Do you remember that autumn day The day you came upon me in the park? I stood in the shadows of the banyan tree Preparing for a final flight of the heart You swept along so light and so true ‘Hello’ you said ‘this October sky is so blue!’
I was taken aback, I was agitated I stood there awkward, uncertainly You didn’t walk on, you stood there rooted Like an interfering angel on a samaritan spree I didn’t want to hear what you had to say I wished you’d sprout wings and just fly away
So I looked through you, hoping that you’d go on But you just ambled around my space The one I had for hours thought upon Where I’d finally leave this wretched place This life, this strife, this gnawing misery This heart that keened so relentlessly
But you stayed and then you held my hand All this while I had not said a word to you You had looked into the depths of my soul And you knew … my friend, you just knew! I remember the withered grass you sat with me on The sun was hidden, but your own light shone
We sat and we sat, you by my side An angel, a friend, a beautiful stranger You parried with such elegant ease My monsters of desperation and danger Your warmth enveloped my aching heart That day you pulled me out of my abysmal dark
Now here you lie in a white satin bed Shrouded in scents of final farewells I touch your hand, it lies cold and inert Your eyes are closed, your breath is still I couldn’t save you dear friend, from final cessations But then you always were the angel in our equation.
Some say our earth is splitting in two Shifting off its axis in directions anew Parallel worlds, a rift at the core One is wrought with strife and war Contentions and conflicts and hate galore This land is mine! They thunder and roar I was here 3000 years before! Decrees keep pelting like acid rain From the sacramental mouths of men Sitting in legislative dominion Your bodies, our choice say all those Born in the spitting image of god The owners, the stoners, the masters, the lords
The other earth … well that is a mystery Wrapped in illusions, visions and dreams Aspirations so secret They lie buried beneath Lungsful of air Every stalwart heartbeat Where Biology is a factual thing Not contorted into statutes and bills Where connections are made Forged by the soul Where language and lore And race and skin Are just rainbows that arch Over our beautiful earth
They say the split is cleaving in two Our world of bloodied green and blue I want to be with the ephemeral lot The one that’s poetic, as yet unbegot Even if that means that I will cease To have and to hold, to breathe and to be At least I’ll be done with our broken world Be a star in the sky An autumn-blown leaf And that dear friend is all that I want When I introspect When I really delve deep.
The rubber grove is wintering Bare branches raised in quiet prayer The trees in meditation Their copse a little haven From the chill that’s spreading everywhere They sit together in the grove Yet solitude wraps each one In arms soothing, slumbersome And there resting they will remain Until earth wakens them again
The fallen leaves have long since ceased To sit lightly on the ground They have sunk into their beds Laid down their tawny-russet heads Hidden away, they will not be found The trees remain skeletal, upright Waiting for spring to arrive But until then they will not sing Stirring songs of vital things For now the grove is wintering
Something deep inside of me Keens for this state of rest To step out of life’s lusty choir For a while to quietly retire From her spring-loaded behest I want to hide, to lie low Take each hour nice and slow Hibernate in my little den Until I can smile at life again Like the grove I will be wintering.
The winter mist is rolling in Tracing umbras and penumbras On liquid walls conjuring Illusions of nostalgic things Like tapestries of sunny hills And shadowlands where valleys stretch Into soft concaves Of velvety days shimmering At their edges, glimmering In the halos of lit up orbs Glittering, pulsating Watching and observing all Like eager sentries making sure The invading mist Covets no more Than the silver kiss That it bestows On each doorway As it tiptoes In and then away Into the darkness further along All the while As it glides Whispering its vapory song.
He looks at him, his son-in-law Blinking, not recognizing him It has been over half a year Since this son was last here Half a lifetime in his existence Scrambled by dementia. Aasiya The daughter he’s barely spoken to Given in marriage at 22 He now remembers crystal clear As she sits with him, ministering Talking to him now without fear Ungrudgingly for all the years She was not enough. Arif Her husband with the business The opinions and the maleness Was the apple of her father’s eyes But now all he sees in the clouds of time Is this angel with her beautiful smile As she soothes him, and she feeds him Her gentle touch calming the storms Of confusion and disquietude That rage through him so often now All he sees, all he has eyes for Is his daughter, his beloved Aasiya.
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.
The cursor blinks expectantly Compellingly, unyieldingly Something stirs my inner calm With tongs charged with electricity I see them bare their tungsten teeth Serrated, set and bite-ready They start to pick at the soft glow That cloaks my core delicately The zen shades come quickly undone One by one efficiently, unerringly Until the luminosity Of the buzzing pliers hits My chakras humming quietly The glow transforms to garish light I’m overtaken, panic strikes My heart leaps up, it’s on the run Blood rushing, pitching oxygen To my eyes and my extremities I blink once, twice and then again As the cursor straight and stark Marks its time ominously I tap-tap-delete-tap feverishly Fingers on the dread-locked keys But there is no hidden gem That flows from this cataclysm On the page in front of me I look up, I take a breath The screen retreats into its depths Some days it really is just best To give the grim cursor a rest.
I had a dream last night You were in it Fuzzy, unclear But the hook was there That had plucked you from somewhere Inside my head or maybe From some deserted place in my heart It wasn’t an act Of which I was aware I had no say In the furtive way You appeared around me again Even if you were phantasmic, chimerical In that time, you were real A swaying, decaying bridge coupling The physical and the figmental
It left a bitter aftertaste In my mouth when I awoke I brushed my teeth With renewed vitality (My dentist would be happy at least) I spent the day going over the locks I had put around certain memories These escapes Even in my dreams Made me restless, agitated me When I was awake Tonight I will have my dose Of vitamins and minerals (They promise all sorts of well-being) So that when I dream The bolted doors inside of me Keep holding their integrity
But even if they lose their might Releasing spectres of the night I know that in my waking hours In dissecting and determining The cryptic whys and wherefores Of night-garish visages Invading, distressing me These dreams, these unbidden images Have already lost their sting They have shed their whipping wings To fly at me when I’m asleep Through all of my monster-proofing And so deep down inside Something tells me that tonight I will dream of other things.
I see the sea, a mottled grey As she holds on,just barely To a hazy vestige Of her tranquil turquoise sheen It was just an hour ago That she wore her majesty Cloaked in all her blues and greens But even she This creature of serenity Has her days when she shifts Off her axis of evenness When she fusses and fumes in choppy tones Sending currents of fear through mortal bones Her discontentment carried in The surf that comes crashing in To where I stand holding my breath In my bare feet, toes inward-crept She sloshes, washes over me Her touch, gritty-soft As she caresses me Tough-lovingly For behind her fearsome gaze And beneath her maddened mien She’s still the nurturer, the queen.
The streets cook in the yeasty sun The concrete melting in little mirages In the corner of my eye, I see The vegetation sizzle on the sidewalks The tops are over-done, burnt The undersides stick to the earth In a grotesque masquerade Of some now forgotten vital bond Roots and soil cling together Like dogged carcasses to the bone The street dogs lie half dead Parched tongues loll out now and then A sluggish scrape against the grit And they escape Back into the desert caverns of their mouths I pick my way along the street Shimmer-sharpened by the heat I feel it reach Hellish fingers through my soles Heat-divining for my soul I hurry on but Hades’ torrid lick Is already on my swollen lips His hoary sizzle has found its mark My tar-seared feet slow to a crawl My essence drips out in burns Upon oil-scorched temples and brows Down my thighs and my neck I cannot move another step I sit on a steaming bench To drench the rest of me In the quenchless, wrenching sun.
I hear the leaves rustle in the breeze The gust picks up slowly, gradually I hear the rattle of a window The one that lies loosely in its frame Like a watchful sentry Announcing the entry Of a wayward breeze That rolls in through its screen To knock upon the door At the end of the corridor
I walk out of my bedroom into the lounge The sentinel window Is now trembling, recoiling Rattling its pane Warning of rain That will soon moisten Its face; gushing Rushing, tearing The dust off old memories Renewing the pain
I see the first flash of lightning and then The thunder breaks The storm has arrived I look at it through the window Now lying quietly in its frame Soon the glisten of its pane Swells into a stream flowing Down silently as I sit quietly With the sweet ache Of old memories again.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 