The Kiss (#10)

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

Rosebud ring.

In a circle of perfection, I make haste. I push past the gardens that come clapping my chin with fresh petals.

I revive the sounds of the past and they morph into your name. I shake my head, they’re louder by the minute.

The rains have never been kinder. And the stars have never been this close to my feet. Is this what walking on heaven feels like?

But then I remember some distant empty promise. Its ringing is fading away – rosebud ring.

You get me roses that adorn the vale of my dark nights. You plant hope in a parched land that never knew how to even spell it out.

And with The Kiss, you seal the fates – beyond the heavens and the earth and the clouds; beyond the nature that runs in you and me.

Beyond us, but deep within.

-Nameera Anjum Khan.

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Day 10: yes I’m late but I’m trying really hard to not miss out on a single day this month 😅

A Melting Tangerine (#8)

Violin Lady by cersatti

A stitch, and now I dance.

My feet move in motions I’ve been alien to. Happiness is a planet revolving inside my palms. I catch you watching me undress my grief in the haunting moonlight. You move like a shadow I’m drowning in – and every inch of this downward spiral is a religion I’m learning to recite.

A stitch, and now I care.

Inside you, there’s a house that looks like a painting I once dreamt. It is so out of place and perfect, so otherworldly and intimate. It’s a touch I recognise and swallow – a strawberry taste/ a bathing tide/ a summer scream.

A stitch, and now I bite.

Tonight, you are my muse. I want everything – to myself. I want the heaven in my hell and the space in my skin. I want death in my voice and life between our meshwire forms.

A stitch, and now I’m the lady – yellow/orange/ a melting tangerine, tear me apart and make love to me until the moon refuses to go down and the sun forgets to blink.

-Nameera Anjum Khan.

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I absolutely LOVE listening to the violin and would love to learn to play it someday! It was such an opportune moment when I discovered this absolutely gorgeous work of art. Do click on the link to visit the gallery & check out some cool merch available based off of the painting above.

Also when I say ‘Stitch’ I’m actually referring to the way the sound of a violin just makes my heart so full. It feels like every reason to fret is slowly fading away and it stitches all the pieces back together.

A Heavy Summer (#3)

Art by Vladimir Kush

My senses are always in consonance with the way time flicks my insides. A heavy summer crucifies my tongue inside a nightmare that I keep wanting more and more. They say pain is an addiction and this day has been everything but that – an addiction sucking me knee-deep. It unfurls on my neck like a morning breath rising anew, like the birds fluttering inside a jar of mishaps. You shake it, until there are enough cracks for you to get in – enough space for your word to mingle with mine.

I think of all the pages dying every night in the grave of your spit. The way this world wraps itself under your skin and inside my fingernails – is a fable residing in the very vacancies of our hearts. Do you know about a ‘Wanting’ that ‘Needs’? It often dawns upon me when your scent travels down my spine. Chills.

This heavy summer is but a monsoon under my eyelids, stretching beyond mortal lines. I want to make the most of it with a hand that can trace all these poems and own them, need them. Need me.

-Nameera Anjum Khan

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The Language of Words (#2)

Descent to the Mediterranean by Vladimir Kush

My hands were tied to a pole and I couldn’t speak

You see, the only way I could speak was through a language I hadn’t yet deciphered

My days went on, in a shell of thoughts

When out there, was an ocean waiting to devour me

People often stood long enough by the pole – long enough to let the streetlight lick their sins away

Until one of them untied me accidentally

And I traversed within after he ran away, so deep within that I didn’t even know that there was a path underneath my feet

People often talk about the ground slipping from under their feet, but have you ever felt it slipping right back?

I did

And so did the words itching the insides of my body

And the poems begging to crawl into the ocean

And so, I wrote – never stopping once, never looking back at the pole and those delicate strings of a self-made prison;

I took the path not meant for me, but the one I had been meaning to take anyway.

-Nameera Anjum Khan

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Day 2 prompt was inspired by the famous and much loved compose by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. It took me back to a time when I was still a novice at writing and didn’t exactly measure its importance in my life. Years later, I can proudly say that the person I am today is because of the choices I made, despite the paths that lay ahead of me.

I’ve been confused and lonely at times, but I always made sure that whatever it is that I do, my heart and my soul is in agreement at the end of the day.

Following your heart is easier said than done, especially in a world that’s always out there to complicate things.

The Man who Ate the Universe (#1)

Key to the World – Vladimir Kush

There is a shallow sinking unfurling inside my bosom

My eyes smell like a lie perched in a lonesome nest

He says that there’s a lot to live for but when I look at the sky, it feels like for a moment; it’d rather freefall into my ribs

Why is vastness so daunting?

A bloody lip, a bloody elbow

I’ve been angry at the walls and my skin, I’ve been angry at my body and I punish it every time a shard from the past’s mirror becomes the only way for me to see myself

There are hands that don’t belong to me,

And colours that seep into my cuticles without meaning to…

A yellow moonlight fades upon my tongue, it’s a rustic desire biting me down

A man comes to me, he says the world is in his pocket – among other things,

I tell him that I want the universe – everything out there and within,

I never see him again. Some days when the sun is in an inexplicable hurry and the stars whisper in secrecy; I hear them talk of a man who ate the universe and now he’s out there – and within

I look down at my empty palms holding on to nothing but a blackness that has no shade, a hope that has no name.

-Nameera Anjum Khan

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This is my very first entry for the Napowrimo Based on the prompt ‘Sun Ra and his Arkestra (Animated Version)‘. I’m planning on spending this whole month here, away from the chaos in my original world of Poetry as I juggle between my passion and academics. Here’s to a consistent beginning!

Thank you for your time, if you want you can check out the daily Prompts too and give them a try.

P.S

I came across the prompt while reading ‘The Sun Queen’ – a Beautifully crafted poem by Rahul Gaur. Thanks for the inspiration! (:

In the Shadows of a page

Do you ever wonder what you look like in someone else’s poem? Is it some made-up version or reflects who you truly are?

If you ever want to know yourself better, read yourself through someone else’s letters and poems. It may seem as though you’re reading about a stranger but if it doesn’t, then you know that you belong there. In that moment of creation, your spirit was complete.

What you hold in your hand is a page, only momentarily. Soon it morphs into endless dreaming and hopeful possibilities.

It becomes a page that is no more that – but something that lives, it is not a thing anymore; but something that breathes you.

-Nameera Anjum Khan

Naked

‘Naked’

And to my mother’s ears, it’s ‘Blasphemy’. I wonder what’s more suffocating, the fact that I am Naked and a mere reflection of her or the fact that she’s had her eyes closed this whole time?

The society is the most illusionary mirror to ever exist. It shows you what you desire, but at the cost of negligence to your own needs. But here’s the catch, it only ‘Shows’ you this understanding that you possess. One single deviation can render you hopeless and so, the question remains; How much do you actually understand about yourself and this so-called ‘Society’?

You see, you’ve got to choose between the two. I choose to strip off of my regularities and give in to this maze of infidelity, I coincide with complicated minds and irrepressive hearts. I’m swinging through the gallant aspirations over to a newer side of things. It’s like a constant dalliance with the impossible heights.

I see my home right here, not up there when I say ‘Heights’. I see it on this ground and between these people. I want to run away sometimes, yes. But I think this distorted mirror has its own gravity that pulls you in, helplessly.

‘Naked’ – Blasphemy? I think freedom is but an unfiltered mind, a careless yet considerate human. When you choose a path of irregularities – it’s neither a garden nor a parched land that have been walked before, it’s a whole new world where you might even fly, who knows where possibilities end, right?

But without taking off those hideous reflections that you’ve been borrowing over the years, how can you expect to let your wings breathe?

-Nameera Anjum Khan

Fantasies & Fiction

There’s a fantasy, at the surface of my spine

It flutters into your arms like a Gothic Romance choking on its own saliva

I spill the rainbows that you planted in my bladder ~ an acid leaves my body crawling on all fours,

There’s a lullaby growing in my belly & with every kiss, you extract a note from it until every syllable is infused with your name

A name this territory knows all too well, a fantasy that speaks my name like it’s the only poetry that matters; the only fiction worth realization.

-Nameera Anjum Khan

Night Creatures

All the night Creatures crawled up to my desk ~ & I wondered…

What Creature am I in their language? The one with the touch of Death or the God with untimely sunlight ~ as bright as a snowfall in the raging summers?

They keep coming back, I don’t think they’ve a name for me.

Sometimes, a shadow looks like my Father hiding behind the door,

At other times, it metamorphoses into an old hag that laughs at me while I read the ‘Articles’ of the ‘Constitution’ aloud…

& Even the night Creatures laugh – at a nameless horror; but I only defined ‘Democracy’, I only swallowed a slice of cake and brushed aside this noisy mosquito.

It was the only one pricking at my skin instead of laughing – when I (defi)n(ed)

D – E – M – O – C – R – A – C – Y.

– Nameera Anjum Khan

Will You Write Yourself?

If the heaven was the eyelash that stole my wish

If it was the candle that I blew on days I lived,

Then I want to write my own goddamn History

In an abyss that reeks of an unending staircase,

I hand my sins to you, so you may decide my grave

I fall as I fly, unto the blue skies~

re-writing the tears that have forgotten how to be a poem.

-Nameera Anjum Khan

(An excerpt)