Tag: love
VERSE | TENDER ACHE
There’s a sweet pain in my chest
A bloom of soft memories in my head
They hold hands for a time
Making me smile for a little while
Charging then to pierce my eyes
Awkward friends
This ache in my ribs
And these recollections
They make me weep
And yet all the while
Hugging each atom of my being
Places and spaces inside of me
Phantom-greyed, blue-bruised, bleak
Stark in the darkness of old scars and stings
Fledgling losses, crushed hearts and things
They hold them close the vital lot
Nostalgia and loss begot
I have a tender-sweet ache in my chest
I wait for my pin-pricked eyes to attest
To love that was gentle, to the fierce kind
Rapt in reminiscence they fill my mind.
VERSE | HOPE PEARLESCENT
It is the bee buzzing round the last summer flower
It is the lightest drizzle on a scorching day
It is the rainbow after it has stormed for hours
That has ravaged everything in its wake
It is the bright little smile on the face of a child
Selling elastics and incenses on the street
When you roll down your window at a traffic light
When you leave her with a kind word or three
It is the weed growing through age-worn furrows
In a cement sidewalk, swaying in the breeze
It is the faithful, steady unbroken flame
That warms the heart of a dying candle
It is the single green leaf on a tree that’s ailing
It is the silent prayer
That leaves your lips
Even when all about you is despair
It is the next step ahead on a broken path
Eyes lighting up a horizon that has fallen dark
Hope is sometimes just the littlest spark
It is feeling like you just can’t go on anymore
It is also your blood gushing stronger than ever before
It is the frame that you pull out of a drawer
Into which you put photos of those that are gone
It is brushing your hair
Pulling it into a bun
It is clipping your nails
When all’s said and done
It is reading this verse
Sitting alone in the quietness
It is laying yourself down in your bed of sighs
It is your throat constricting, you breaking inside
It is also awaking to thunderous skies
Their wetness brimming in your aching eyes
Mangled hearts that still throb in the ebb and the flow
It is you that’s still here
Though you’ve bled and you’ve bruised
Hope pearlesceht strings through all of those.
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 | 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 | SOME DAYS
Hope visited me today
She brought Grace and Calm
I looked at them comfusedly
Why had these three come?
I was lying in my bed
With Dejection and with Dread
I’d been in their company a while
They had spun their grisly web
I had lain in its hoary mesh
While its tendrils reached within
Shutting out the daylight hours
My world was dark and grim
The ache that they had released
Had also roused Masochist
He clutched me now in his eerie hold
I just couldn’t break that spell
The rushing, gushing tides of pain
Numbed memories that played
Over and over in a loop
Relentless, without a break
My heart bled from the holes that gaped
Wider with every wave
Of agony that swept through me
I had no desire to be saved
But now there was Courage too
With Love she looked at me
Grouping together in my chest
They held hands with the other three
Their other hands lay on my heart
Staunching the essence that fled
Out into the ravening veins
Of Dejection and of Dread
A gentle warmth spread through my flesh
I finally saw some light
Flitting, peeping, twinkling through
The blue gauze in my eyes
Hope and Calm and Love together
With Courage and Grace today
Came to sit with me a while
As in my bed I lay.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 