Tag: satire
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 | THE AB-SIND CLUB
This is a fond tribute to all the microscosms of colonial design and demeanour/ architecture and attitude that continue to faithfully roost in various cities across what was once the coveted Jewel in the Crown.
I’m having a day that’s making me feel
More sterile than a beetle on its back
I’m walking on the thin side
Of breaking down, losing sight
Of my psychedelic, privileged life
I need some of the forgetting tonic
That Pir Buksh so expertly whips up
That makes me happy, schizophrenic
With every sip and every glug
I drink the potion, and I duly grow
My Abs synth-esizing my lost bravado
Suddenly they’re all like flies
On the periphery of my eyes
They cease to make me wince and curse
They cease to be a part of my universe
I sit back, bark an order
In Bloodhound, German shepherd tones
Throw a carcass, throw some bones
Throw a tantrum for good measure
The club becomes a pyramid
I’m at the top, the very apex
Those hoisiting it upon their shoulders
The club like a majestic boulder
Matter not, they sit there
Like a pile of boring underwear
They’ve seen it all but you don’t care
They keep it all precisely together
The erstwhile jewels in their imperial leather
“One more!” I shout in thundering tones
“Absinth me up quick bartender!”
Before I lose the precious threads
Of the delicate lace of elegance
Pir Bukhsh gives me some more manna
From the counter in the shadows
And I swallow and I glide
In the throes of happy amnesia
The absinthe in the Ab-sind club
Makes me feel so damn superi-a
Heavens be praised I’ve had a day
Like I’m lord of a castle in the UK
Indeed, the last few hours have made me feel
Like a hero in a Bollywood reel.
VERSE | PHILOSO-FARCE LAND
I’m sitting here feeling bright
Home with the family
Conversation is easy and light
And then on comes the telly
I try to talk over its
Loud and aggressive tone
Political talk shows cutting
Razor-slicing through the calm
I want to look away
From this soulless carnival
But the addiction to this madness
Is deep-rooted, farcical
Dante would have short-fused
A few neurons, chomped some grass
To see the Inferno he’d imagined
Come so brutally to pass
Sartre would have grinned
In self righteous satisfaction
Hell really was other people
And their insidious interactions
Nietzsche would have conclusively
Summarily declared
That we’ve given up on heaven
And created hell instead
Turning in his class-conflicted
Grave would be Karl Marx
Seeing history do its rewind
As tragedy and then as farce
Freud would have slyly winked
And then chortled cheekily
To watch our IDs and EGOs
Play out their crazy fantasies
The philosophers and sages
Of times gone by, days of old
Are seeing the fruition of
Their theories, mad and bold
So now I’m sitting here feeling
Like the world has dropped upon
My shoulders, pulverising me
Mind and body, heart and soul.
VERSE | NATIONAL (S)CARRIER
A bit of a funny ramble about my recent flight from Karachi to Lahore.
I travelled on a plane today
And felt compelled to write
This verse of my experiences
On PIA’s domestic flight
Let me start with a whinge
The seats have no leg room
Even the petites are overcome
By claustrophobia and doom
The stewards and the stewardesses
Seem like they’ve just had enough
Of meeting, greeting passengers
Their demeanour is kind of rough
But that’s ok, we’re a nation of
Tough minded women and men
And there is a tad more softness
For the elderly and the children
It was a daytime flight, post luncheon-time
So folks had had their meals
Some nodding off with gaping mouths
Others snoring with extra zeal
The plane jerked forward and began
To taxi on the concrete
While the stalls held two or more
Full bladder emergencies
Off we lifted off and then
We climbed up to the clouds
There was a bit of turbulence
There were loud prayers from the devout
As we levelled off the crew
Started on their inflight missions
Soon the plane transformed into
Zubaida’s Desi Kitchen
And of course everyone there
Ate a second meal
Food is integral to our
National look and feel
Soon the air was rent with
Loud belches and with sighs
The pungent vapor wafting ‘tween
The seats and in the aisles
An overhead bin flew open
With a painful, turgid groan
A fit finale to the meal that had
Endowed its own bloat
The icing on the cake was
The toffees on the tray
And our disembarkation
In a half-civilised way
One prevented a stampede
Of desperate humanity
One a choti meethi* offering
For PIA’s eccentricity.
* Choti Meethi: :small and sweet” in Urdu
HAIKU
A haiku is an unrhymed Japanese poetic form that consists of 17 syllables arranged in three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. A haiku expresses much and suggests more in the fewest possible words. Trying my hand at the lithe and sinewy art form.
Some gladness, some strife
Mixed in with some love and hope
Faultless slice of life.
It opens again
Haltingly, poundingly, my
Newly love-drenched heart.
The light shone, my soul
Soared. The monitor too glowed
In final farewell.
The pane shudders, shakes
In the wind. The pelting rain
Renews, whets the pain.
The old men sit snug
In their fortressed halls waiting
Out the raging storm.
She lay down to rest
The crickets were still. There were
None six feet under.
The breeze kissed my face
Whispering, praying we would
Never meet again.
Tea with buttered toast
A little sip, a bite, my
Broken heart revived.
The wind pulled at him
The kite pulled at his laughter
Heart in hand they soared.
VERSE | BLUNDER WOMAN
I was in a hurry, in a mad rush
The morning was crazy, yes one of those
The alarm had belted shrilly out
But I was dead to the world, comatose
Dreaming of wishes being lattes and Bookers
Until the clock struck ten and then
I threw off the duvet, leaped out of bed
Limbs all awry like a headless chicken
Here’s a little aside: when I’m stressed
My hair also declares a mutiny
Acts up like it’s the raging heroine
Of its very own show on prime time telly
And so it was in this agitation
That I knocked my elbow on the door
I cursed like a sailor who’s had too much ale-er
Deliriously, frenziedly I swore
I vented as much as a random string
Of choice expletives can enable
The rest of the rage I swallowed away
As virtuously as I was able
Then the ultimate decimation came to pass
I stubbed my wretched left little toe
What chanced to happen in the heat of my passion
You really wouldn’t want to know
Suffice it to say that on that day
The angels filling in my Wicked Gal page
With brimstone, hellfire, the sinfulness of ire
Had a field day, ‘twas their advantage
And so ‘twixt my shoulders and my feet now
A funny bone doesn’t exist at all
I try to be sweet-talking, kind and good
Until the next time I slam, stub or fall.
VERSE | CAUGHT RED-SALAD!
This is my Alice in Wonderland type of journey through my bowl of salad. Some trials (including of the dietary variety) are best undertaken up close and personal! Also thrown in some existential angst for good measure. The title of the piece is a play on the phrase “Caught red-handed”.
I pick my way through little bits
Of bright green, the shade
Of fresh cut grass
I then pass
A scarlet flower the size of my head
It sits on the ground like it’s dead
Or perhaps waiting
Anticipating
Food? Me? Like the Venus flytrap?
I shudder and go on
It agitates me that I’m alone
I look up
There propped
On a frilly green tree
I see
A brown green dome
Velvety on the outside
Is it a temple? A den? A ploy to lull the senses
Full of pretenses
Of warmth and safety
Waiting slyly for unsuspecting prey?
I shiver and go on
I’m borne on fogs
Of peppery wet air
I stop and stare
At uneven bricks of black and white
Stacked haphazardly
Here and there
Are these stairs to heaven? alien art? remains of ritual sacrifice?
I can’t tell … but oh the smell!
As I step through a hole
Soft and pliable, the pong
Makes my eyes water
I falter for a bit
It it a giant fungus? A virus? A disease?
I step through gingerly —
“Good afternoon ma’am. How’s the salad”
I’m startled, awakened from my reverie
I look down at my bowl
Where I had been traipsing
Thumb-nail small
In a fearsome fantasy
That my despairing mind had woven
In garden salad tapestry
Lettuce, tomatoes, olives and cheese
Untouched, unloved, salt-pepper doused
Waiting for a forkful raised to my mouth
Sit patronisingly, self righteously
In the bowl, staring back at me.
VERSE | ICARUS, REALLY?
* ICARUS: One of the most famous tragic figures in Greek mythology, his story highlights the dangers of excessive pride/ fixation. Although he was warned by his father not to fly too high, Icarus became overexcited and flew too close to the sun, causing his wings (made by his father,from feathers and wax) to melt and leading to his untimely death.
This is a bit of satire on the old Greeks of mythology.
There was once a young woman
She had this special thing
One can’t call it love you see
The Sun was her heart’s king
She’d look up at the sky all day
In spring and then in summer
Winter woes came down in throes
Not seeing him was a bummer
But she’d then glue her sun-sick eyes
Upon the tele-vusion
Watching classics and Sci-Fi
Of beaches and nuclear fusion
(Fission, I admit, is a grander term
But it’s a small explosion
Through staid old Fusion doth the sun
Make Helium from Hydrogen)
One day on her 60th birthday
She’d had it with long distance
She put her crafty hands to work
She wasn’t losing one more instant
She made herself some silver wings
With aluminium and nylon string
And then up to the roof she went
To flap, flap up to her king
It was probably mind over matter that
Got her three feet above the roof
The Sun finally said “Icarus in your 35th
Incarnation, you’re still a goof”.
VERSE | STRANGER THAN FICTION
I look at the book
Have I read it before?
It’s a throng of short stories
My favourite genre
I took it from the shelf
In my own home
So it has to be one of the
For-sure-read tomes
Still, as I glanced
At the back cover blurb
Nothing jumped out
Not a line, not a word
I looked at its front
Multi shades of grey
The image glimmered
In its dusky array
I opened the book
I had to recall
A story, a plot twist
A mystery resolved
In the 267 pages
I held in my hand
So I started reading
Page one, it began:
That day Alisha
Looked up at the sky
The purples and blues
Looked terribly awry …
The rest of the story
Unwrapped itself
As I glanced through page two
Of the book from my shelf
Yes I had read it
The memory crept in
Of ETs and UFOs
And otherworldly things
Of skittering creatures
That had huge heads
Full of insidious plans
To make us all dead
Or not! Even in fiction
They were polite
Giving us choices
Being forthright
Choices! Forthrightness!
Now those are things
That are as alien now as
Well … human beings!
Laughing, I put
The Sci-Fi away
Our own lives were stranger
Than fiction these days
VERSE | JUST ANOTHER FAIRYTALE
… Only because more and more it seems like the apple doesn’t fall far from its rotting, pestilential tree. But being the eternal optimist that I am, I’m hoping that a handful of the sons and daughters are at least questioning the political and entrepreneurial legacy they are inheriting from their thieving, deceiving, mobster parents and grandparents. But then I also think, who am I kidding! Still, here’s a verse which is probably farce by its very idealism.
I look at the statement
That I have received
At the burgeoning wealth
In my off-shore company
I revel in the fact
That I’ve paid zero tax
To the exchequer of my home country.
“Remember your legacy and your roots”
I always say to my progeny
They will of course some day
Fill my stompingly ample boots
I see the smirk
On my son’s face
It always gets to me
In some weird way
“I’m involved in this
Complex enterprise
Always walking
On the edge of a knife!
For your sister and you
So get on the same page!
Boy, this churlishness
Is not a good look!
Show some gratitude!”
I thunder and rage
“You’re stealing from people
In thieving hoardes
Tradition and Legacy
Are just hollow words
If this is my ethos,
Why does it reek
Of insult, deception
Of sly treachery
I don’t want these roots
No, no thank you
These gnarled and twisted
Tendrils of greed!”
He looks at me
With storms in his eyes
Intimidating me
Cutting me down to size
He looks at the statement
That he has received
Of the plundered millions
In his off-shore company
He holds it gently
Almost reverently
Even as he upbraids
And tongue-lashes me
He now stares me down
I have to look away
But at least I found the courage
To finally have my say
Mahvash Mohtadullah 