Oh look at that beautiful dragonfly It’s turning somersaults Its peacock coloured gossamer wings Perfect, without fault! But you didn’t catch the fleeting glimpse It bestowed upon this scene You were on your phone lost in Digital worlds upon your screen
Did you see that butterfly Just sit upon my arm Brown and orange-yellow wings It was full of golden charm! You missed its quickening beauty As it said hello and went You were caught in your own loop Eyes down, heart still, head bent
I had to hold my breath there That scene was so sublime The grand eagle swooping down And then soaring back up high! Where, where? you ask me now As you look at an empty sky You were fretting, agitating As nature sprang her wondrous surprise
Glittering dragonflies, murmurations Eagles in majestic flight A shower of blossoms, a ladybird loveliness Nature exulting in life Magical, mystical, shimmering marvels Surround us at all times Some of us get to revel in their beauty Some stay trapped by Sentinel Time
Note: This poem was long-listed in the 2023 Plough Poetry Competition
She looks at the leaf Its serrated edges holding together A cosmos of possibilities Of alternate realities Of burgeoning opportunities She looks at a vein A cholorophyllated pathway of dreams A vital, verdant, emerald seam Running like a stream From the heart of the leaf to one serrated edge
Nearest To her wrist
Where her own veins have seared a path Specific, stark Chiseled from the magma of predestined fate Pre-blessed, pre-set, per-fected Once a rolling ocean of fluid dreams Now quiet, grief-stained, shadowy seams Of still water that never skips Never dances, it stays gripped Even as it drips In the finite space of one blue-purple vein
Literal and Satirical definition: defective sight in which objects/ other opinions/ other people cannot be properly seen if not close to the centre of the field of one’s view.
It grips me in its narrowness Blurring out everything else The serrated edges of my self Fade, become invisible I only get to feel One urgent, solitary reel Of fickle life at a time Drenched as it is in endless Waters of love or rage Seas with no horizons No frontiers, no boundary lines These swells take over me In my entirety I can barely breathe The deluge almost drowning me My heart and mind My tears and smiles In that moment are replete There can be no more In my stores Of pain and joy They are empty, hollow, done The universe too Knows when it’s enough And that is why I then see Only a sliver and no more Of life’s excess, its extremity Its climax, its nth degree Through the narrowed and diminished lens Of my shielding, sheltering tunnel vision.
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.
I want to walk into the sunset Far, far away from here Find a portal for myself, whisk away to somewhere else Far away from here But my dear what then? What will become of you I think I’m the crutch that you lean on The weathered plank that you pace on Ironically your prop so hardy Has grown a rift, become foolhardy A fissure sprung in my core Where it must mature into rings Of mellow age and other things But the cleft, a secret break Hidden away has slowly swelled With snaggy splinters, spiny edged Letting in light that I had lost Golden- yellow, shimmering, quiet And it has cleaved the crack some more More and more clearly I see the door Where the gleam keeps pulling me Towards the sunset thrilling me Far, far away from here.
She sits there selling bangles Set up in a wicker basket Some laid down on the grass Every now and then she gently Sweeps off the dust that spreads thinly From teeming feet that hurry past Barely slowing near the woman Sitting on her haunches hoping For someone to slow down, to pause Her concave belly almost touching The basket that is tugging The life blood from her womb Every time that she moves Spilling it in little driblets Onto its precious load
The maternal bond of glass and blood Unremitting, never enough As she sits car-caressing Sometimes fretting, sometimes fussing Rearranging, caring, loving Always loving, always loving A tender smile hov-hovering Around her tired mouth She is umbilical-corded To her treasures Resting in their bed of wicker Willing them to cleave their way Into the hearts of passersby Willing them to shine so bright That it brings tears to her eyes The boundless world of plenty In those bangles by her side
Behind her lie two little heads Heat-numbed and stupefied Little thumbs in little mouths Doing their best to pacify The endless hunger in their bellies Matured and rarefied Over lifetimes spent behind Their mother as she hums Little songs of gentle rain On golden fields of wheat and rye Watching their little sisters Take all their mother’s time Resting in their basket They tinkle and they wink They watch their little sisters Gleaming, laughing in delight Suckling on the joyfulness That streams from their mother’s eyes.
NB: Image is from the World Wide Web. Artist was not mentioned.
Eyes rheumy, ringed with grey Stare at me, stare me down But their old fire is gone Almost gone … age-worn I still shrink, but imperceptibly Outwardly there is no sign Of being pushed off the line Off my center, intimidated Bullied, silently hated For that time. Those eyes Still try to be Windows to his reflection of me Disappointing, different, so unlike The version I should have been
I look back at him Even as I feel my own agitation Silently Pull at my edges, wringing at them Helplessly, I don’t want the drama I’m too old for that now He’s older but he doesn’t see The futility, the lovelessness, This rejection of me I look away, back at my book Quiet, stoic as calm as can be Inside another little piece Of closeness, affection, familiarity Breaks off into the grey-ringed void Of distances spanning an eternity.
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.
There’s a shop down the street Where you can buy consciences Gentle pin pricks around your heart For when you want to sense something For when you want to feel A tiny paper cut, a delicate weal Most times you buy a numbness though Cloaked in velvety greys and yellows They’re tailor-made to fit around Your never-racing, constant heart And your ever-racing, chasing mind The greater you can muster Put down on the counter The finer the swaddle To enshroud your qualms To feel the vaguest of twinges Of right and wrong When to see and when to be Sightless, without sound Unconscious, uncurious, asleep In the thick, creamy fabric Numbingly, comfortingly bound Gut-driven compass buried deep Six feet below the ice and the snow The tsunamis, the floods and the hurricanes The droughts, the disease, the misery Interred in darkness, entombed underground In the meantime there’s a shop that sells Custom-built, free-of-guilt scruples in town.
My thoughts sometimes Become like rebellious kids They dart about my head Swarm into my hippocampus Making me sweat I race after them Calling to them But they don’t heed me They’re chimerical beings Elves and pixies and aliens Coins and marbles and peeling paint A stubbed toe, a tired saint A fierce cupid on a fountain Rose bushes that run riot And then I just lose sight Of them at all I hear the silence Numbing, thrumming, sometimes strumming Through my brain
Then I see them again They’re out on the streets They’ve run free, leaving me behind They’ve escaped the prison of my mind I watch them from afar Tumbling around Laughing, skipping, rumbling around Moaning, groaning, fumbling around Far away from me I’m featherlight now I float above them Like I’m dead The leaden weight of life Has dropped I watch it tumble with my thoughts Rumble, tumble, sometimes stumble In its frantic vitality
I’m timeless, sadless, gladless now E m p t y I float away In a silent conspiracy Of air and nothingness.
My book SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS is now available at the following locations:
SRI LANKA: - THE BAREFOOT BOOKSTORE - THE JAM FRUIT TREE BOOKSTORE - PENDI - SARSASAVI BOOKSTORES - EXPOGRAPHICS
PAKISTAN: - LIBERTY BOOKS - PARAMOUNT BOOKS - READINGS
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The book is a collection of poems and essays, and as the name suggests, the contents of the 243 pages range from the sublime to the ridiculous; from soaring on the wings of ecstacy to struggling with overwhelming despair; from the capricious joys of matrimony to the dubious delights of singledom; from the profound ecstasy in a mug of steaming latte to the ardent disappointment in a less than perfectly brewed cup of tea; from the comedic to the somber and from the customary to the controversial, this collection of poems and features encompasses them all, and like a sore-throated bulbul (who also has some clear-voice days) I have sung them all for you.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 