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Ayesha Sep 2023
I begin to end where the song begins
Little rain plays the earth, birds learn
Little facets light to mimic the sea
The crumpled sheet of the sky
Seems to sink slowly upon my land
The fortress offers a generous view
But my people are busy in their work
And I am busy in the watching

Sweet. Sweet. It is a stumbling
Sweetheart, walked up through the night
I break down, I break down altogether,
I stutter as lightening within the clouds
And the thunder of my disquiet
Pounds against the sun. Everything
Everything, everything incites me
To climb up the watchtowers, invites me
To join a hand onto hand, and
Scream myself open to the world
19/09/2023
Ayesha Sep 2023
White as a sordid awakening
Hollow, shallow, swallows
Me like an aged cavern

When mother comes in
She is scared to find me
Pale and blue

The window is a hole
Curtains like bedraggled women
Clutch at themselves

She stumbles through a gathering
Of talkative charcoal
And pastel on the floor

Scattered and sallow
Turpentine twists in sweet sashes
Round and round her neck

She calls, wavering already
Diving obliquely through the sea
She reaches for me on the mattress

In the bookshelf,
Behind easels,  pallete
Beneath the bridge of the table

A thousand gales of hues blow
Ruffling a thousand shadows
Thousand murmurs decieve her

Into breathing relief.
I see her heart a flickering flame:
Waves of my deathlessness

Shove her around.
Mother, mother, come closer
I call from the lean wooden

Parapet of the canvas
I dance her about in the sky
Stroke the hair, as

She cries, holding my solidity
Thin, bony; her hands shake
Like factory floors

Rancid blooms of a stubborn faith
Scotch her oak-brown skin
And all the walls watch our show

Disintegration occurs
As she searches for me
Kicking clatter and dust around

I a pebble in the pebbles of me
She picks, examines, throws
Picks examines, throws

All while tumbling
Into into into the stench
Of my keen blue decay

Brushstroke, word, scream and plea
She takes all the noise along
Into the beautiful world

Gaunt, I crawl clawing out
I am monster now
And she is painted.
22/08/2023
Ayesha Aug 2023
پ
کہاں تک کو چلی پھرتی ہوں
چھوٹی چھوٹی گم راتوں میں

چھوٹی چلتی چلی باتوں میں
کیسے سنساں ہو جاتی ہوں

کیسے چھپی گلیوں سرہانے
اکسر رکی سی جاتی ہوں

اکسر ہی سیاہ سنم سایوں میں
ایسی جھکی سی جاتی ہوں

جیسے خدا کھلا کھڑا ہو کوی
جیسے مجھے بلا رہا ہو کوی

کیا کوی بلا رہا تو نہیں؟
یوں ہی پوچھتی جاتی ہوں

نہ رات، نہ رنگ، نہ راغ رنج
پھر بھی کھڑی سنتی رہتی ہوں

ایک شور سا سفید، ایک ڈانٹ جیسے
کیوں میں سب کچھ سہ جاتی ہوں

شام سمندر سڑکوں پر
سب بھول جاتی ہوں، سب بھول آتی ہوں

سب سکت شکستہ ساتھی اپنے
سب لپٹے لال لیے جاتی ہوں

کوی پوچھے جو نام تو مڑ کر
پھر کیوں تیرا ہی نام بتاتی ہوں

کیوں مدھم مسافر تجھے مٹا کر
خود اب بار بار بلاتی ہوں

بخستا سی یاد کے موڑ پر
خود اب انتظار کیے جاتی ہوں

بجھتے سماں کے چہرے پر
تجھے سجا کے دل بہلاتی ہوں

کیوں بہلتا ہے دل منافق میرا
   کیوں اسے قریب کیے جاتی ہوں

آہ، کم خواب چٹانی راتوں میں اب
کیوں میں رکی چلی جاتی ہوں
15/08/2023
Ayesha Aug 2023
Sombre heaven, you look just right in pink
Clothed and cloaked, silken limbs of ancient lore
Everything droops round the drape of your lace
My eyes stumbling lurking, running, returning

I will - I could take anything miniscule
Bare minimum, pitiful, pathetic, muggy
Bitter rain - but you refuse to yield, just like me
Is this why our touch fails so simply?
Because we're too similar for revolution?
Defeat has me nauseous, mildly in love

Sweet, sharp, a little painful, a little blue
You leave no scent when gliding by
10/08/2023
Ayesha Aug 2023
naivety slips
forbidden down
I wipe away
with sodden palms
I wipe the way
I slip in paint
wipe moody, spoiled,
wipe then a madness
little and brown
it is no one's fault
or no one's bad
it is rampant Less
stood up to life
with machine breaths
and human noise
sweet sky buckles
as it spreads its arms
rampart then, it is
like blindness
like stumble
forgive me
I know it is weak
when you are evil
I cannot help but break
01/04/2023
For Saad
Ayesha Jul 2023
The unbearable viscosity
Of the boredom of waiting
Gags and gapes, it growling
Has me swallowed
Into its grotesque throat

The fans purr, feathery,
Unpleasent. The lights buzz
In my brain, it scratches
A restless cat, churns
A gyring stomach

I turn an old song
Over and over on my tongue
Till the sombre juice
Is lost to my black insides
And the flavourless gum
Becomes a pebble

Sold, a piece in the pieces
Of the past - how many hours
Lost, faceless leaves, to dirt?
The endless rosary
Of mournful beads: stale,
Untouched by prayers, a
Mockery to God
25/07/2023
Ayesha Jul 2023
I am lost, and the cave is blue
All facets of it, some faded, some sure
Crystal tears flicker on the jagged
White eyes, the stones speak nothing
Merely blink as the turnings of lights
In keen grey wells of silence
My life, as a ragged brush, paints
The night to be raw and torn
Leaves the canvas blank for a moon
Throughout the sky are pinned
My letters to the world, flip-flopping
As wild wind horses hop about them
But in the day, in its darkness
I can recall nothing of the colours
The walls scuttle away from me
And the cave, though endless, shrinks
I sit down into the shape of an insect
And feel the firm embrace of lone
Of stone, I begin to feel myself of stone
I rush to the waters, they rush to me
Bleak blue turns me over, takes me
Through months, I sail its roudy mouth
Blissfully unseeing and faceless
Until the coin of the sun flips
And blackness washes everything clean
The sea still, sags to rock, entombs
Itself and me. I am lost, and the cave
Is blue
16/07/2023
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