Poems by Aaliya Mushtaq Baba

Aaliya Mushtaq Baba

1. ENGLISH TEACHER

Blaring voices mock my name
Should I scream louder to be heard?
Or tap the ground beneath my feet
To tell them that these beats are different
From pots and pans colliding in the kitchen.

Careful with pronouncing words correctly!
You see,
The tricky business of teaching English!
They say the stress in WoMan falls on the Man
I sense animosity between the rise and fall of intonation.

Maybe I shouldn't look at the language so keenly?
Be it, if I am looked at as the invader of 'spaces'!

I talk of literature...
Jeering voices can’t speak on their own
They invoke giant-dead-authors
From all genres, across languages
(Laughing as if possessed)
To render me into a ghost!


2. ROUTINE

Routine died!
All people in the world
Assembled for its funeral
(Anxious what they must do next)
They stayed longer,
Ever liberated crowd
Rather was confused,
Sky looked threatened...
Just then some strange looking woman made a suggestion:
"This is the right time for the metaphysical protest"
Her brother sought an apology, for she was a lunatic.
By then, the message had gone viral on internet...
Though priests couldn't speak on this!
Some revolutionaries came forward to explain...
A metaphysical protest on the death of routine,
Would be a desperate cry for God to show up!
(This was their only chance before death)

Alas!
Routine came alive out of the coffin!
And all alarm bells rang!
People dispersed!
Rushing in different directions!
And the only chance, hence lost!


3. MEET ME IN WINTER

Will you meet me in winter
When all kindness in me,
Must have frozen.
And, my feminine tenderness
Is shrunk upon my brows!

Will you meet me in winter
And receive my metal words,
Without a shield.
And, gaze deep into the shadows
Of my haunted summer!

Will you meet me in winter
And read my poetry,
To mine own silent eyes.
And, make a wish
To stay for all seasons!

Setu, April 2019

Aaliya Mushtaq Baba

Born and raised in Srinagar, Kashmir, Aaliya Mushtaq Baba is pursuing her PhD from University of Kashmir on the politics and philosophy of Autobiography. Her poems have appeared in journals like Miraas, Sheeraza, Kashmir Lit and English Studies in India.

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Poems by Aaliya Mushtaq Baba

Aaliya Mushtaq Baba

1. MAN AND TREES

We live only one season
In the life of a tree.
It lives our lifetime
In just one cycle of seasons.

Spring is ahead,
You will see green leaves
Mock an old man's autumnal life.
In response, he will have a bundle of sighs!

Spring to man
Is one lost season to death.
Spring for a tree
Is to be the young self again!

Now do you fathom
Why man axes them right at the roots?
Makes them fall like martyrs do!
After all why should a tree outlive man?


2. SHRINE

Dear heart

Just tonight will you allow a poem that tosses around like a coin would, while nearing the whirlwind that you are...

I won't let it scratch you or let it hear the insane beats that could melt its letters into blood...

It might just die a pilgrim on your threshold or be a martyr, cast unto its own tombstone...

I wonder if you will just break the door that you are, serve as a carpet to let the devotee pass through...

Annihilate the whole of you, break and burn to illuminate the ways leading to Light...

Dear heart,
Will you allow a record that speaks of times when you were raised beyond time!


3. THE WOUND

Familiar graph, she found near the dried roots of that dead tree,
Reluctantly with the touch of her finger she feels the mark...
She hadn't visited before, but the texture of it felt like that wound in her heart that she never dared to touch!

The mark engraved, was asleep and the earth looked eager to devour it,
Unfold it to its last fibre
In silence and shade,
Kill the mark and become fertile with the pain!

Lost in the pictures that flashed on the evening sky,
She trembled with the thought of seeing a badge so identical with what she guarded in the marrow of her heart!
Memory froze and the silence was about to die.

Just then, she woke up from a dream!


4. COLD METAPHORS ON COFFEE TABLE

Metaphors jumbled on a coffee table
Like tangled wires,
Forming a bizarre constellation.

I kept stirring my coffee;
Staring at them with a mocking glance
Some grew pale, some turned to darker shades...

I let some of my hot coffee spill over few cold metaphors.
Immediately, out of pity, picked them with unease;
And hung them on the edges of the coffee table to dry.

Within moments, I grew overwhelmed by my internal gloom,
Feeling the very cold that I tried to rid them off!
‘What do I do to pull it out?’
A sip of hot coffee wouldn't help!

I reached out to the edges of my table,
Fetching cold metaphors that I earlier mocked.
They were still cold with a tinge of undesired colour.

I quickly poured them into my now-not-so-hot-coffee
Gulped down the whole of it in one go as if it were some hard-found medicine,
While throwing smiles to my friend sitting across the table!



5. AT A WEDDING

As soon as I closed my eyes...
I would feel tempted to look at those blue and green stars that shone outside the curtainless windows!
No twinkling; neatly arranged in rows of electrical wires...

I wondered if this was to dim the night a bit,
Or to illuminate the dark inside that house?

I had rarely been there before,
The child I was is not me or never was, damn this puzzle!

Some distant cousin's wedding is stranger than life!
Roars of laughter, overly energetic children, inquisitive aunties, noise and boredom!

All dress their best to sit in a corner,
To endlessly wait for the meal with all the hope intact,
Or for moment's click with the celebrity of the day!

Setu, August 2018