You Are Too different Too controversial Too weird Too quiet Too absent
You Are Too passionate Too frigid Too pushy Too gregarious Too reserved
You Are Too opinionated Too invested Too indifferent, disinterested
You Are Too much but You Are Also not enough
These arrows used to fly East and west Between the bazaars and the mosques Down and up From my beating heart To my silent mouth, forging Right angles containing me In burnished boxes glittering bright But in the moorings Of all these paradoxes writhing out Like strident dirges from treacherous lyres Howling of brimstone and hellfire Now I hear only one thing I only hear that one constant thing
YOU ARE!
In the refrains that ring Thunder and break I hear it sing:
YOU ARE!
In all that cacophony In the clarion calls of propriety Pounding, rounding endlessly From the steeples of society That is all I ever hear now
🌸 YOU ARE! 🌸 YOU ARE! 🌸 YOU ARE! 🌸
Yes I am! I finally am! This is me And that is all I ever need to be.
This is an unlovely ode to bad relationships. It is also for all those still tempted to give toxic relationships chance number 2 and 3 and God forbid even more. May you keep moving ahead, above, beyond.
That gaze was just too intense My head felt like a beaten egg Yolks and white all combined To give me wishy-washy legs
I was usually in control My heart never rested on my sleeve But that stare, your yen laid bare Made my ribs into a sieve
And so my sage old heart popped out Of its latticed bulwarked den It leaped gaily down my arm And upon my sleeve I wore it then
It leaped and skipped all the while That you sat to my left I tried to brush it off my arm But my heart dodged me, it was deft
By and by it took up the song Of new love, brazen and bold My thrumming blood picked up the tune As it danced in its venous folds
I felt my eyes light up like stars My face catch on wild fire As you cast your eerie spell Of infatuation and desire
The rest as they say is history It doesn’t behoove my gentle pen To transcribe and eternalize Chapters closed with an amen!
Like loaded missiles, your eyes today Once again bore into me That day I was the prey you sought But today I am armed to my teeth
That gaze is just deception cold It’s so clear, now I can see As back it kicks and ricochets Into the desert of your being.
My book of poetry and essays SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS will be available in bookstores across Pakistan and Sri Lanka at the end of December 2022.
FRIENDS IN SL can get their copies TODAY from the Jam Fruit Tree bookstore on Galle road in Colombo via call/ WhatsApp to 072-7268078.
Shimmering Scraps is a collection of poems and essays, rumblings of the heart about the joys, the truths, the pain, the controversies, the funniness and the wonder that criss cross all our lives in one way or another.
The book is divided into five sections: Joy, Foot-in-the-mouth, Truth, Hope and Serenity. The Truth and Foot-in-the-Mouth categories are especially brazen and raw. As with most such uninhibited writing, the objective is to assail the sensibilities and even if just for a while, to look the truth right in its jaundiced eye. The other three sections are largely whimsical and uplifting very much like walking through a zen corridor, which I’m hoping, will also soften the sensory assault of the former two segments.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 