VERSE | THIS MOURNING

She’s caught in the rush of hurrying feet 
Snippets of conversations
Of laughter, exclamations
She’s caught in a tidal wave
Of teeming, streaming life
She’s caught in the swell
Of people of voices, of sights and smells
Riding the vital wave
Pushing ahead
Her silk scarf catches the breeze
Of swelling, surging humanity
She feels it pull
Floating just a little in front of her
She quickens her step
Her feet instinctively keeping up
With the urgency of life
She feels something
In her gut, the pit of her stomach
A ripple, almost a laugh!
She inhales deeply, she can’t place
This sudden lightness of being
It feels out of place
This morning, mourning
She had felt like lead
Now like vapor she rises up
Colourless, clean
In that moment she’s someone else
Propelling her body like a comet
Lighter, brighter almost serene

She arrives at her gate
8A
The same number, the place
Where this very morning
She had buried them
She had forgotten
For a few moments
Who she was
She was desolation and grief itself
Wearing the bruises of loss
Mourning only this morning
It all came back dawning
As she came to herself
As her blood remembered
And curdled inside
A freezing, heaving cauldron of chills
She sank into the depths of her seat
9B
There was a sequence
Monumental, compelling
To her agony
She had to remember
She couldn’t forget
Her world had ended
When she had buried her dead.
Image: Toyism

VERSE | LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

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 | THE PASSION FLOWER VINE

Outside in the garden
There’s a Passion flower vine
Its little green tendrils
Have curled here and there
Where the shoots are fullest
Lushest, most verdant
They burgeon and grow
Weaving circles of rapture
Until they’ve spun around
Seven times
Lighting up the chakras of life
And then just like that
Their work done
Of dancing in the sun
They fall

Inside the house
There’s a woman
Her hair
Is tied up in a bun
She’s on the run
With little tendrils escaping
At the nape of her neck
She’s rushing upstairs
There’s a toddler emergency
And then she races like the wind
Into the kitchen
To make breakfast
And then she’s on the run again
Appointments, to-do lists, errands
To complete
And then back to cook and clean
To feed and coddle, kiss a bruised knee

The hours weave their set design
Finite, regimented, organized
But she has no sense
Of its texture or lines
The day is done and finally
She sits down for a while
Soft tendrils forming
At the nape - one, two, three
I hold my breath
I count the whorls in the curls
The longest one has six
I look away
A little thought flits up to me
Unexpectedly, a sign
Whispering secrets I don’t want to hear
Of endings on the whorl-bearing vine

She smiles at me tiredly
I wish, I wish fervently
That the curls that gather
Loosely around her neck
Is just hair soaked in sweat
In the labour of love
I pray, I pray silently
Into the depths of whatever’s out there
God, the universe, ethereal energy
For the moisture laden curls to weave
Their mystical circles for a few more years
Until they attest
To a life well-lived, joyfully
Until they wear their silver-grey majesty
Before they finally
Unspool in eternal rest.

VERSE | WALKING ACROSS THE STREET TO THE PARK

I wish this verse was more wholesome and whimsical like Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, but that it is not. This is about women determinedly forging on across streets, bazaars, workplaces, government offices, neighbourhoods and communities. This verse is also not so much about the woman hopeful of change (God knows that’s going to take its time in our blessed homeland), but the woman who is stoic and steadfast. It is the woman who goes about her day despite the odds that pull at her body, spirit and soul. It is the woman who dares to bare her true self despite and in fact because society expects otherwise. It is the woman who walks in her neighborhood afraid yet brave. May you find your grit and your grace for the rest of the days of your life.

A resolute, meaningful Women’s Day to all my friends and family 🌺


I wear my track pants
And a pink shirt, long
It says “Life is a song”
I wonder if it’s too loud
Stoking thoughts like a gong
A shout
To the world of men that teams about
The streets
Eyes peeled
For glimpses of variously clad
Women that are mad
Enough to sidle into the periphery of their sight
And special leery gazes
Trained like full-throttled tasers
On women who dare
To bare
More than the hand wrist down
Or a smidgeon of a toe around
Which sits an uncomfortable sandal
A Soleful reminder
To walk cautiously
To always look behind her
To shrink as small as she is able
So she might pass
With a warning glance
From the men sitting around
Jenetic Judges of right and wrong

For the women who dare
To bare
There’s a special gaze
For their fall from grace
From the fraternity that mills about
The corners of streets
Superior, upright
Pissing in plain sight
Marking their territories
For the women who dare to bare
More than the eyes
Downcast, demure
Vacuous and pure
For them there’s the death stare
Cutting them down to size
I’m one of those
Who - Dares - To - Bare
The woman within
The whole human being
Self assured, aware
She sits in my eyes
Unfaltering, dignified
Even as her heart drums inside
As she traverses that den
Of wolves, dressed as men.
Image: Ramona Pintea

VERSE | FORGED

I was lost 
I took the path
Less trodden, I tossed
Away the ease
Of normalcy
I walked away
Off the street that carried feet
Teeming, streaming busily
Easily, its metalled gray
Smooth and safe, predictable

I’d felt strong, invincible
I walked away
Aimlessly, Trail-lessly,
No signs, no familiarity
I walked I walked
Directionless, solitary
On and on I walked and walked
Until doubts and insecurities
Snaked hoary tendrils around me
But I walked on until my feet
Were bruised and cut
Until they bled
Until I wept

================================
Until I had forged a road ahead
==================================

It now lies cleaved and gravelly
With little grooves
Once stained with blood
And squelching mud
Filled up
With wild flowers now
Sun dappled through shady boughs
The path ahead of me
Now gleams with its own lambency

I was lost
I left the path
oft-trodden, I crossed
Into uncharted territory
Where the wilderness roamed free
Accompanied by the gleam of stars
And the warmth of cherished dreams
There I carved my own way
Hope-hewn, Grit-laden, Endlessly
It now stretches out in front of me.

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VERSE | PIN PRICKS AND PAPER CUTS

There’s a shop down the street
Where you can buy consciences
Gentle pin pricks around your heart
For when you want to sense something
For when you want to feel
A tiny paper cut, a delicate weal
Most times you buy a numbness though
Cloaked in velvety greys and yellows
They’re tailor-made to fit around
Your never-racing, constant heart
And your ever-racing, chasing mind
The greater you can muster
Put down on the counter
The finer the swaddle
To enshroud your qualms
To feel the vaguest of twinges
Of right and wrong
When to see and when to be
Sightless, without sound
Unconscious, uncurious, asleep
In the thick, creamy fabric
Numbingly, comfortingly bound
Gut-driven compass buried deep
Six feet below the ice and the snow
The tsunamis, the floods and the hurricanes
The droughts, the disease, the misery
Interred in darkness, entombed underground
In the meantime there’s a shop that sells
Custom-built, free-of-guilt scruples in town.

VERSE | THROUGH THEIR EYES

She sat there selling bangles 
Set up in a wicker basket
Some laid down on the grass
Every now and then she gently
Swept off the dust that spread thinly
From teeming feet that hurried past
Barely slowing near the woman
Sitting on her haunches hoping
For someone to slow down, to pause
Her concave belly almost touching
The basket that was tugging
The life blood from her womb
Every time that she moved
Spilling it in little driblets
Onto its precious load

The maternal bond of glass and blood
Unremitting, never enough
As she sat car-caressing
Sometimes fretting, sometimes fussing
Rearranging, caring, loving
Always loving, always loving
A tender smile hov-hovering
Around her tired mouth
She was umbilical-corded
To her treasures
Resting in their bed of wicker
Willing them to cleave their way
Into the hearts of passersby
Willing them to shine so bright
That it brought tears to her eyes
The boundless world of plenty
In those bangles by her side

Behind her lay two little heads
Heat-numbed and stupefied
Little thumbs in little mouths
Doing their best to pacify
The endless hunger in their bellies
Matured and rarefied
Over lifetimes spent behind
Their mother as she hummed
Little songs of gentle rain
On golden fields of wheat and rye
Watching their little sisters
Take all their mother’s time
Resting in their basket
They tinkled and they winked
They watched their little sisters
Gleaming, laughing in delight
Suckling on the joyfulness
That streamed from their mother’s eyes.
NB: Image is from the World Wide Web. Artist was not mentioned.

VERSE | BE STILL MY BEATING HEART

Be still my beating heart 
It’s only the setting sun
With its fiery orange hues
Tinged with scarlet and indigo
They’re the colours of a day that’s done
Be still my beating heart
It’s only the setting sun

Be still my racing blood
It’s only the ocean wide
It’s waves unfurling liquid lace
Onto my upturned, sun-warmed face
As I leap into the rushing tide
Be still my racing blood
It’s only the ocean wide

Be still my aching breast
It’s only a trail in the greenwood glade
Hemmed on the edges with wild flowers
Glistening in the wake of a spring shower
It’s only the whispering leaf dappled shade
Be still my aching breast
It’s only a trail in the greenwood glade

Be still my breathless lungs
It’s only the afternoon sky
With a rainbow that has looped around
The azure blueness like a crown
A beautiful palette of pastel dyes
Be still my breathless lungs
It’s only the after-rain sky

Be still my quickening breath
It’s only the lover’s first kiss
You’ve been on that road before
You’ve flown where the eagles soar
And also curled up where the earthworms live
Be still my quickening breath
It’s only the sweetheart’s first kiss

Be still my beating heart
It’s only the setting sun
The mystical ocean and the greenwood glade
The after-rain sky and the lover’s kiss
It’s the enchantment that nostalgia has spun
Be still my beating heart
It’s just life in perpetual thrum.

VERSE | A BLOOM OF ONE’S OWN

Sometimes I’m a foxtail orchid 
Needing extra care and warmth
Sometimes I’m a leaf skipping
Where the wind takes me along

Sometimes I feel fresh and light
Like just-cut summer grass
Sometimes things get cold and grey
Then I’m the winter frost

Sometimes earth’s shadowy arms
Are where I want to hide
I’m then the discreet Cereus that flowers
Once in a great big while

Other times my gladdened heart
Beats strong and rhythmically
My courage drapes me like a cloak
Then I’m the intrepid weed

Every day brings a new avatar
A new sensibility
I hug the day that comes my way
Or watch it drift from my safe niche

Nature’s blooms that make up my being
Rest in their special spaces
Each day I become the seed that keeps
Life marking its measured paces.

VERSE | SADLESS

My thoughts sometimes
Become like rebellious kids
They dart about my head
Swarm into my hippocampus
Making me sweat
I race after them
Calling to them
But they don’t heed me
They’re chimerical beings
Elves and pixies and aliens
Coins and marbles and peeling paint
A stubbed toe, a tired saint
A fierce cupid on a fountain
Rose bushes that run riot
And then I just lose sight
Of them at all
I hear the silence
Numbing, thrumming, sometimes strumming
Through my brain

Then I see them again
They’re out on the streets
They’ve run free, leaving me behind
They’ve escaped the prison of my mind
I watch them from afar
Tumbling around
Laughing, skipping, rumbling around
Moaning, groaning, fumbling around
Far away from me
I’m featherlight now
I float above them
Like I’m dead
The leaden weight of life
Has dropped
I watch it tumble with my thoughts
Rumble, tumble, sometimes stumble
In its frantic vitality

I’m timeless, sadless, gladless now
E m p t y
I float away
In a silent conspiracy
Of air and nothingness.
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VERSE | VEINS

She looks at the leaf 
Its serrated edges holding together
A cosmos of possibilities
Of alternate realities
Of burgeoning opportunities
She looks at a vein
A cholorophyllated pathway of dreams
A vital, verdant, emerald seam
Running like a stream
From the heart of the leaf to one serrated edge

Nearest
To her wrist

Where her own veins have seared a path
Specific, stark
Chiseled from the magma of predestined fate
Pre-blessed, pre-set, per-fected
Once a rolling ocean of fluid dreams
Now quiet, grief-stained, shadowy seams
Of still water that never skips
Never dances; it stays gripped
Even as it drips
In the finite space of one blue-purple vein

VERSE| A SELFCARE NOTE

You know that tiny little thought 
That forms inside your head
The one that nags and corners you
When you least expect?

That atomic little notion which
Makes you doubt yourself
A hazy inkling barely there
Now sits big upon the shelf

You try to look the other way
From that space inside your mind
But your racing, tearing brain has left
Your willpower behind

And so you stare at the thought
Treacherous, stinging and sly
Of how you could have done better
Of how lacking was your try

The tiny speck of self doubt
Grows gargantuan in size
As it festers in your head
The truth hidden behind the lies

Put up your guard, don’t be afraid
To not see it at all
Know its savage purpose
Don’t let it spread its pall

So when that nagging little thought
Creeps in out of the blue
Face it only when you can
With kindness, grace and truth.