VERSE | TUNNEL VISION

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.
Image: Kay Adonna

VERSE | THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE AIR

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 leaves
In their swaying 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
Lips everywhere
Spilling the same prayers
As with our souls bared
We fuse, we unify
With something new in the air.
Image: DB Waterman
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VERSE | PIN PRICKS AND PAPER CUTS

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.

VERSE | THROUGH THEIR EYES

She sat there selling bangles 
Set up in a wicker basket
Some laid down on the grass
Every now and then she gently
Swept off the dust that spread thinly
From teeming feet that hurried 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 was tugging
The life blood from her womb
Every time that she moved
Spilling it in little driblets
Onto its precious load

The maternal bond of glass and blood
Unremitting, never enough
As she sat car-caressing
Sometimes fretting, sometimes fussing
Rearranging, caring, loving
Always loving, always loving
A tender smile hov-hovering
Around her tired mouth
She was 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 brought tears to her eyes
The boundless world of plenty
In those bangles by her side

Behind her lay 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 hummed
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 tinkled and they winked
They watched their little sisters
Gleaming, laughing in delight
Suckling on the joyfulness
That streamed from their mother’s eyes.
NB: Image is from the World Wide Web. Artist was not mentioned.

VERSE | KIDNEY-STONED

There’s an ache in my kidneys 
It’s stuck fast to me
It seems to go deeper
Than just physically

When I least expect it
The pain creeps up on me
Like a divine messenger
Whispering its prophecy

I clutch my aching flesh
On my left or my right
I press desperate fingers
On the tormenting side

And then I hear the words
As they form in my head
The pain cannon-balling them
Into shooting threads

It’s a manifestation of
Trying hard to fit in
Of being torn to pieces
Every single day within

It’s the gathering storm
On every page in my feed
Of a debt-propelled suicide
Of a billionaire’s feast

It’s the hungry eyes
That sit in their deathly sockets
It’s the bloated engines
Of Mars-bound rockets

It’s people breaking out of
Society’s pristine box
To be trodden underfoot
By the conventionally orthodox

It’s the clamour of politics
Economics and faith
It’s the thousand new ways
We resent and we hate

These barbs sit inside me
Each waiting its turn
They’ll wound and they’ll lance me
Until they’re felt and they’re heard

There’s an ache in my kidneys
Of a tragedy that’s new
Or one that’s lingered awhile
And now is screaming its truth.

VERSE | SADLESS

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.
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VERSE | VEINS

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
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UPDATE- New Book Release | SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS

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.

POETRY READING | JUST ANOTHER FAIRYTALE

My book SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS is a collection of poems and essays, rumblings of the heart about the joys, the truths, the pain, the controversies, the funniness and the wonder that criss cross all our lives in one way or another.

The book is divided into five sections: Joy, Foot-in-the-mouth, Truth, Hope and Serenity. The Truth and Foot-in-the-Mouth categories are especially brazen and raw. As with most such uninhibited writing, the objective is to assail the sensibilities and even if just for a while, to look the truth right in its jaundiced eye. The other three sections are largely whimsical and uplifting very much like walking through a zen corridor, which I’m hoping, will also soften the sensory assault of the former two segments.

POETRY READING | MAYA

My book of poetry and essays SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS will be available in bookstores across Pakistan and Sri Lanka at the end of December 2022.

FRIENDS IN SL can get their copies TODAY from the Jam Fruit Tree bookstore on Galle road in Colombo via call/ WhatsApp to 072-7268078.

Shimmering Scraps is a collection of poems and essays, rumblings of the heart about the joys, the truths, the pain, the controversies, the funniness and the wonder that criss cross all our lives in one way or another.

The book is divided into five sections: Joy, Foot-in-the-mouth, Truth, Hope and Serenity. The Truth and Foot-in-the-Mouth categories are especially brazen and raw. As with most such uninhibited writing, the objective is to assail the sensibilities and even if just for a while, to look the truth right in its jaundiced eye. The other three sections are largely whimsical and uplifting very much like walking through a zen corridor, which I’m hoping, will also soften the sensory assault of the former two segments.

NEW BOOK RELEASE | SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS

Dear friends and family,

It is with great excitement and pleasure that I introduce my second book for the grownups – my book of poetry and essays titled SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS. The book will be available across bookstores in Pakistan and Sri Lanka at the end of December 2022. Friends in SL can currently order it from the Jam Fruit Tree bookstore on Galle Road via call/WhatsApp to 072-7268078.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This is a collection of poems and essays, humble opinions, rumblings of the heart about the joys, the truths, the pain, the controversies, the funniness and the wonder that criss cross all our lives in one way or another. I have compiled them here because too many times, we are witnesses to profound beauty, love, dreams, desolation, prejudice and injustice and yet, we forget.

The contents of these 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.

Scraps of Poetry and Madness is a phrase borrowed from that literary Wonder Woman, Virginia Woolfe. For in this collection too, there is a stream of raw and strident, passive and ruminative, joyous and grief-bound, mad and glad thoughts that run like a melody through the entirety of its spine; and like a sore-throated bulbul (who also has some good-voice days) I have sung them all for my readers.

VERSE | STARS

She carried a little bouquet 
Of golden-hearted nargis*
Her face flushed, her eyes bright
She was going to make a gift of them
To someone special.
The bus stop was empty
Save the woman with the flowers
And me. I had my phone in my hand
She sat on the bench waiting
Clutching her bouquet
I stood nearby, holding my phone
Watching her secretly
Trying not to spook her
But she was mesmerizing
In the tender enchantment
That surrounded her

The bus was late
She sat there almost motionlessly, quietly
But the thrum of her joyful energy
Was taken up by the gay bouquet
As it danced gently in the breeze
She wore yellow shalwar kameez*
With little white flowers
Or were they stars?
They were tiny, almost imperceptible
So small I was sure even she wouldn’t know
But they shimmered in her gaiety
She smiled as she adjusted the stems
The flowers bobbed back happily
She sat there like a painting
Full of joy and anticipation

The bus rolled in
Carrying its load of passengers
I lingered a while to see
The recipient of this picture of love
That waited brightly on the seat
Together we watched people alight
People go left and right
Until the last passenger stepped down
I climbed on, slowly, hesitantly
I sat down near a window and looked out
The bouquet now lay inertly on the bench
Its sunny heart wrenched
Where it had been clenched
In the ardent embrace of a pair of hands
Drenching it in the liquid warmth of love

They were stars, not flowers
On her kameez, five-pronged tridents
Piercing, lancing, shattering
The perfection of beautiful things
Hidden, Unbeknownst to her
The fault, I was sure, lay in the stars.
* Nargis: Daffodil

* Shalwar kameez: the long shirt and trousers worn by women in Pakistan and India