January 2018
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Photo credit: Hakim El Haj
The Making of a Modern Day Woman
By Maya Kaabour
This is no tribal rite of passage.
The villagers have gone to sleep centuries ago.
There are no songs to be sung.
No skinning of sheep.
No sun salutations.
No nets with enraged ants to be cast on the hands
of the young ones.
There are train stations that keep buzzing.
Cities with writings on their walls that are kinder than
the faces in them.
There are cellars and rats and sky scrapers cast so high
they could almost pierce the stratosphere.
There are bars and parks
and there’s prime time TV, too.
But something is changing.
The girl no longer laughs wholeheartedly,
and she cries like she hasn’t shared the full story.
She writes too little and day-dreams too much.
Her hands are learning to open up jars and unzip dresses
and struggle to pay bills and
drunk-grip steering wheels in traffic where
The train stations keep buzzing.
The cities have writings on their walls that are kinder than
the faces in them.
There are cellars and rats and sky scrapers cast so high
they could almost pierce the stratosphere.
There are bars and parks
and there’s prime time TV, too.
She wears her make up like it’s war paint,
and circles the dancefloor; a mating dance.
Fat perverts who resemble her father offer her drinks and say
“Hey honey, give me another chance!”
But something is changing.
A beast is rising from the ashes.
Her tongue is a hard cut diamond.
She is God; but she is not forgiving.
Hell, she’d eat your heart out if she wanted.
She will wait for no one, cater to no one.
She will take up as much space as she needs and
She’ll ask for what she wants when she wants it.
You can hear it in the click of her stilettos.
She cares very little what you think of her.
She’ll sleep alone tonight with all the lights off, while
The train stations keep buzzing.
The cities have writings on their walls that are kinder than
the faces in them.
There are cellars and rats and sky scrapers cast so high
they could almost pierce the stratosphere.
There are bars and parks
and there’s prime time TV, too.
But something is changing,
and so is she.
The woman has awoken.
The little girl has gone to sleep.
Photo credit: DJ
Melancholia
By Binu Sivan
A half-remembered tune melts into me
I rise up trying to meet it… grab it
make it fully mine.
But the very acting of reaching
rips the melody out of my mind.
Just the ghost of it stays behind
to tease me with its unformed lines.
Haunted by a feeling, almost physical,
I hang on to sanity by slender threads.
There is a foreboding in my chest
vague in detail, yet precise in visceral sentiments.
Like waking from a nightmare,
heart pounding, drenched in sweat,
half-remembering the details.
But the very act of waking,
pulls the veils over the specifics
as they brush by teasing… warning
all in the same heartbeat.
If only I could capture the wretched poignancy,
the bleak terrain of my mind
and put it on paper.
Songs seem to be able to do it.
Other poets do it with ease. But I struggle.
The very act of putting pen to paper
robs the emotion of its very feeling.
‘It’s alright,’ I tell myself.
All I need is a good night’s sleep.
Not too long to sunrise, now.
I will bid the dark goodbye.
Photo credit: Hoach Le Dinh
Raincloud
I could never understand
why I always preferred
to be the cloud of doom
that looms
over my loved one,
when I could’ve, instead,
burst open and released
all the pain
that I’ve been hiding for years
and relieved both of us
of the burden of my bottled emotions
that’s been blocking the path
through which that fine thread
of love used to traverse,
which connects both our hearts.
Photo credit: Odette Scapin
Miss Congeniality
By Biji Dominic
Thy name is women
her name is Miss Congeniality
she got an alluring look
she walks with confidence
Miss sensuality is sensitive at times
her eyes speak volumes
her nails speak femininity,
with her curvy figure, she turns cat-walk,
Miss Congeniality is a heart-throb,
her attitude is her strength
she keeps fetish friends at bay,
with less vanity, she goes,
But she still keeps a vanity bag.
Miss Congeniality is the girl at the next door.
Photo credit: Jamal Saleh
Elegy on a Train Suicide
By Keith Pereña
It has been four days since your passing.
Why did you do it?
What did it feel?
Was there a squish or a thud,
Tears on your eyes or maybe a smile on your face
Proclaiming – “It is all over”.
You made headlines.
an inconvenience to some
as they struggled to find a way home
while you found yours
with your brains out on the floor.
I had hoped to have seen your thoughts –
the whys.
but I’m just like everyone
reading your fate – a full grown man
on a small sized screen
I would mourn for you – stranger
but I’m left to React, Like and Share
talk about your fate and then move on to the next post.
Four days later.
The station still smells of you.
You chose not to live.
Yet you live.
As I look down from the platform.
And ponder the same thoughts that you might have had.
Breaking news.
Photo credit: Peroculus
Please Don’t Fall in Love with Me
Please do not fall in love with me
I will read you like a book, beginning to end
search for old scents in your pages
over analyze and think of you when I drive to work
Please do not fall in love with a girl like me
I will make a character of you
and write stories about it
reveal you unintentionally to the world even if you don’t want to
Please do not fall in love with me
I haven’t understood who I am
my body is a bottomless pit of diffidence
and my immutable darkness will consume you until there’s no light
Please do not fall in love with me
I will terrorize you with my meaning of love
there’s no black and white, no compromise
you see I’m an extremist in nature
I have no concept of middle ground
Please do not fall in love with me
I will love you and leave you
in the museums of the world
like an artifact, an ancient relic
empty, dark, hollow, echoing the beat of your heart
in its alleys and corners
our aches reverberating in the ears of passers-by
Please do not fall in love with me
I have felt the pangs of love, a love that has no remedy
I have lost in love so I know what it is like to be found
in the clutches of life, dazed, suddenly pulled back to reality from a dream
or was it a nightmare, I can’t tell the difference
Please do not fall in love with me
for you will hate me – because – you love me
you will suffocate in the fortification I would provide you
and the moment you feel the salty breeze of the sea
you will release yourself softly
to taste the ocean, to swim freely and incautiously
Please do not fall in love with me
because you will want to remove my layers
undo me like a Russian wooden doll
know the woman beneath the girl, the girl beneath the woman
Please do not fall in love with me this way
I am not a foreign language you need to deconstruct
I am not a question nor a puzzle
I don’t need an answer, I don’t need a solution
or your opinion about my life
Please understand why you may fall in love with me
I am for you to remain unsettled, I am for you to keep in motion
I am for you to remain in wonderment of the universe and nature
as you are for me
in moments of glory, to thrive
in moments of darkness, to survive
as we are together
Just as loves energy, like the sun – to create, to multiply
and when the world turns around
to accept defeat quietly, without losing pride;
These are the reasons.
Because maybe if you do fall in love with me
we might just rise.
Photo credit: Rasha Darra
Color
By Rasha Darra
Indecisiveness is not a color that suits me,
I pour water on myself again and again,
Yet, it remains.
I try again to shake it off me, this time rubbing my hands to wash it away
Using soap, oil, alcohol,
Nothing works.
Indecisiveness is not a color that suits me,
Or so I think,
I am not always right.
Again, I try; more determined, more stubborn
Still it sticks to me,
Like a dead fly swatted; stuck and unflinching.
Indecisiveness is not a color that suits me,
This time I scream it,
I want it to go away,
After trials and trials of me in denial,
I conclude,
Indecisiveness is not a color at all
It simply is, if you let it be.
And is not, if you pay it no heed.
Photo credit: Odette Scapin
Blissed By Your Love
Worshipping your brilliance
crumbled my despair.
A daunting survival,
what I dreaded, now impaired.
Winds that you stroke
transform disturbed climates.
Clearing frosted hurdles,
breathtaking journey emanates.
Driving within boundaries
of your aura marvelous.
Enclose me eternally,
turning my fate auspiciously.
Photo credit: Hakim El Haj
December
By Heba J.
I used to want more of everything.
More of life, love and laughter.
Now, I seek the truth even if it is uncomfortable.
Although falsehood is pleasantly plausible and quite effortless.
It is also short-lived.
The truth is real.
It stays with you.
It hangs over you.
It haunts you.
Photo credit: Allan Filipe Santos Dias
Beyond All
By Asha Kumar
Will you love me through my attrition?
When I have pared myself to the last vestige of humanness
When I have peeled these beguiling aspects,
One skin after the other –
A woman, a poet and layers of gauzy put-ons,
Denuded, with nothing in my periphery,
Standing in the dark with no synonyms,
When all that defines me now
becomes autumn leaves.
Will you love me beyond my visage –
bare, unbeautified,
Not even a smile stretching out
to kindle your amorous fire,
With only a feeble breath to mark me alive.
Will you love me beyond
the baits of my flickering eyes,
Beyond my words, silence
and the timid spaces in between?
Come to me
only if you will find
that last shred of me – my spirit
worthy of devouring and possessing.
Come to me
with proof of your pristine passion,
over which you will shed
tears of poetry
and I will measure you with my bareness.
Remember, on the day of reckoning
you will see nothing of me,
Yet I will know
how unsullied your offering is.
And I will take you in
to be part of my void.
For that is the love
I have harboured for you for eons –
Sans attributes,
Ask yourself if you can love me thus.
Then, we will invade the Garden of Eden,
Scatter pollens of love over the earth,
Be reborn as the spring season,
And sing butterfly songs.
Photo credit: Hakim El Haj
A Peace of Mind
My cup of coffee; half empty
cold again like the weather minus twenty,
spilled all over my words
like how life spilled sorrow in my soul
and sipped on my happiness.
There I am again
with my heart in pieces
trying to put my mind to peace
but it is too noisy for me to fall asleep.
Where did happiness fly to?
Will it ever fly back to me?
Happiness… my cold cup of coffee is waiting for you,
maybe then I’ll drink it while its hot
at least it won’t burn me.
Photo credit: Christian Langballe
I Forgot You
Stone in the chest,
tears in the eyes,
night in the tatters,
and you in my thoughts.
The lone man stood in the rain,
dog was in the bucket
and the trampled flowers cried.
The last smoke fled, somebody ran away
and my heart beats strong,
stronger, stronger than ever,
while one shadow passed by
and I thought it was yours.
My hand covered my mouth
and hid my heart deep under the skin
wet from the rain,
one tear touched my face,
and the dog went away,
the lone man, met and hugged somebody
the flowers cried sadly again
and the stone turned into the sand.
The tear evaporated from my eye
the shadow disappeared
like darkness in the dark
my heart stopped beating
and I forgot you.
Thank you to every writer for the thought infusing poems contributed and
thank you to every passerby for reading the art of our talented poets.
If you would like to have your poem or image published for the next
Dubai Poetics edition
send your poem or request to be a “visual artist” to poetry@dubaipoetics.com
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Enjoy more of our earlier editions of 2017:
Edition XIII
Edition XIV
Edition XV
Edition XVI
Edition XVII
Edition XVIII
Edition XIX
Edition XX
Edition XXI
Edition XXII
Edition XXIII
Edition XXIV