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Shivani Lalan Apr 2016
In shaking verse
She writes down the gifts of his divinity.
Her trembling meter pays homage
To the ruby red circles seared onto her skin.
Every stuttering syllable is an offering
That she conjures as a devotee,
Who has defaulted on the repayment
Of words, now long overdue.

He demands epic proportions of gifted wisdom,
He asks for legendary lines in his honour.
He demands for glory to his name,
Written in red.

The patron saint of inspiration
Retains his light,
And casts gifted shadows over her,
As she struggles to her elbows,
Drowning in loud, blank papers.

The patron saint of inspiration
Waits at the altar of poetry,
Watching tributes flow in,
Mounted on her fragile skin
And faded rhymes.

The patron saint of inspiration
Inspects the fabric of the writer's soul,
And passes judgement
On the worth of her tears,
Ever smiling, ever watching.

The patron saint of inspiration
Lures her to the gates of Eden
Only to have her trace her words
In the eternal dust of the ephemeral
Gods that gathers beneath it.

His grace against her fatigue,
His divinity against her anguish.
His grand schemes against her hope
His knowledge against her intrigue.

The patron saint of inspiration
Watches her from the walls within.

The patron saint of inspiration
Encourages her divine sin.
a piece from the series of poetry for the NaPoWriMo.
Shivani Lalan Mar 2016
You are reckless colour
and I'm the muted grey
backdrop to you riot.
I let you run wild
while you carry the world
on your tired back,
dripping paint on the
canvas of space and
time. You paint universes
in sorrow, stars in
exhaustion; you drown
oceans in skies and
raise mountains on
plains. You are wild
imagination and I'm
the steady flow of
words to keep you
solemn company. You
are the last dregs of
chaos, strong and pure,
and I am the smell of
an old room, always
there, forever constant,
forever lingering. You
are great joys sprinting
across the canvas and
I'm the borders that
you leave on the
windowsill. You are
violent song, trembling
tears; I am the quiet nod
of a great tree as it listens
to the whispering wind.
You are a million sparks
of power, behind a dam
of subtlety, and I am the
river, waiting for time to
pass. You are autumn, or
what it feels like to fall,
and I am the warm summer
with my joyous abandon.

You and I are forever in
balance; you observing me,
me writing you down.
The first in a series entitles "You and I"
Hopefully tolerable.
Thank you for reading this!
Shivani Lalan Jul 2015
Je serai poète et toi, la poésie.*
I will be the poet and you, the poetry.

But it is not the words
That I scribbled out in arduous hand,
The slopes of my letters,
That quite encompass
The ***** of you leaning against
The pane of my window in the rains.

Nor is it the soft cursive
In which I gently wrote down
Your expression when a flake of snow
Soft and tender;
Rustling through the branches of fir
To land on your nose,
Ever so gently;
That can quite tell the world
What your clear laughter does
To an hour of gloom.

I knew then,
That my mind, with its fractured
Concepts disjoint syllables and tripping verse might not be capable
Of putting pen to paper
And recall your fiery eyes,
When they pierce the veil of
Young melancholy
And beckon me to act my age,
And not a morbid royal spinster.

And I thought of how you knew
In far more precise details how
After a weary day, I flopped down
On to the couch in monotonous exhaustion
Wiping my brow, shaking off the
Metaphorical dust.
You knew, far better than me,
The blurred movements of my hands
As I traced words in the air.

I watched you watch me
Move and I watched as you noted
The crest of every breath I took.

And I thought.

Tu sera poète et moi, la poésie.
You will be the poet and I, the poetry.
First attempt at romantic poetry ugh.
Shivani Lalan Mar 2015
And lights.

She looked a little pale
In the yellow light.
The spots had been
Changed to white.
And when the white
Couldn't hide her pallor,
She asked the makeup
To put on a brighter colour.
They didn't ask if she had eaten.
They tried once,
Came back browbeaten.
"Diet only for ma'am"
Her abdomen perfectly satisfied;
Her soul craving for more.

And camera.

The perfect shot
Ended with a sweeping glance
Across the set
At her hero all decked
In the knightly splendour.
She was a princess whom
He saved from a dragon.
Little did anyone know
That after a day's worth
Of angry cameras panning
Her face and scrutinising her life,
She needed saving
Mostly from herself.

And action.*

This time, a thriller.
She walks down the corridor set
- Director's thumbs-up,
To hunt down the culprit
Who snatched her family.
She gives the perfect action sequence,
Complete with blood trickles.
"An award winner, surely."
She is done with the shoot
And heads home, her van.
Someone is waiting.
He had been waiting since she left
Him that summer.
Waiting for an excuse, at first.
Then acceptance.
Then forgiveness.
She gave it her best performance,
But could not fake the relief
When he approached with an apology
And a gun.
In my series of pieces based on social problems, this is a poem about the life an actress battling something.... something that you can percieve in whichever manner you want to.
Shivani Lalan Feb 2015
He had a habit of forgetting
That the knife should be
At his left,
Unlike others.
Every morning, she would
mechanically
switch the fork with the knife.


When they finished lunch
she started clearing up
and noticed the knife to his right
again.

That night,
after their routine drew to a close,
They talked.
Slowly, at first.
A touchy subject walks in.

It's time.

Even as the air is knocked from her lungs,
She gets up and scrabbles on the floor.
Nails scratching the carpet.
Eyes scanning the horizon, now black.
Her brain decides to get up,
Her body disobeys.

Her body disobeys.

Isn't that what put her here in the first place?
So what if she is pretty?
So what if her eyes are sparkling emeralds?
Her belly renders her defenceless
from his onslaught.
Isn't it her fault
that it is empty?
Isn't she wrong to want
independence from him?
Mentally, physically, emotionally?
He owned her, didn't he?

He owned her, didn't he.

He explained to her the benefits
of obeying.
Her pretty face wouldn't have been
all those ungainly shades of black.
Her eyes wouldn't have been encircled by blue.
All she had to do was obey
and not tell anyone
but obey.
Her brain rebelled.

Her brain rebelled.

Her body, for once, obeyed.
She stumbled through the hallway
She knocked down her favourite frame-
Their daughter on a pony.
Kitchen, her sanctuary.
She broke her favourite China.
Hurled her utensils.
"I arranged them last week, you *****."
And then she saw them.
The knives.

The knives.

They were inviting  
Her hands were pale, waiting.
His heart corrupt, hating.
*"Knives to your left, darling."
As a sociology student, I found domestic violence  intensely intriguing and wanted to experiment with the same.
Shivani Lalan Jan 2015
Hold your head
above the crimson water,
my love.

There's peace in the air,
there's peace;
a dove.

And heart from heart
it flutters,
in vain.

To bring to this parched earth
love,
and rain.

When peace, she groaned
under the weight of darkness,
she cried.

"The armies heard not this wail"
and the gentlemen
they lied.
Inspired by O, gentlemen by Sahir Ludhyanvi
  Jan 2015 Shivani Lalan
Cassandra L
I think I need to fall in love
with a poet.
So that maybe all the words
and all the hurt won’t always be mine.
I need to fall in love with a poet
so that he will whisper words
that sound better than stories and
don’t need to last as long.
I want to be the one to fall in love
with a poet.
He can make me feel something
so that all the love and the futures
won’t always come from another. And I
will write stories about us
in another world with better lives
where poetry will be sung from
the love, which dies so poetically
and I will know that I loved
a poet.
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