I saw a tree lean in the wind
Its leaves tearing, bolting ahead
To sate the squalls that pulled at them
I thought of you
Of my blood careening in my head
My limbs convulsing for release
My lips struggling to appease
The ego that would sunder me
I saw the tree lean and lean
I heard its leaf-tortured scream
My insides churned with the memory
I turned away
I couldn’t stay
And watch nature take my dismal tale
Rinse it, recycle and repeat.
I can wake up on the wrong side
Of the bed today
I can let gravity pull at all my happy curves
My smile, my feet that skip
My stoical nerves
I can despair today
I can stare
At myself in the mirror for an hour today
I can have conversations with her today
Openly, honestly
Or maybe not
I can look away while I sit
In front of her looking at me
It’s that kind of a paradoxical day
Full of contrariness, of rights and lefts
Downs and ups, shakes and nods
Of sunny dawns and 8am thundery skies
Of bewildering vibes and double negatives
Of not being entirely unhappy with things
Not unstill … but still, not entirely still
The kind of day that hugs you tight
Holding you in the hollow of her hands
And the next moment thrusts you away
With a flick of her wrist. You’re stranded.
Alone
I look in the mirror trying to decide
Whether I want to fret or if I want to fight
Stew in my head or go at it
The daedalean knot loosens bit by bit
F-i-s-t-i-c-u-f-f-s, a k—ick to the ribs
Right-into-the-leathery-heart-of-things
I wage it out in a phantasmal bout
Unfailing precision, all contact bulls-eyed
Unfettering, releasing with every strike
I’m Bruce Lee and Catwoman rolled into one
Nothing’s enough. I go all out
Riding the bracing rush of my blood
Piercing through the eye of the storm
It’s Over, It’s All Done
The Battle Within Has Been Won
I take in a breath
Deep. Freeing. An all-organ sweep
Another breath, reviving, serene
The contrariety for today
Has been washed away or dry-cleaned
Either way
By machinations of the mind
On battlefronts designed
On psychogenic frontlines
Or laundromats for bruises and stains
Either way, one way or another
On the inside, the rumble is done
I look into the mirror again
Into the quiet depths of her eyes
The morning rain has played its song
The world is a patchwork of dappled sunshine
The lingering clouds are peaceful, unrushed
Like the gentle pulse of her bloodstream
For a few moments in the mirror today
Her tranquillity was in disarray
But she can’t despair, not today
While the universe around her winks and gleams.
“QUIRKY CREATURES, AN EGG, A FRUIT AND A STAR“
Putting my children’s-book-writer hat on for a bit to introduce my third book in the Curious Animals & Quirky Creatures series: QUIRKY CREATURES, AN EGG, A FRUIT AND A STAR.
From the little bee with the huge head, to the mischievous dragonfly trying to steal ladybird’s spots, to the extra bright little firefly, there are ten little stories in this collectible about delightful and funny creatures.
Every poem tells of a little act of courage, humour and kindness as each of the little creatures saves the day in its own little way.
IN SRI LANKA: The book is available at Sarasavi, Pendi, Expographics, Seyln, Barefoot and The Jam Fruit Tree bookstores.
IN PAKISTAN: It should be on the shelves in Liberty Books and Readings at the end of July 2023. It will also be available with my aunt Mrs. Nayyar Liaqat.
IN DUBAI: July onwards, you can get your copy from my sister Zarmina by sending her a WhatsApp message.
A big thank you to my illustrator, Chrish Vindhy for the beautiful artwork of the book.
It’s been a fabulous journey with my children’s literature over the last 2 years with over 700 books sold. So thank you to all who have bought, read and gifted them 💕
Here’s to #raisingreaders
NOTE: a flock of doves is variously called a cote, dole, dule, bevy, flight, and piteousness.
If my peace was like a dove
A wooing, cooing ball of fluff
I’d catch a little flight of them
And find serenity again
But every time that I have tried
To visualize, to catch some sight
Of the piteousness said to stop wars
Assuage wounds, bruises and sores
It flutters out of my mind’s eye
I’m left gazing at an empty sky
And so I looked for something else
To calm my inner sweeps and swells
And then one day it came tiptoeing
Into my quietest imaginings
The vision of a tranquil lake
A gentle, shimmering, blue-green slate
Now when my hurrying-scurrying world without
Seems like it’s turning upside down
I close my eyes and I transport
Myself to that peaceful spot
I’m far away from everything
My troubles bolt, they take wing
My core gleams softly in the place
Where I sit by the lapping lake
My inner peace, a dove she’s not
But all the stillness I have sought
Is by a lake, without its birds
They await me in my outside world.
I know we haven’t talked in a while
I know I haven’t seen you wear your soft smile
We’ve said things to each other we didn’t mean
Tearing and splitting the vital seams
Of the fabric of our togetherness
I know that I have felt desolate, helpless
We have sat in silence, cold as frost
The glow of our closeness long since lost
Somewhere along life’s bewildering way
I let your warm hand slip away
I know we haven’t talked in a while
I know I haven’t seen you wear your gentle smile
Through the years we have journeyed on
Along the same path but each on our own
Forged by our children, we treaded their dreams
Only seeing shadows of you and me
Still together we walked into middle age
But it’s been a while since I really saw your face
It’s been a few years since the air around
Was filled with your familiar scent and your sound
Somewhere, somehow I lost the quickening string
That bound us together through thick and through thin
I know we haven’t talked in a while
I know I haven’t seen you wear your lovely smile
But I know you’re still here, your pulse still beats warm
Even as we’ve both whipped up raging storms
They’ve whirled inside, while we’ve pulled away
The terrible loneliness adding to the fray
I know that we are distances apart
But I can still feel you in the depths of my heart
Let me find you once again in the mists
Of sepia memories, reminiscences
Let me hold your hand as I once did before
Let us walk together, in step once more
I lost sight of you, dearest for a while
Let me love you again, let me make you smile.
I see my shadow lengthen
With the ebbing of the day
I feel it suck up all the sadness
From the bowels of the earth
With its purple, glistening hoard
Of melancholia and hopelessness
I move ceaselessly, restlessly
I will my never-stopping feet
To sever the tortured bond
That my swelling shade has formed
With the darkening world around
But my shadow just spreads out
Ever further on the ground
It suckles at night’s dreary breast
Absorbing all her suffering
So that nothing should remain
In earth’s mighty store of pain
With its ravening tentacles
My twilight shadow reaches in
Never faltering in its aim
It will not stop it will not rest
Until it has gorged itself
On a sorrow that is infinite
It’s bloated edges
Endlessly dredge
The gloom from earth’s wounded veins
My shadow ripples and it writhes
Waning only when daylight
Breaks the tragic coupling
Of the shades and sadness of nighttime.
This is about all the women who are killed in the name of honour or privilege or archaic customs. Women like Mukhtaran Mai who was gang raped as per the ruling of the local jirga or court of the elders of the community. And Qandeel Baloch who dared to be bigger than the box she was born in and paid for it when her brother whom she financially supported, killed her in cold blood.
PART ONE:
Pin me, skin me
Kick me in my shins please
Bring me buckling, crashing down
Then grin as you haul me up
Dust me down, make an act of freeing me
When I’ve lost all my will to be me
Churn me, burn me
Laugh in my face, spurn me
Then adulate, adore me
But airily, lightly
Politically-correctly
When I can’t feel your torment or love
Or anything else inside me
PART TWO:
Juice me, use me
Mangle and abuse me
Then write up columns flush with
New found awakening
A social issues deciphering
All the while computing,
Measuring, forecasting
Your own index of hero-worship
For calling out brutality
Other demons, other sins
Out of your realm of reality
But you orate and preachify
Because it is your deliverance
From mundaneness, insignificance
Roar out, be devout
Let your new found arousal
Wash over everyone
“Not all of us are like that”
Shout it out, don’t hold back
Declare it with panache
You are righteous no one can forget
Everyone else’s moral compass
Is a fickle sickle, directionless
You’re guilt free with that homily
With your ringing voice and sacchrine smile
You present it proudly to me
When all I can see are lips and eyes
A Leviathan dripping honeyed lines
Onto a transfixed audience
They watch and gently chew the cud
Of the weed that they are fed
By evangelical heroes of prime time
PART THREE:
Boot me, loot me
Strangle me, shoot me
Then have a ball in my name
Found a charity, earn some fame
Let the posthumous heroine
With her tomb-tough shoulders
Become your newest Taj Mahal
Let her catapult you to the top
Always from her deadest parts
A pillaged body, a spirit crushed
A tragedy censored and hushed
From her countless cuts and gashes
She now hides under her eyelashes
While YOU and YOU and YOU and YOU
Rise like a phoenix from her ashes.
There’s something in the air
In the way it moves around
The living and the dead
It carries a new sound
Alien and profound
It bleeds in and it seeps
Reaching further than skin deep
There’s something in the breeze
It has much to say
In mystifying whispers
The strange leaning of the trees
In the writhing of the leaves
Detaching from their seams
By off-season guillotines
Shimmer-sharpened by the breeze
It moans against the skin
In tongues we now don’t speak
In tormented suffering
But all that we can see
Is the stirring of the blades
In their darkened canopies
There’s something in the air
A blinding glitter everywhere
But the motes of light are still
While a cosmic storm prepares
A million miles away
Thickening, darkening
Marking time until
It comes crashing, smashing in
Sweeping us all in
Its alpha and omega waves
In beginnings and endings
And lips everywhere
Will be spilling the same prayers
As with our souls bared
We fuse, we unify
With something new in the air.
A smile is such a magical thing
Like a rainbow that has sprouted wings
Its pots of gold shimmering
In a dimpled firmament
Lifting the day
In its 180 degree euphoria
It is that precious loop
That adorns the mouth
In latitudes of joyfulness
Its bearings somewhere between
The heart and hypothalamus
A smile is a small piece
Of heart that is pulled out
Of its latticed, multi-ribbed house
A little boon of bliss
A bit of love set free
Into the ether of the world
That beautiful upturned arch
Of rapture and release
Stirring the organs and the feet
Defying the pull of gravity
I see your smile
Framing your face
I don’t know you but my heart lifts
Drawing its own curve on my lips
A gift bestowed for one received
A smile is that magical thing.
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 their 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.
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.
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 