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| Farah Sheikh |
Dementia’s Grip
I keep weaving a pattern of illusions
it looks like a circle of confusion
carefully I sew a familiar thought
a memory comes visiting
and the pattern turns intricate
A fine gold thread from the past
overlaps the delicate muslin weave of the present
again, the cutting winds from yesteryears
blow through the desolate landscape of today
colours convoluted, emptied of life
I stop and pause a while
stuck in the French knots of the mind
and stare through time’s menacing fog
recollections become a multitude of entangled cords
reason a maze of crossing stitches
Memories falter and reality oscillates
Like the gaps in a running stitch
Once more the fibres of remembrance slip away
fading away into an abyss of nothingness
where nothing matters any more
***
The Evading Platonist
There you were waving your heart at me
I knew not where to go with feet frozen
Like an old tree in the middle of a rainforest
Rooted in the shadows of times
Long I stood there, once bitten twice shy
Feeling like a pebble sinking into the deep sea
I stood on the threshold of wondering and waiting
The silent waters of your deep eyes
The ocean breeze inside my chest
All the wind could hear was our loud silence
White flowers slumped on the marbled floor
Like the colliding crescendos of our hearts
Creating tiny ripples, they reached your feet
The colour white spread its starkness
And tides of time passed before our eyes
A pair of hands searched the ground
Collecting teardrops from lost days
The very hands that once held celestial dreams of me
Like hearts holding the secrets of existence
And long I stood there, once bitten twice shy.
***
Pain Also Weeps
Cut open a wound
A Pandora’s box of anguish
its not the blood but a daughter’s cry
an absent mother’s doing and her leftovers
Its intensity increases
Cover it up, he said
its not the blood but a woman’s shattered trust
a man’s place of privilege and his many hides
Daily functioning failures
Forget it, they said
its not the blood but a soul’s unfinished business
People’s indifference and survivors’ carnage of dreams
***
Bio: Farah Sheikh is a Lucknow-born Bangkok-based freelance editor. After graduating from Lady Shri Ram College, she pursued Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She has worked with Dorling Kindersley Publishing as a travel guides editor and later with the Rekhta Foundation as a digital communications executive. She enjoys Urdu poetry, world cinema, vernacular literature and photography. Some of her poems have been published by Borderless Journal, The Wise Owl and Muse India’s Your Space.
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