lingering clouds are peaceful, unrushed Like the gentle pulse of her bloodstream For a few moments in the mirror today Her tranquillity was in disarray But she can’t despair, not today While the universe around her winks and gleams.
Putting my children’s-book-writer hat on for a bit to introduce my third book in the Curious Animals & Quirky Creatures series: QUIRKY CREATURES, AN EGG, A FRUIT AND A STAR. From the little bee with the huge head, to the mischievous dragonfly trying to steal ladybird’s spots, to the extra bright little firefly, there are ten little stories in this collectible about delightful and funny creatures. Every poem tells of a little act of courage, humour and kindness as each of the little creatures saves the day in its own little way.
IN SRI LANKA: The book is available at Sarasavi, Pendi, Expographics, Seyln, Barefoot and The Jam Fruit Tree bookstores.
IN PAKISTAN: It should be on the shelves in Liberty Books and Readings at the end of July 2023. It will also be available with my aunt Mrs. Nayyar Liaqat.
IN DUBAI: July onwards, you can get your copy from my sister Zarmina by sending her a WhatsApp message.
A big thank you to my illustrator, Chrish Vindhy for the beautiful artwork of the book.
It’s been a fabulous journey with my children’s literature over the last 2 years with over 700 books sold. So thank you to all who have bought, read and gifted them 💕 Here’s to #raisingreaders
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 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 distances 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 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.
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.
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.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 