Category: writing
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.
VERSE | DIRKING PORCUPINE
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.
VERSE | RINSE, RECYCLE AND REPEAT
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.
VERSE | HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAREST ONE 🌺
There is a little photograph
That sits upon my shelf
In its monochromatic hues it holds
My world in its sweet self
A vision sits inside the frame
A smile lights up her face
She’s looking out from beaming eyes
In another time and place
Even as I look at her
She reaches inside my heart
Pulling at blue-purple strings
Of memories tender and soft
I can almost feel the comforting
Gentleness of her hand
It lies there like a lilly
On the railing where she stands
I wish sometimes for magic
An alchemy of the souls
for a few quicksilver moments
Your beautiful hands to hold
Then I close my eyes and reach
For your vital warmth once more
I’m wrapped up in nostalgia
For times and places from before
Your photo sits on my shelf, Mama
It’s full of your love and grace
On most days I just reach within
And you hold me in your loving embrace.
VERSE | CONTRARIETY AND CATHARSIS
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.
NEW BOOK RELEASE!
“QUIRKY CREATURES, AN EGG, A FRUIT AND A STAR“
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
VERSE | A DOVE SHE’S NOT
NOTE: a flock of doves is variously called a cote, dole, dule, bevy, flight, and piteousness.
If my peace was like a dove
A wooing, cooing ball of fluff
I’d catch a little flight of them
And find serenity again
But every time that I have tried
To visualize, to catch some sight
Of the piteousness said to stop wars
Assuage wounds, bruises and sores
It flutters out of my mind’s eye
I’m left gazing at an empty sky
And so I looked for something else
To calm my inner sweeps and swells
And then one day it came tiptoeing
Into my quietest imaginings
The vision of a tranquil lake
A gentle, shimmering, blue-green slate
Now when my hurrying-scurrying world without
Seems like it’s turning upside down
I close my eyes and I transport
Myself to that peaceful spot
I’m far away from everything
My troubles bolt, they take wing
My core gleams softly in the place
Where I sit by the lapping lake
My inner peace, a dove she’s not
But all the stillness I have sought
Is by a lake, without its birds
They await me in my outside world.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 