It was so, that palpitations on the go Were what this brew Bestowed on me willy nilly Everytime I put a mug of it To my lips and took a sip
That cup-o-java treacherous
Time took its stride, I began to write And the gentle infusions Of earl grey tea and BOP Just lost the zing they brought to things Robot, human and alien
As onto joe I transitioned
Now I’m somewhat of a connoisseur Of the brew, and what have you I cringe when it is less than perfect My taste buds scream at every defect In a mug or cup or a takeaway
That I encounter through my days
I tell this story because today Is alas one of those days Where my joe, is a little slow In bewitching my senses as I conjecture Its milky hue and grainy texture Grounds afloat like demon specters No soulful brew, no gods’ nectar The stuff of theses, TEDx lectures I could go on, but suffice to say
Blamed again and again for massacres We have no clue of, our proxy war Of 40 years ago is still biting us in the bum ‘Fo-Fum - this beast at least Does not have the bite of the ‘other-man’ With its depraved ideology Hijacking faith and humanity Bankrolling them into human bombs Boom! There goes another one Creating martyrs of civilians We protest, we didn’t do it They say we did, you see Another ethos, dark and evil has floated in upon the sea And so they insist it is us Nurturing terrorists underground and above Guns blazing, egos inflating Up up to the constellation Of ISRO satellites
But what is this?
3, 4, 5, 6 jets down - not ours We shook them right out of their stars - their 5 out of 5 on Amazon Now they’re raging like bulls in a ring We’re meme-ing and gif-ing like comedy kings I’m laughing at both A little harder at the misplaced ire Full of apocalyptic brimstone and fire
But here it is
War is not what any of us need Good sense, forebearance, lucidity Is the need of the hour and I want to believe In this ideology even as I Pin a little pin of green and white Crescent moon and star shining bright Onto my beating heart full of pride
Because when all’s said and done
Between neighbours who live side by side Sharing a culture old as time Huddled albeit over our nuclear buttons War really is just not an option.
For all the times when writer’s block has dammed the flow of words. Like a beaver it plugs the essence, but like a force of nature, the floods of creativity bring those dams crashing down. Again and again, hope shimmers at the end of every one of those bottlenecks.
I feel out of touch A tad bit rusty Cranky and creaky Tinny and such The words clump together With a grind and a grate I wonder if a month away Has dulled my tapestry of verse Shimmering skeins that advance and traverse Embroidering and stitching Notions and qualms Into billowing storms Into rippling, sashaying ribbons of calm Bewildering phrases that make me guffaw Festering sentences painful and raw In bobbing waves with lacy edges In crashing, lashing, tearing deluges In twinkling stardust upon my page My blinking cursor running away With the train of my thoughts to the drum of my heart Laughing, singing, assuaging an ache Grieving, weeping, caught in the wake I wonder if my keyboard, unstirred, unscathed For two score nights and forty days Has borne my quickening string away.
7 books down, and I was told By well meaning friends of the heart Start Writing a novel. Now that would be novel For someone like me A lover of the short story Genre. Honour-ing the demigods Of the craft Like Munshi Premchand and Kurt Vonnegut Poe, Manto, Chughtai and a glut Of others Revered for the grace and form They built into their pithy tomes These brothers And a sister to bring them all home
I also dabbled in poetry A bit of whimsy, some contrariety A ravaged spirit or blithe wings Made my poems weep and sing But the short story And flash fiction Is where my heart lay For 6 of the books Where my pen strayed Where the typed word Lay bare its humming core To hold words of wisdom Emotions galore (Let me disclaim these to be mine Not of the larger space and time)
7 books like an epoch of weeks Must of change rustle and speak But a no-vel, well-no … that’s not for me Or my pen or my sensibility William Faulkner that sage divine Said it best when he wrote his lines I paraphrase, this verse to fit: “A failed short story writer is a novelist And a short story writer is a failed poet”.
She puts it down in front of me A bottle of water and a glass With a straw (Not plastic - Greta T. Would probably be somewhat happy) I especially ask for it, I know It reeks of faux gentility To sip one’s water from a glass With a rim, sculpted for your lips To gently settle on it and draw Up The water. But the straw Has replaced that intimacy Between the aqua glass and me It wasn’t always like this This distancing of my lips But unending hopelessness Pandemics of malaise Scrooched time and again Upon the rim, insidious and grim Where there should have been Pure bevel, clean, pristine Or at the very least Conclaves of mellow disease That didn’t bleed dry and deplete The very life blood out of me So now you know Why I use uncoupling straws Indifferent, cool, gappy (Paper-made, eco-friendly) An arms-length defense strategy To keep myself malady free.
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 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.
This is an unlovely ode to drudgery of all kinds: professional, domestic, emotional and mental. This is also a bit of a kick to the steaming underbelly of corporatocracy or political capitalism. For those still in its grips, tomorrow is another day, and then another, and another …. This is to deep breaths, cathartic vocalization and despite it all, inner peace ☮️
I sit here with my tea It is past dusk, nighttime has come My day is done, the drudgery For now, has been overcome I know I should call it living A productive life, goal-driven One that should give me belly warmth The kind that you find In food that hugs your soul While it slowly dissolves Into dreams and hopes and Forging on; wanting more; The bar always moving up There are no rests, there are no stops
But Drudgery O Drudgery! When I call you out for thee That word becomes cathartic As it washes off the aches The tiredness, the ire The fresh and dutiful daily inks Of brimstone and hellfire It’s like a song, a one word air It fills the air with daring A momentary “damn it all!” No fear of anything Celestial, terrestrial or alien
Drudgery oh drudgery! I have been taught to revere thee In your sugar-coated entirety But to speak of you Honestly In all your tri-syllabic impiety Is to seek out fate When she should be Left alone Picking at her murphied* bones
And yet Drudgery Och Drudgery There are days when I acknowledge thee For what you are: A stinging thorn in my soul A worldly curse, a profanity And that is when I perceive An adroit lightness of my being. When I call you out, I feel A joyful whoosh of relief My hapless spirit is airborne Again, and I am fortified For another day spent in your arms Ceaseless, easeless Drudgery With a name that’s yet a purging charm.
Image: Jacqueline FaheyImage: Douglas Arthur
* The title of the poem is an adaptation of Karl Marx’s critique of political economy - Das Kapital
* Murphied: The word is derived from Murphy's Law (Whatever can go wrong will go wrong). Victim of bad luck and circumstance.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 