What I want to gift myself

is Mary Oliver’s beloved world

an unexpected chorus of imagination

in conversations at my beck and call

 

Resurrection is outside my window

lily and poppy bulbs eager to burst open

Grass blades prickle demanding silent rain

Ground cover trellis growing supple again

Tree sprouts offer themselves unto a sweet blue sky

Peonies are collapsing into a colorful wedlock

Sunflowers surrounded by astonished bees

Clover leafs entranced by the aching earth

Lavender stems swaying to a crisp song

Rose bush in color, a madness of blooms

A hyacinth canopy drips with succulence

Touch me nots bring a bold cinematic style

Daisies chanting in coordination with my chimes

A fanfare is being staged in my backyard

 

As we watch, awaiting the return

Of the hummingbird, while sipping

unlimited cups of basil infused chai

 

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NaPoWriMo 2019

Gift to yourself

If I could go back to my nana’s house

I would wipe the refrigerator stains, each night

I would however run them with kindness, not perverse joy

 

If I could wear my nani’s embellished wrist watch, a Swiss

I would leave space between the fraying strap and my skin

I would fasten the broken buckle, without hurting my wrist

 

If I could plant myself on my dada’s knee again

I would listen, rapt as he fed me almonds, but

I would feel his fingers, where the knuckles knotted stories

 

If I could borrow my dadi’s lace dupatta again

I would remember to wear it like a pilgrimage

I would celebrate her indiscernible life, hued into its layers

 

If I could hold my brother close to my chest

I would hold gently,  enfolding my arms around his neck

I would not let go, embracing ferociously till my breath became an extension of his

 

If I could place my daughter into the warmth of my womb

I would tell her to sink her pain into the innards of my being

I would drizzle into myself, for her every speckle of sunshine

 

If I could do nothing when my son pottered around the kitchen

I would let the dishes sit longer, and listen to his voice breaking

I would linger around and watch him becoming a composition

 

If I could reassemble the jigsaw with my sister

I would plait my love into her hair with abandon

I would let her laughter spill into my bones

 

If I could bring a bouquet of time to my parents

I would choose the largest one in the universe

I would infuse the petals with an aroma of whispering thanks

 

If I could sleep each past night again on a pillow besides you

I would relearn the forms and shapes of your presence

I would arrange my head into your arms, unwilling to awake

 

If I could harness moments, collect sounds, collapse days

I would swallow them into my gurgling veins

I would make them mine, forever relive just as

the waves wash sandy offerings into an anticipating ocean

 

 

*Nana/Nani – maternal grandparents 

Dada/Didi – paternal grandparents

dupatta – long scarf

 

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NaPoWriMo 2019

If ..

 

 

 

What was told the cypress that made it strong and straight

Time will tend your spirit, my child, in depth you will grow

Many miles of my strength, be your armor as life takes you on brittle ways

 

I wish you a warriors gait, and a lover’s ache

Deep bamboo roots, wrapped in the tenderness of my belief

What was told the cypress that it made it strong and straight

 

All my breaths are intertwined, with habitual cacophony of my prayers

Sometimes tattered, often healed, nostalgic remains of my womb

Many miles of my strength, be your armor as life takes you on brittle ways

 

These days, my eyes seem ever flushed with tears, afraid?

Not missing you my children, but gasping at my potent dreams

What was told the cypress that it made it strong and straight

 

I wake slow, often letting my dreams go astray

Dreams that lurk around your frolicking smiles, spinning voices

Many miles of my strength, be your armor as life takes you on brittle ways

 

You, my child stay blessed with all fragrant landscapes

Sweet may always be, the congregation of memories in your home

What was told the cypress that it made it strong and straight

Many miles of my strength, be your armor as life takes you on brittle ways

 

®️©️Kashiana.wordpress.com

Napowrimo 2019

Vallenella

borrowed from Rumi – What was told the cypress that it made it strong and straight

 

Starved for simplicity

Cheese cloth sieving me

Leaving behind my crumbled 

Fears in its recycled net 

Curdled just like my

Anemic blood when

It was forced to run

Through my acidic veins

And into that chamber

Of my heart which beat

In erratic randomness

Coping with the years

Of poison I had fed it

Enveloping, almost sheltering

My savagery, my darkness

The savage darkness

That I keep crawling into

At every jagged dawn

Starved for simplicity

A preexisting condition

That I often revisit

with myself at twilight

 

 

 

®️©️Kashiana.wordpress.com

NaPoWriMo 2019

Answers are perpetually being formed

Through many unanswerable questions 

For example

Hope is often misunderstood

As the nourishment to loneliness

Misfortune is justified 

By blaming forces uncontrolled 

Ordinariness is a biased view

That assumes human importance

 

The bullet shells that stay fallen

As the killer runs his course through

A head fell tick took

Tock tock Then face smashed

Then hands disfigured tick tock

Tick tock Then feet no longer stepped

Then a chest silenced tick tock

Tick tock Then fingers broken

Then arms flailing tick tock

Tick tock Then back crumbling 

Then stomach spilled tick tock

Tick tock Then eyes darting

Then womb disintegrating tick tock

Tick tock Then heart becoming idle

Then nose crushed tick tock

 

Tick tock Then the bullets are counted

One lays open mouthed

Next to the fallen toddler child

The second twists itself

Into a sign of regret for the dead father

The third bows its emptiness

Wiping the tears of a living mother

The fourth is exasperated

At the sight of a bloodied skull cap

The fifth mourns the relationship

As it sits itself near the mourning bride

The sixth is embedded into the ceiling

Solitary as it views the gathering grief

The seventh is fallen into the bird bath

Wondering if there ever will be birds again

The eighth has entered the sanctum sanctorum

And hurts itself as footsteps pause in prayer

The ninth actually is in despair, it tangibly

feels the furiously beating heart, desperate to live

The tenth is crushed into a metal ball

rolling, rolling into its own guilt

The eleventh tries to rearrange its fragments

As they stay stuck on the young man’s face

The twelfth has landed wobbling slowly

Into the wobbly legs of an elder at prayer

The thirteenth she’ll realizes devotion was

the fourteenth, fifteenth, another, another, another

 

All around in broken bodies, dead places

Grieving mothers, shocked children and

A distraught community clinging to

unanswered questions, and fears

 

Fear of

Enclosures

Possibilities

Gatherings

Until they need not have any more fear

and seconds, minutes, hours, days, years

stay stilled within that one moment

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock

 

®️©️Kashiana.wordpress.com

NaPoWriMo 2019

unfolding over time

 

 

 

®️©️Kashiana.wordpress.com

NaPoWriMo 2019

open ended, leaving questions unanswered

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are a planet 

in the cosmic system

wandering the sun

since the nebula

it is time you get sober

stop the dizzy stargazing 

and come into your own

 

Pause the spinning

with defined caution

staying in your lanes

instead

circle around each other

discard the orbit routes

reach for mineral blue

of the one you admire

swallow the glowing edges

of another, be inspired by

the celestial eclipse events 

nudge in some naughtiness

sometimes pause to

adjust pace, get off course

and keep up with the other

stop racing against yourself

break perennial patterns

of equators and orbits

thunder and crash

into each others comfort

creating of your collision

a beautiful infinity

an infinity that is spectacular

with criss crossed curvy lanes

explore each other

with all your disbelief 

you spinning beauties

choose to complete the vastness

by breathing miracles

into your collective exosphere

collect a conglomerate of starchilds

and take your stars

on a rendezvous

 

If you are a planet

in the cosmic system

exploring unlikely places

it is time you stop speculating

about your own mystery

instead create a new mosaic

of intertwined rainbows

and write new episodes

about your lunatic moons

 

 

©️®️Kashiana.wordpress.com

NaPoWriMo 2019

Instructions

left behind in broken bits

her scattered essence

jolted from my trance

into the gory sights

of shadows that fill

the eerie crevices

haunted with souvenirs

of your violated presence

 

haunted with souvenirs

henna’ed palm stains

that scratched the walls

ankle bell trinkets

lay scattered in shock

rusty red patches

of flesh that dripped

into his stale breath

and rotten curses

accomplice to pushing evil

viciously breeding lust

until your reluctant breath

was consumed, parched

 

haunted with souvenirs

walking around

on creaking floorboards

I collect souvenirs

yet another effort

to wash away for you

the remnants of

his sickly toxins

and knot a bundle

of bells, anklets, eardrops

palpable with tears

salty anguished cries

 

haunted with souvenirs

I stumble over another

before walking out

into the sighs of

a starless sky

 

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Unending steps, Nirmala embraces her own race

A famished charm hovers cautiously over her face

Her bone structure festered into a trained solitude

Hands a healing force, as her knuckles protrude

 

Red bold kumkum circle, an effort to distance that lech

Conjugal bliss empties itself into an abundant acidic belch

Saree pleats tucked aside, as she scrubs and furiously cleans

Stubborn tarnished spots, wrestling the numbness in Nirmala’s spleen

 

Her manuscript written with contradictory life strokes

Confused, Nirmala’s ghungroos silenced by fearful ghouls

Excruciating pain, joyous treasure, intense process of birth

A sense of submission, defiance echoes in her widening girth

 

An unnecessary ornamental, fact like mangalsutra beads adorn

Strings showing through, her insipid emotions tired and torn

Everything Nirmala has ever felt is a quiet bangle encircling her wrist

The hushed restraint of her space, contradicted by colors that insist

 

Phantoms, come each night when she curls again into herself

His fantasies break her into tears, tenderness set aside on the shelf

Dreary dawn nudges her awake, she washes, prays, wears resistance again

Collecting a potli of dreams, a composed Nirmala walks into the rain

 

Defying the grammar of traditional womanhood, impoverished lives

Her daily life embraces tomorrow, today’s hunger submitted to archives

Nirmala’s bio presents strange attributes; observe, listen, resilience

I witness her laughter hesitatingly, jolting trauma into obedience

 

Repetition nourishes days that hide the broken scars of the night

Finding her truth in rooms, doors and windows, peeping skylights

Questions that face her, are tattooed into the kaajal of her eyes

Wretchedness was a corpse, Nirmala embraced her Kaali in disguise

Wildflowers 

Luminous in sadness

That holds their blooms together

Before they fall into the abyss

 

Nodding a silent scent

Into the breeze, languid salt of tears

Drooping low at the ruin of human race

 

Waning colors, into the night

Gathered in bunches of feeble shapes

Of hope towards the waning moon

 

Drooping stems that bear the weight

Of those who are lost in war

Adorning vases  along tombstones

 

Silent wildflowers, pressed against

broken hearts, and shallow breaths

Petals shredding themselves, letting go

 

Testimony to all that is trampled

Tickling thorns coax us awake

to the tragedy of our fallen selves

 

Perennial in our ignorance

insistently we flirt with

war, mortality and grief