Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Ayesha Oct 2021
Tomorrow hatches a cursed sparrow
Her pink-spotted wings and red-stained beak
They say, she ****** the song out her mother’s marrow
Her eyes, of gold and shimmer reek
Her voice is bleak and shrill an arrow
And a patient dawn she comes to seek

As will stumble her kins towards old light
She, scrawny, outside my window will sit
And sing and sing and sing on alright
Clumsily wake and my teeth I will grit
Squint and stare at the silhouette in bright
In sky alight, her little small being will sit unlit

Sleek with lone her innocent song
Though ugly and strange, I will hear on
Through rise and noise; however long, however long
Spring-kissed birds and the battles they won
Then I too will sing— what for I wish and what for long
Till, ever rushing, the flushed dawn will be gone

Then giggle she will and whisper a verse
A little advice from a little bird
To love, to love and never curse
This fine, fine, wretched little world
Then smile, and into the sky she will disperse
And I, serene, into the crown of dirt
28/10/2021

Lazy Ramblings - II
Ayesha Oct 2021
steer then forward
moons slide by
hustling days on
talking go
unchanging I—
say, not really.
an uncovered death
slowly stirring
I await, await
the blooming, as
sounds of bees
fade and fly
however patient
gold-licked lakes my skins,
sweet grief is my food
dusk-dipped despair
my bed
steer then onwards—
laced my sleep
with seas' gentle excitements
27/10/2021

Lazy Ramblings - I
Ayesha Oct 2021
The Magic dripped out of the night
Out of the holed hold
Of its frail, fence-like fingers
The Magic slid onto and past me
Kissed the cold, cement floor
In its drip drop dripping ecstasy
Then vanished under still
Though no deeper depths I had known

As a towel hung out to dry
The night melted onto its grey shadow
Till the moon was just a moon
And the quiet— piercing shrill and bitter.
I felt my fingers go dry
And my body
Sensed not the silky speech of my palm
Nor the whispers of sneaky light

And the city
Was a song torn apart—
Every horn upon me lunged
I slipped through the silence, and fell, but
Fell not enough
I said, Magic, Magic, take me along
But the floor for me was a circus uninviting
And in my wretched solidity, I lay limp
Listening in to the echoes
The echoes, the echoes of a laughter so far away
(I said, Magic, Magic, take me along)

And the moon was just a moon
The evening star I could not see
And sleep was a ragged little thing,
As the sharp dripping,
With last and last of the Magic, was gone
I sank, I sank, immobile —
Oh, In the ever-stirring city
It was a night lonely
20/10/2021

Whatever Magic is
Ayesha Oct 2021
Strike— bare, boastful light.
Snakelike, your silver serenity
Strike with firm, flaunting fatality
Surrender then, to specks flush-light.
Split asunder, your thriving fragility
Shuddering then, a humble complexity
Shimmering so lovingly bright.
Spin I the crystals; your dancing simplicity
Simplicity— oh, so generous in its creativity
Scarce old stars rather I,
                       than sun’s lifeless white.
20/10/2021

I keep thinking: it must be painful for the mighty rays of sun to be broken to bits by the sun-catcher that shines by my window. Yet, the patterns that form through the process are so overwhelmingly beautiful.
There must be some beauty in the pain that comes through bravery.

There's a saying in Urdu - my mother tongue - which goes like this:
کچھ سوچ کے شمع پہ پروانا جلا ہو گا
شاید اسی جلنے میں جینے کا مزا ہو گا

Which roughly translates to:
"The moth must've thought something before it leapt into the flames
Perhaps it was that burning where the true flavour of living lay

Honestly, I so wish the translation could do justice to how beautiful that verse is in our language. The first time I heard it, it just took my breath away.
Ayesha Oct 2021
Grief is good, O naked shivering—
Grief, the last full blossom
In the rich, rich ***** of spring
Laden with hues, their gentle smother;
Reap it they and morph a shrine:
Grief, the violent girl of a silenced mother.
Grief, the first decay of decay old
As the sky beats down and down,
Burning all green to gold.
Grief, the cunning god
That quietens, and teaches the art of scream.
Grief then, the ripe fruit’s bitter-sweet cold.
The first fall that a thousand follow,
Crystal chambers of the first frail flake.
Then, hues that all white swallow.

On, on swirls the necklace.
A countless tyrant beads
Still, countless laced with grace
True, shrines tumble, and daughters weep,
Falls then burn, and summers melt
Thirst and ash into fruit do seep.
This despairing tickle in so deep—
But suns to snow and sweet still on subside
Own thus the jewel, and, hush, be off to sleep.
Oh, in here a faceless sky long stubborn stood;
Years blank, till snow and sun lit up from soot

O naked shivering, grief is good.
17/10/2021

Going over to my father's village, my little brother sleeping. I don't know, I began to feel quiet, dissolved in the trees and fields running by. Suns are good, crinkled leaves, itching, annoying flies, and terrifying insects. Cold is good, and flower and water. Chatter and laugh and silence. Hours passing by, yet I felt so still.
Ayesha Oct 2021
Still they lie on the river-bed.
Unforgotten; daughters of the sun
their itching, prickling, stabbing beams
And dusks that ran ran red
But tread on, the circus just begun,
The ripples— mote by mote— by seams

The sands stir and rocks twitch
Dull-eyed creatures still non-living go
Roses bloom, say, roses rise
Once lively dawns to sacked towns switch
Body and body and body we sow
Roses bloom, say, roses rise

Say, still they lie; still sessile
Of tens a blooming heart we plucked
Still some more we knew as our own
Stumble on we desperate while
Lie we still in the river-bed tucked
Oh, those parched pieces that once shone

and these wretched blooms undying
14/10/2021

"Hello, Paul. Thank you for the comment on Roses Bloom.
Even as I write this, I realise that I did not do a very efficient job of depicting my thoughts in the poem, as I was paying too much attention to the rhymes. It was a clumsy attempt, but, well, here is what I meant to say:

The poem is about all the good parts of myself that I have lost along the way. All the versions of myself through the past, through every day (thus ‘the daughters of the sun’) that I have killed/neglected. I guess I could say that the poem is about goodness lost as one progresses through life - I do not mean that in a sense that we become bad, or that I think I did, rather that we lose parts of ourselves as we grow, and some of them also happen to be good. This poem is about a temporary state of mind that regrets all that loss.

And all the dull-eyed creatures go on, meaning that days pass on, and the waves of everyday living hide from us all those sins we committed, or goodness we lost. But the bodies still lie there, and I see them very often. They bear all the memories of myself, and they are myself, yet I can do nothing to undo my doing.

Well… It ***** that I could not write it very brilliantly so as to make the theme or message clear, but, well, thank you for reading anyway.

P.s. sorry for the rant."

[Copy-pasted]
Ayesha Oct 2021
XV
new moon’s a shy child
fairy-lights, cherry night, quiet.
I talk myself wild.
and all the world listens
Next page