Resilience

As if being a woman here
Isn’t a deep enough gash,
The motherhood’s lament
For a broken son,
A mistreated daughter,
Incites enduring pain,
That breaks a heart in twain.

©Aaysid

Every time I hear about any sort of tragedy befalling a person, my heart breaks for their mother. One of the most remarkable blessings in this life is to have a mother who loves and nurtures you.
My heart goes out to all the mothers who have lost their precious children to brutal, inhumane violence. They are the epitome of strength and resilience. This Mother’s Day feels incredibly heavy.

Featured image from Pexels

The Kind Places

Everyone in the room
had something to say,
a story to share,
a few scabs to pick at,
a few wounds to redress,
but there you were
sitting cross-legged in the corner,
repressing an urge to flee.

All of them could see
the red in your eyes
and the streak of slow sweat
at the nape of your neck,
but not many could see
that you did not wish to speak—
for your story’s macabre,
the scab’s crusted over,
and your wounds still bleed.

So, when they passed you the conch,
you broke it instead,
but to your utter surprise,
they did not ask you to leave.

Some places are tough,
but they’ll wait for you
while you take your time to heal,
for your pain may be different,
but they know how it feels.

©Aaysid

“What happens when people open their hearts?”
“They get better.”
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Featured image is generated using the Microsoft Designer

Still Weird

I.

Not a day goes by
That I don’t say to myself,
“Don’t engage,
Don’t engage,
Don’t engage!”
But there I go again,
Spilling my guts out,
In response to a hesitant, “Hey.”

II.

I see you.
Even on the days
That I cannot see myself.
So, don’t you dare disappear.
Not before me, at least.

III.

I feel like the baby figs
That fall excitedly,
Albeit prematurely,
In all their greenish-amber glory
From the sturdy branches,
Only to discover
They were too unripe
To be turned into a jam or a jelly,
And too young to take roots.

IV.

I pack my bags
And leave a note
For the void
I got tired of staring into
As I walk back home.

©Aaysid

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

Featured image from Pixabay

The Decline

shattered moments
sprawled on a turntable,
the sand trickling out
from an hourglass,
upside down,
or the right way up,
there’s no way to tell
with the seconds leaking out
of it like that.

the vacant evening slots
in the daily planner
stare back blankly,
collapsing into one lean
thread of the night,
kept adrift in reverence
to celebrate the decline—

of the day, of the hours,
and of the mind,
that no longer coexists
with the time.

©Aaysid

“You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself”
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Featured image from Pexels

Muddled

No cherry blossoms grow
in the gardens of eternal anguish,
and the doves leave their nests
way before winds of peace
make rounds over their vacant nests.

The flute and the lute players
come down with the spells
of hacking cough that leave the lungs
bereft of breath, and the ears
devoid of notes in the air.

The woes keep stumbling into each other,
impotent in the face of their own inertia,
and the world ends for some in the night,
but begins all over again
in the morning for a fortunate few.

While what is unruffled, remains as such,
even in the face of utter discord—
it is hard to pick a side, at times,
hence, we embrace all of it,
and nothing at all…

©Aaysid

“And I can’t be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”
J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

Featured image is generated using the Microsoft Designer

Fuming

Shackled, pinned down
In a mind that rages,
Wails, bawls, throws a temper,
And boils over in contempt
Over its own spinelessness.

I forget to blink sometimes,
Consciously choose not to do so
at other times,
Afraid of succumbing
To the darkness of it all—
The sheer helplessness,
A profound inability
To do anything but watch
A few diabolical souls
Wield inequitable power
And wreak havoc on mankind…

I do not know
How to be here anymore,
Where to go,
Or even where to look anymore.
I am sorry for being here
And not being able
to change a thing.
I am sorry, my endlessly fuming mind,
For not being here at all.

©Aaysid

“Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they’re evaporating.”

Mahmoud Darwish

Featured image from Pexels

A Lifeline

I feel like I am disappearing,
Diminishing, falling to bits,
Getting too small
Unlike a news-clipping
From an isolated event
I was once featured in —

Neither the protagonist,
Nor the villain,
Rather a bystander,
Mentioned not by name,
But by a weird chance
Of being in the right moment
At the wrong time,
Midway through a sneeze,
Awkward, ludicrous,
Unfit for the scene,
But suited to the affair
For these very quirks.

Tucked reverently, however,
Inside a treasured book
Kept on the nightstand,
Laminated, and visited often
By that one person
Who imagines themselves
To be an anchor, a lighthouse
For a spirit adrift,
A gatherer of remnants
Of a soul amiss.

©Aaysid

“How could she tell him that we come to love those who save us?”

Jenna Blum, Those Who Save Us

AI generated featured image by Microsoft Designer

Humbled

To be merely
A small stroke
From a brush,
A paint drip,
Or even a tiny
Unplanned smudge,
On a primed canvas,
Or on a canvas
Still rough,
Might just be too much
If it allows you
To become a part of
An artistic moment;
Disguised, yet,
Recognizable as such.

©Aaysid

“My name is Nobody.”
Homer, The Odyssey

AI generated featured image by Microsoft Designer

Connected

Plucked daisies in an open carton,
Sunday bazaar, and a long-pleated skirt,
With an ineptly crocheted scarf,
Crow-feet at the outer edges of bleary eyes.

Half-past ten there and also in the kitchen
In her home where the last night’s stew stews
Over the stove she forgot to turn off,
And the other heads turn skyward more often
Than they turn sideways – towards her.

Fearing the ominous sky about to rain
In a city that suffers miserably
Like an immunocompromised person
Does in the viral outbreaks,
But it is one of the many worries
That also exists outside of her head.

A silent, shared dilemma,
That momentarily feels like a connection
Stronger than the one she has with her isolation.

©Aaysid

“Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage.”

J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

AI generated featured image by Microsoft Designer

A Publication

I am grateful to Spillwords Press for publishing my poem, The Bedraggled, today.

https://spillwords.com/the-bedraggled/

At this point, I have almost as many literary publications as scientific ones, and it is both amusing and worrisome. Nonetheless, these days, I am working on the first draft of my poetry book, struggling to find the time and patience to see it through.

January’s Disquiet

It burns, and it stings,
The cold wind against
The numb cheeks,
And the great distance
Between you
And the opulent world
Grows ever so greater.

You are a silhouette
Of a person you used to be
Two winters ago,
Separated at the edges,
Not making ends meet,
Making blankets out of dreams
That no longer recur
As sleep eludes you.

The open sky is not a roof,
The pavement is not a floor,
And existence feels illusory
Without four walls and a door.

It can get taken away
In days, in a minute,
The will to just be
In spite of the unbecoming
You get subjected to —

January breaks apart
A great many souls!

©Aaysid

AI generated featured image by Microsoft Designer

Annotated

We can be found
between the lines,
in the margins,
underlined, struck through
with a pink crayon,
for crying out loud!

A mess in the sticky notes,
lost in the sticky tabs,
scribbled over and under,
doubly struck through
with a neon green
highlighter this time.

Flipping the pages
sends out a waft
of the perfumed notes
hidden inside…

Alas, our books are read
with an utter disregard
for the annotation guide!

©Aaysid

Featured image from Pixabay

Paradoxical

A poem is not a person;
An exposition is not a place.
The masquerade on the paper
Is a witless charade.
The mind comes undone,
And it is tough to save face
For those who choose to write,
Keep falling in and out of grace.
For those who choose to write,
No longer feel part of the race.

©Aaysid

“We write to make sense of it all.”
Wallace Stenger

Get Busy Living

It is both funny and incredibly melancholic how some of us spend our days looking forward to that vague and distant idea of a vacation that sounds incredulous at best. We leave the books unread, the friends unmet, the plays unheard, the shows unwatched, and the people we love untalked to. The toll of the routine begins to radiate out of us. Our gait languid, the gaze disengaged, and our conversations a cry for help. Yet, we continue as if we have all the time in the world. The world ends for so many people every second here, and our existence weighs on us a lot more if the meaning is lost in a seemingly eternal struggle to survive, and all the joy is sucked out of life, in one missed opportunity to sit back after another.

‘Stop and smell the flowers.’ The flowers do not smell the way they ought to when we wait for them for so long. When the apparently free days arrive, they are consumed by mundane things – woes of deep cleaning the house, queuing up in the lines in banks/offices, grocery shopping, and catching up on the doctor’s appointments to finally address the health troubles that you had been pushing down to just be there. Where does it end? There will always be work to do, so what if we took the little bits out of our dream vacation and incorporated them into our wearisome days? What if we talked to that friend we had been putting off for so long? What if we threw caution to the wind and binge-read for the whole night? Not all ‘what ifs’ are wistful and improbable. Some of them never have to become ‘what ifs’ if we just do them.

©Aaysid

“Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.”

Matt Haig

Featured image generated with Microsoft Designer

The Alpha Rhythm

There are barricades
in the stream of consciousness:
unprecedented undulations
in the middle of the spectrum—
thrice removed, detached,
discombobulated, re-patched… tranquil,
but not yet asleep
to remain in the midst
of the blur of the world
through approximated eyelids
as the journal writes itself,
one unfocused entry after another.

©Aaysid

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.“

Richard Brautigan

Missing It All

I have been experiencing issues with the WordPress Jetpack application for quite some time now. I believe it is not fully compatible with my phone. Because of this, I’ve been posting more frequently on Instagram instead. Unfortunately, switching over to Instagram caused me to miss many posts from the wonderful writers and poets here. I hope to find some time to sit back and read them on my laptop soon. In the meantime, I would love to read the work of my WordPress friends if they share it on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram under the username _aaysid.

https://instagram.com/_aaysid?igshid=YzAwZjE1ZTI0Zg==

My latest post on Instagram. Retouched an old poem.😊

Absurd

A soundless morn
Ends up summoning
A few clouds of blue to rain.

A scriptless eve
Tries to extinguish
What was left of the flame.

A voiceless night
Adds to noise
And causes, thus, much pain.

©Aaysid

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

Michael Cunningham

Away

A long way from home,
And not getting any closer,
Not anytime soon, anyway.

The sun sets late
In places you have left
To be close to yourself,
And as the night darkens,
You lie fidgeting,
Staring nervously
At the ceiling,
Hoping against hope
That the skies outside
Don’t light up
The way they did back home.

Someone else loses sleep,
Worrying for you,
You, who have left home
To find it.

©Aaysid

“We start out as little bits of disconnected dust.”
Naomi Shihab Nye

Stormless

The world is bleeding and is in terrible pain, and it leaves the writer in you at a loss for words. I do not have the right words to express grief and outrage as the violence spreads like wildfire. Today, in a low moment, I practised a calming exercise, where I thought about all the good people I know and how they are the exact opposite of the evil that so unabashedly prevails in this world. After a while, I wrote this poem to enlighten my own heart, and now I am sharing it with my friends here.

You are a June guy,
Making homes in the deserts,
But forever waiting
For the monsoon guy,
Staying up after hours,
In love with the moon guy.

Slept-in, wept-out,
Eyes like a raccoon guy,
Outside looking in,
In-sync, out-of-tune guy,
A dark cloud in the bright sky,
But too animated,
To be a maroon guy…

Happiness in a teaspoon guy!

Staying for the moments,
Day in and day out,
Giving up in the afternoon guy.
Ephemeral, too good to be true,
In a rush to run away,
Always leaving too soon guy.

©Aaysid

Unfallen

It is seconds from fading away,
Once and for all,
But you pull through,
And begrudgingly resuscitate
What’s left of your will
To carry on despite
A desire to leave
The shards of it
To gnaw through the wall
You have built around
Everything you cannot stand to recall.

You cannot help but laugh,
A maniacal laugh,
As you look back towards a woman
You used to be just a moment ago –
Awry hair sprouting out
Of a last-night’s bun,
Coming undone,
Same disdainful look in the eyeball,
Stuck in an awkward pose,
As if in limbo
Halfway through a fall,
Trying to process
An enormous situation
With a concentration span too small!

©Aaysid

“Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’

Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘… Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.”
Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Featured image from Pexels

Working Week

A few micro poems to illustrate what a working week looks like for a tumultuous mind when it decides to part ways with to-do lists and wing it instead.

Monday

I drown

in my morning tea

only to reappear

in my bedtime coffee.

I am often not

able to recall

the sandwich from supper

at all!

Tuesday

the metaphorical flames

grow ever so mighty

in my daymares,

and I snap out of them

feeling like a puddle!

Wednesday

I was supposed

to go insane

by the middle

of this week,

but here I am,

living for the weekend,

and still making

a lot of sense

Thursday

my mindlessness

is the next best thing

to my mindfulness,

and this is a scary thought

to spend

a Thursday with!

Friday

one cannot

lock up happiness

in order to contain it,

but this moment

right here

is joyful enough

to last for at least

the next two days!

©Aaysid

Featured image from Pexels

Invisible

I was terribly afraid
Of bumping into you,
With my head bowed,
Eyes struggling to fixate
On the quivering earth
Beneath my jelly feet.

So, I locked myself
Inside my befuddled head
And pretended that I
Was the one who
Did not know who you were
When you looked
Right past me
Without a hint of recognition
In your fanatical eyes,
As you stood steadily,
With your head held high.

©Aaysid

“All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Featured image generated with Microsoft Designer

The Subtle Beauty

To gaze at the lilac sky,
Just before the sun begins to simmer,
And to feel the afternoon air growing thinner;

To stir ginger and honey into the evening,
And to scoop out hazelnut ice cream for dinner;

To toss and turn at midnight,
Trying to evade sleep
Before I inevitably surrender—
I am enamored with September.
©Aaysid

“But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.”
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Featured image generated at Microsoft Designer