Category: writing

VERSE| THE WOODEN BENCH

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, serenity, verse, writing2 Comments

We have all, at some time or another been overwhelmed, overpowered, bested by our grief, anxiety and wretchedness. At those times, some of us have also been lucky enough to have that one place where we have, for a while, found some degree of quietude and peace. This is a tribute to those secret little places and spaces of comfort and healing in our lives.

There is this wooden bench I like
It’s not fancy, quite the common type
Cloaked in by the dappled canopy
Of a gracefully pirouetting Mara tree
It sits in the park like a dear old friend
Its well-worn embrace ever welcoming
A young couple walks up, caught in the grips of wrath 
Love is lost, it’s the wretched aftermath
Words are exchanged until the fury’s spent 
Frustration - Anxiety - Sadness - Silence
Then they sit down on the wooden bench …
Slowly muscles relax and nerves untense
Even if it is a passing interlude
Loads are lightened, hearts are soothed.

Wild flowers grow lushly around its feet 
Bobbing bright heads to earth’s vital beat
The bench sits there like a quiet friend 
It’s well-worn seat ever welcoming
A man sits down in a state of unease 
Holding on to his hat in an errant breeze
He picks up his phone and looks at the screen
The unlit glass reflects the tranquil scene …
He looks up and around him his brow somewhat eased
Fleeting albeit, he’s found his moment of peace. 

Songful birds and their terrestrial friends
Roam warbling and chittering around the bench
Hoping for a serendipitously fallen treat 
They browse busily around the seat
A wheelchair-bound man looks up at an overcast sky
His female companion already has water in her eyes
They sit side by side in worlds of their own 
Reminiscence weighs heavy of days that are gone
A mynah trills as a light drizzle falls
And a sweet petrichor briefly dispels the pall …
The man looks at her, takes her hand and she smiles 
For now they’re alright, tomorrow is still a while. 

I too have sat in nature’s restoring arms 
On that bench where she weaves her alchemical charms
I too have unburdened my hopes and my fears 
I too have laid my bursting heart bare
And I have heard her soothing murmurs 
That have quietened my deepest despair
I’ve looked into her soft eyes from that corner in the park
For a time, my soul too has emerged from the dark …
The clouds have parted, the sun has shone through 
And I’ve breathed more easily, sitting on that wooden pew.

Image generated vis illustration software

KIDS BOOKS | THE QUESTING QUILL-O-MAN

On By Mahvash K. M.In bookworm, childrensbooks, verse, writingLeave a comment 
There was once a young man
Well he was not quite twelve
He always kept behind his ear
A porcupine quill 

Sometimes that quill was purple
Sometimes like the sun
He painted them with loving hands
Our curious Quilloman 

The story goes that one night while he
Chased villains in his sleep
A kindly witch came floating down 
And said “O Quilly listen to me”

“If you want to live nice and long
And have adventures far and near
You must carry a colourful quill
Tucked neatly behind your ear”

And so our quirky Quill-o-Man
Thought he must heed these words
And that is how he collected
One thousand quills I’ve heard

“O Quilloman, O Quilloman!”
Everyone who passed him cried 
“Why do you carry all these quills
Who will you stab tonight?”

You see our oddball Quilloman
Had adventures in his mind
Where he roamed with his best friend
Sir Lancelot the knight 

Together they fought battles
A lot of blood was spilled
The knight fought with his lance 
And our hero with his quill 

Then while on an adventure
One medieval Wednesday
Sir Lancelot lost his lance
While he was stabbing away 

Quilloman was so shocked 
He dropped his own quill too
Blade-less and point-less
There stood the warriors two

It is believed that was the day
That turned the tide for Quilloman
He stopped collecting piny quills 
And had pockets full of sand

Our brave Quilly continued his
Madcap make-believe
Surfing in his sandy bedroom
In goggles and his briefs

Every few years, Quilloman hears
Of how he can improve
His ruddy health and his adventures
And finds hobbies anew

So next time you see someone who looks
Like they’re having too much fun
Surfing or flying or poking at things 
You’ll know you’ve met Quill-o-Man.
Image: Generated via Recraft illustration software
Featured

FREE VERSE|LETTER FROM AN AFGHAN GIRL TO HER TALIBAN CAPTORS

On By Mahvash K. M.In Afghanistan, Politics, truth, writingLeave a comment

This is a tribute to all the women in fact who are oppressed, reduced and shamed in the name of religion, and who still find the strength and dignity to go on another day.

O Talib*, O ye self-professed Learned One,

I have something to say to you. 
You can whip up monsters from the air and call them your Shariah*. 
You can torture and mangle “your” women, break their spirits and their bodies and call it the Word of God. 
You can wear your imperious lungee* and as it swishes around in the wind, you imagine the very angels dancing around you. 
You grow your hairy beards, and hide your malevolent grins behind them. 
You rumble and you roar and that is your devotion. 
You maim and you kill and you call that Divine intervention.

But then secretly you also glance at your reflections and you see what we all see: imperfect, angry, reviled men trying to validate their existence in the only way they can - by wiping the planet clean of the scourge of the Double (H)Ex*. But then you pause with the greatest effort known to the Men of God and you think:
How can we annihilate this evil, garbed in soft flesh if we are to propagate and procreate? How else are we to add to the rank and file of Allah’s soldiers? 

The conundrum is excruciating. So you continue to brutalize and ravage just short of pushing her six feet under.  Just so you can crush her under you instead and make her pay for staying alive. To bear and to beget your many sons.  To nurture and feed your rabid army of the Men of Allah.


O Ye Men of Allah,

I have something to say to you. Hear me.

I am the Daughter of the Universe; the Yin to your Yang, the ultimate balancing act of God’s will gone wrong in your hands.

Hear me. We will be who we are: the proud women of Afghanistan. Our honour lies serenely, supremely, completely in the depths of our own eyes, not in yours. 

Look at me. Don’t hide behind your fragile male bravado. 
Look at me. Don’t turn your suddenly shameful eyes away. 

Look at me. Look at me.

Look at me as I rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you kicked aside. 
Look at me as I look at you. 
Look at me and see what you have become. 
Look at me as your heart Drains … Shrivels …. Breaks …. Burns in its own hell.

Hear me, my voice will echo through my sisters even if mine falls silent. You will Hear me.

Look at me, even if it is at my corpse as I go to meet my Maker. You will Look at me.

For Allah hears me. For Allah sees me.  

Allah stands behind me as we both look at you. As we both await you.
The “Where is My name” campaign. Laleh Osmany campaigning to have the mother’s name included in the birth certificate.
Her study centre was bombed. But Shamsiya, a Coal miner’s daughter still tops in Afghan University entrance exam
“A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.” – Marge Piercy
* Double (H)Ex: Word play on the double X chromosomes that all female mammals possess.  Hex is a spell or a curse.

* Talib: Scholar; Learned one.

* Shariah: Islamic law derived from the teachings of the Quran but mainly from the Prophet Muhammad. It is not a list of rules but rather a set of principles on aspects of life, including marriage, divorce, finance and rituals such as fasting and prayer.

* Lungee: turban/ cloth worn around the head.

VERSE | INERTIA

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, truth, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
I wake up today
There’s a keening in my heart
It sits there familiarly
Waiting for me
To take its hand and walk with it
Feel its ardor, talk to it 
Make it wholly, soully mine

But the lethargy that is life
Has been pulling for a while
At my seams, they’ve come undone
I cannot find it in me now
To acknowledge this someone 
This something that looks at me
With glowing eyes, dark and deep

I stay aware of it
But like a balm 
I keep it topical
Let it rouse me for a while
With dreams of higher things
Dire things, of touching lives
Even a few, maybe just two
Or even just one …

But now I have also learnt 
To preserve myself 
That strain of goodness 
Stands no chance 
In the dulling sludge of circumstance 
And a will that’s willowy 
Bendable, collapsible 
And so when it stares at me
A cosmos of possibilities 
I look away
But I stay aware 
Of its unsettling symmetry 

It’s easier this way
As the days spill
Into each other
Unremarkable 
I tell myself at least I’m not
Doing anything to hurt the lot
Humankind, neighbours, the child
Snotty-nosed running wild
In the streets where a mother sits 
On the pavement resigned
Circled by dead dreams and things 
Spaces that once gleamed with hope
And all the while I tell myself 
At least my intentions are good.

Image: Mia Lane

VERSE | SIT WITH ME

On By Mahvash K. M.In hope, Kindness, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
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.
Image: Fine Art America

VERSE | BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

On By Mahvash K. M.In Joy, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments

This poem is written from 2 separate perspectives of 2 different people sitting in a cafe. Oftentimes, in our beautiful world, inner and outer imperfections can become calming, comforting and even uplifting. 

I see her in the cafe 
She’s sitting on her own 
Like me
A cup of coffee
Rests in front of her
Lines huddle in the space between her brows
They’re furrowed now
In some private grief or anxiety 
Only her cup knows for sure
As she stares into the darkness within 
Her lips tremble for a moment 
Just a bit. She takes a quick sip
Of the vitalising potion
Swallowing her emotions
Down they both go
The sadness and the coffee
Lingering on the inside now 
I feel my heart go out to her 
It hovers around her table 
Softly, silently, wordlessly 
I want to follow too
But we are strangers 
It wouldn’t do 
She looks up. She sees me
I smile and then I look away guiltily 
Outside the window 
And then down at my own cup of tea 

I see her looking at me 
Just a glance, a little look 
Then away from the nook
I am sitting at 
But that little exchange is everything 
Even in that whisper 
Of a gaze, that smile 
I feel her compassion 
Shimmering around me
Gently, silently, comfortingly  
I look at her as she sits there
In her wheelchair 
Reminding me that frailty 
Is never on the outside 
Her own courage shining bright
Has skipped across the room 
Transforming into a tenderness
Shattering my spell of gloom
My heart lifts and wafts out to her 
I want to follow after 
But we are strangers 
I turn back to my cup
And I smile
I hesitate just for a while 
And then I beam across the room to her 
My heart now light with gratefulness 
Lit up by a beautiful stranger

VERSE | LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

On By Mahvash K. M.In Faith, hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments 
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.
Image: Steven Willis

VERSE | STARRY NIGHT

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, Sadness, truth, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
The blue-purple sky today 
Has spent its moisture-ladenness
It is now cloaked in quietness 
Its sadness it has put away
In some clouded corner that
Will hold it, hide it tenderly
For now it wears a lighter heart 
Star-smeared, it now gleams
Wetly with nostalgia
A tender melancholia 
I look at it as it glimmers
Stalwart in its eternalness
Its timelessness, its ceaselessness
I yearn for that serenity
That noiselessness, that peacefulness
I take in a ragged breath 
All my grief sits in my chest 
Heaving, cleaving achingly
Endlessly, relentlessly
I look at the resolute sky 
At its crush of dewy stars
Valiantly twinkling at me 
And I look away 
Tonight I don’t feel brave enough 
To let the shimmering cloak of night 
Take me into its embrace 
Away, away from my sad place.
It moved its glutted grief today
The sorrowing, water-laden sky
And I have in my wretchedness
Made it my own this starry night.
Image: Getty Images

VERSE | IF I COULD

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, serenity, verse, womenwriters, writing2 Comments 
If I could live another life with you 
I’d talk of a few more things 
More palpably, more honestly with you
Of things that gnawed 
At my mind; at the way my gut wrenched 
Balling up inside, or even when 
The pit of my belly dissolved 
In a fluttering crush of butterflies 
I’d speak of love light-footed and pure 
The kind that knocks you to the floor 
And the next instant pins shimmering wings
On your tingling spine so you can fly
High high, breath-catchingly high!

I’d talk of heartbreaks too
That shred the organs into little bits 
Where the pain ripples in screaming peals 
My thoughts marking time with the cacophony
Where I stumble on my own feet 
Where I want to just lie down and feel 
Nothing for a while 
I’d share secrets that I have held deep inside
Now frozen, frigid, petrified
Mute scars of speechless agonies
Never named, never identified 

I’d also tell you that I loved 
My quiet, my solitude 
When it was just me in my room
Or just you and me
Sipping tea 
In the lounge, watching tv 
And then I’d tell you about the things 
That would make my tone-deaf heart sing 
A constant humming underneath
Beneath the sheath of my skin
Of peace that was soothing, softening
Of flame-bright hope and quiet joy 

I’d talk to you 
Of beginnings and of endings too
Some tragic some tender 
Of sometimes going under 
But always re-surfacing, I would 
Talk of spirituality, the ethereal kind 
That makes the hair stand on end 
The kind that quickens your breath 
That makes life and even death
A fleeting, splendorous enterprise 
A mystical trip with no finish line

And when your time here or mine
Was drawing to a close 
Together we would 
Strum those notes
One last time
Of all the things that we’d talked about
And all the times that we had spent 
And then I’d have held your hand in mine 
We would have laughed and we would have cried 
And we would have laughed again
Because nothing would have been left 
Unsaid, unfelt at the end.
Image: Cathy Jacobs

VERSE | SENTINEL TIME

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, truth, verse, writingLeave a comment 
Oh look at that beautiful dragonfly 
It’s turning somersaults 
Its peacock coloured gossamer wings
Perfect, without fault!
But you didn’t catch the fleeting glimpse
It bestowed upon this scene
You were on your phone lost in
Digital worlds upon your screen

Did you see that butterfly
Just sit upon my arm
Brown and orange-yellow wings
It was full of golden charm!
You missed its quickening beauty
As it said hello and went
You were caught in your own loop
Eyes down, heart still, head bent

I had to hold my breath there
That scene was so sublime
The grand eagle swooping down
And then soaring back up high!
Where, where? you ask me now
As you look at an empty sky
You were fretting, agitating 
As nature sprang her wondrous surprise

Glittering dragonflies, murmurations
Eagles in majestic flight
A shower of blossoms, a ladybird loveliness
Nature exulting in life
Magical, mystical, shimmering marvels
Surround us at all times
Some of us get to revel in their beauty 
Some stay trapped by Sentinel Time

VERSE | HUMID SQUALLS

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, Rant!, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
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.
Image: Gerry Miles

VERSE | GENTLE GLOOM

On By Mahvash K. M.In hope, poetry, verse, womenwriters, writingLeave a comment 
Today I woke up to clouds 
Sitting in the morning sky 
They’d been there a while 
They looked cozy-comfortable 
Their greyness was all shades 
From the smoky pearl of sparrows eggs
To the steeliness of granite 
They were contented in just being 
There was no bloated turgidity 
To their form, no urgency
To spend themselves 
To waterously end themselves 
To cut their rain-sodden wrists 
To release the essence from their seams 
In a tryst with vanity 
Of azure blue visions and dreams 

These clouds they rolled in differently 
Serenely, so quietly 
They lay claim upon the sky 
Wiping out all the sunlight 
But there were no thunderous sighs
No jagged lightning in their eyes 
No weeping sheeting pouring rain 
No genesis, no annihilation 

These clouds they swept in differently
Stirring up a little breeze 
Cool, it brushed against my skin 
There was no banshee trapped within 
Wailing of storms and other things 
The darkness lingered for a while 
It left a whisper in the breeze 
A silver rustle in the trees
Then gently, gently it went by.
Image: Van Gogh (Wheat field under a cloudy sky)