Tag Archives: poetry

Feb20

A Chai Affair

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by Omar Ahmed AlKhulaqi

 

When my lady prepares her tea,

I hear the boiling water spewing,

And like the cup, it streams in me,

The steamed herb of my undoing.

With her wand in circles I go,

Stirring and stirring me down to my soul,

Anticlockwise, suspending time,

I surrender to her design.

 

Snapping back at the wand’s clink-clink !

The hypnosis ends as she blinks,

I gaze at this spirit of sort,

Our eyes commune where words fall short,

She hands me the potion that scents her hair,

Her chai! O such an intimate affair,

My senses rippling, eager to erupt,

A whiff of my soul, brewed inside a cup.

– Oak

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Dec30

A challenge

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I received this challenge, ‘create a poem on the following picture’

Unknown

my response:

When Hope was captured in a jar

Pandora set her free

But not before she had unleashed

Every evil that could be.

 

Some would set a caged bird free

To fly unfettered in the air

And some would say that keeping it

Safe, shows that you care.

 

But Hope and birds and butterflies

And bats and spirits too

Artist’s hearts and writers’ dreams

Must soar and never rue

 

The strictures and the structures

Of form and shape and size

They must explore the wider world

Of fiction…

And the poetry of lies.

Dec3

The Relationship Bazaar

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I was greeted this morning with a Whatsapp message that was really moving and expressed in an almost Gibran-like ‘voice’. It was written in Hindi, and another friend, whose Hindi has fallen into disuse, couldn’t read it as fluently as he would have liked to. So I made a quick and hasty translation.

But, as with a lot of poetry, once something starts buzzing in your head, until you sit down and actually write it it won’t leave you. So, of course I did just that, and here it is:

The Relationship Bazaar

As I was walking in the marketplace

My feet stopped at the Relationship Bazaar.

I looked around and saw it filled

With kinship on sale for near and far

 

Relationships of every kind

Were offered everywhere

‘Relationships for sale’ they cried

‘Come buy a few to spare’

 

Each seller had a lively trade

And I walked up to one

‘Aha!’ he cried, ‘What will you buy?

I have everything under the sun!’

 

With trembling lips I asked the seller

‘How much and what’s for sale?’

With a flourish he said

‘Most everything and some beyond the pale.’

 

‘What would you like? What will you buy?

I have a wondrous range

Special ties with a son, or father

I have all good, some strange.’

 

‘Choose from a sister or a brother

Dear shopper what’s your choice?

Humanity or the love of mother

Faith? Pray, where is your voice?’

 

‘Come, come,’ he cajoled me,

‘Come, come, don’t hesitate!

Ask for something, anything

Your silence on me grates.’

 

With fear and sorrow in my voice

And with a great unease

I sighed and asked him, whispering

‘Do you have friendship, please?’

 

He stopped mid-sale, he stopped and stared

As if I’d lost my mind

Then tearfully he turned and said

‘Ah that is hard to find.

 

‘For friendship is the relationship

On which the world depends

It’s not for sale, it has no price

No price that can be named

 

For friendship is worth everything

This earth and then some more

It is a pure and selfless thing

And this you can be sure

 

The day that friendship’s offered

For a price and put on sale

Why then my dear, dear shopper

The world it will have failed

 

This globe will be uprooted

And lose its orbit quite

The day that friendship’s offered

And can be quoted for a price.

Oct30

What makes a poem?

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Please can someone tell me if they see a poem here?

I am not versed, if you’ll pardon the pun, on some of the ‘new poetry’ but honestly the poetic value of the piece here completely eludes me!

After the model is struck by lightning, she becomes really good at yoga. She teaches classes at the small studio by the harbor and afterwards has long talks in the parking lot with her students. She sees the way they stare at her, like any minute something might happen. And they all ask the same questions; they want to know if the current made her body bend better, or if she can feel things about the future. But all she knows is that she was struck by lightning and then she wasn’t. Sometimes she wishes it had done what it was supposed to do, but she has never said this out loud. Her boyfriend makes jokes at parties about how the television reception is clearer now, or how he’ll stand away from her when they walk in the rain. She doesn’t really like him very much anymore. In horror movie storms, skinny bolts of lightning walk across the sky with the shuddering legs of a yearling, but she knows that’s not how it really is. She remembers how it pushed against the night and lit up the sky’s nervous system before it hit her. She remembers how it singled her out. In class a woman who was attacked by a shark shows her a scar that starts at her calf and gets wider as it winds up her waist. It’s the first map of lightning she has ever seen and she can’t turn away. The frayed fault line is like a fossil of electricity, evidence of a fever. In it she recognizes the turn and rip of the current, the break of a bite from nowhere—

Oct13

I missed Malala

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…At point blank range

With Malal Yousafzai so much in the news again with reports and articles such as these:

in the The Prague Revue

in the Washington Post

and in the New York Times

I thought the time is right for me to post a poem I wrote several months ago on a chance remark made by my husband when I wondered how the would-be assassin could miss Malala at such short range? And he replied, ‘Perhaps he couldn’t do it’. And from this, the following poem arose:

The training it was thorough

The orders loud and clear

The young girl was a menace

And she was spreading fear

I really didn’t get it

But my superiors were sure

And on the Internet they said

Her demands were all impure

Read the rest of this entry →

Sep2

The Miracle

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Another poem from Rupali!

I looked up towards the sky

To where the great eagles fly.

The clouds were passing by

In shades of grey and white…

Read it on Rupali’s page!

Aug11

The Storm – a new poem on Rupali’s Page

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Drum Roll…

Trumpet flourish…

We have another rhythmic, lyrical poem from Rupali…

The Storm

The night was dark

The wind did howl

The streets were empty

The tramps didn’t prowl…

See the rest on Rupali’s Page

Oct17

Halifax Streets

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From a place called Leeds Street

You can see the ocean

Behind an institute of technology

That spawned engineers and builders

The kind that mauled the hillsides with roads

And marshalled the trees

Into soldierly rows

Gouging out in a mere two centuries

What Nature had husbanded

Soil on rock, soil on soil, layer upon layer

Too thin a soil belt to hold a redwood tree

It bravely sustained pines and hemlock,

Birch, maple, elm and cedar

Too few to people the hills with now

They have become mere street names.

Oct15

Welcome to Fictionpals

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This is a place where I hope to publish some of my writings as well as contributions from visitors like you! Naturally, I will decide what should appear and may edit and adjust your works as I see fit. Please send in whatever genre you’d like: from prose and essays to stories – both factual and fictional, from verse that rhymes or flows wherever your muse takes you to funny tales. All I ask is that you remember that this is a general site and no adult piece should appear here. Thank you. All genres welcome – poetry, prose, prose poems, stories, dramatic pieces, essays up to 1500 words are welcome. Just remember this is a general viewer site. If I deem a piece of writing unsuitable it will not be published.

Oct15

I’m an Owl not a Lark!

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I had a fractured sleep last night

No splints or plasters

Could knit it together

Thereafter the pain of it

Has left me yawning … all morning

I’m an owl not a lark

As the day proceeds

I can feel my body’s rhythms

As they pick up speed

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