tasnim

Poetry inspired by a painting.

2011-12-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

My Heart

My Heart gallops like a frisky horse
It has been racing since I met you.

My heart is melting into love with you
It feels at once like a tranquil pond and sea heaving blue

My heart beats like a distant drum
It counts the wasted days I pine for you

My heart waits behind the glass of time
It drops its reasons, one by one, poured in a hope for you

My heart has strings warping the truth
It spins a gold angel not the yellow canary that is you

"Heart" Painting, Acrylic on canvas, By Farroukh
"My Heart" Poetry by Tasnim Jivaji

Peep into my only life.

2011-12-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Reality
Tabloids, Shows
Have nothing, compared

To
What you
Will See Here

If
You Can
Leave a Bug

And
See What
I hide here.

Where
Is Shame
Respect and Love

Gone
Burned Washed
In Furious Lineage

My
Five souls
Fix me here.

There is no other God - There is no other Me.

2011-12-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

If there is a God,
In that Image am I
If I am who I imagine,
Then God, am I there!

Soldiers dont have choices, do they

2011-12-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

You know the identity if a true soldier is one that puts on the colours of his country and gets all nice and shaven only to climb onto a plane that will throw him into a dark sky onto hostile soil. However, that has nothing to do with the fact that he will or will not make enemies there, because the people whom he bears arms against could have been friends deprived of chances for that first greeting, for that possibility to become bosom pals.
They bow on the stage where ancient hatreds were born and nourished and get chosen to play the part of bleeders and slayers of innocents, they cast stones sometimes for wrongs that no longer are wrongs.
For leaders who don the mask of father send their sons to horrible uncharted graves in search for their own glories and to hands stain with metals in the medals that hate to shine for the reasons that they do and would rather have stayed in the belly of mother earth and never been mined to be forged into round guilty honours for death and destruction.

I can't change the tides of life.

2011-12-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

What does a mother never say?
That it doesn't feel good to be a mother,

What would a new mother never know until its too late?
That it doesn't make me proud to see the hatred,

Is there more pain than the pangs of labour, huh mother?
Yes, It is a pain to stoop all the time and be kind,

Why would you change the way it works, mother?
It is a shame that they don't learn until it hurts.

What comes next comes and lays the step for an aftermath.

2011-12-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

It isnt planned, the great truth is the gamble

The randomness

What happens next is never what we plan

It never comes out the way we intend

Where we are after the spoils

is where we are, there is no rocket science

Why it happens is simple

we have no answers, do not try the math.

So all we can do

is be still and let the calm take control

Wave

2011-09-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

And I tumble back to the shore
thrashing churning foaming
Until I am no more

Week 24 - Everything I ever hoped for is happening.

2011-06-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

But I do not like the feeling inside. I think I wished for the wrong thing to happen. But I am on the top of the roller coaster and I know that I am going to hate this ride, I am going to lose my dignity swearing out loud, but come out of this fine. Fine and relieved. Fine and alive. Fine and swearing never to do this again.

She is in life

2011-04-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

Mid life crisis
Crisis

Someone who knew made that line
Someone else has been here

And now it is a joke
People say it to aged fools who finally grow up

What is crisis is that the people around this fool
Might be shrugged off like an old well-used jacket that never did fit

Untangled from the beloved one
Hurtling towards a crisis or a lonely mid-life

Mid life crisis is
When the kids I cherish turn away

Mid life crisis is
When the kids I cherish, cherish me back

Mid life crisis is
The spouse I held up taking me for granted

Mid life crisis is
The spouse I held up, holding me up guaranteed.

Mid life crisis, when all the business is done
and I am faced again with I,

Mid life crisis is mind boggling because I do not recognise
That person - the one with whom I was born

Why words gush.

2010-05-25T07:11:00.001-07:00

"Someone asked me what I want to say when I say what I say, on my posts on Facebook.

I do not want to say what I want to say, I say what I have to say because it has to be said and then I want to say it because if I do not say it, it will be like a river that gushed away with seeds floating on it which never got sown and the river melted away into oblivion.

Thoughts in our minds want to flow to our tongues but never make it there because of a detour in the mind. Mind, flooded with doubt and fear, that must blow up like a land mine so nothing takes root, because someone said 'no' and 'no' filtered in and made mind a home.

What I want my words to speak to you, are words I need to speak to myself. I want to speak what I speak and leave it there. Because the Universe speaks to me, I want to speak to the Universe too, because it speaks through me and I want it to hear me speak exactly what it speaks, because I do understand."

- by Tasnim

Fasting

2009-09-03T01:26:00.000-07:00

Seems like I waste a day
when I am fasting
because I cant really do much
But maybe I am not really wasting
because I am supposed to pause
and appreciate the bounties from the Maker
Which I dont do when I am so busy.

Painless

2008-10-29T09:59:00.001-07:00

To be underground
unreachable to family and others
never to be hurt again.

By Tasnim Jivaji

Thoughtful

2007-07-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Thoughtful
An e-less poem

Who knows what a thought is -
Why should a thought grow from this mind and not from this chin?

Who knows why it is that I think -
What would I think that would say it all, not want a word said past that fink?

Who knows how thoughts stop -
Is a man not a man should his thoughts halt for good. A flop?

What is this thing, a thought, anyway -
If a day is to dawn with half minds blank, would it blank out a portion - the ill in our world, say?

By Tasnim Jivaji.
December 6, 2006.

You Don't Sing

2007-07-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

To my husband, Naju
after Ayub Ogada

You don’t sing.
No. You don’t. You know you don’t.
You don’t sing. Who is Ne-Yo?
In fact you can't sing and you don’t.

You don’t dance. No, you don’t.
Please don’t. No. No. Stop.
Fred Astaire, do not even try.
Please don’t. Just stop.

So I sing along alone
And you don’t moon, you don’t know
The words, the song, or even why
You can’t measure the moment in the tune.

And I dance alone
Galloping to the jam on the floor
And you might come but you
Don’t move, you squirm and you don’t get the tone.

Little sing and dance moments don’t a lifetime make
Adjustments to complications; strings tightened loosened
And you, you inspire me to be more than I could
You inspire me to be more like you, and I can.

Long walks, bike rides, reading, eating, aah silent pauses
You and I fluently do. Oh, and the three kids, just as easy too.
What I do alone is scary though. Overwhelming, but you know
I think of you and you inspire me to dare, and I can.

By: Tasnim Jivaji

Don't stab the machinegun-ist

2007-03-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

There is a furor about the atrocities of the armies that are coming into our holy places and desecrating our pious zones. Their deeds are horrible indeed.

However, I don't see how they are to blame for what they are doing. These are youngsters who do not even know the names of the streets down their roads, if you ask them.

The question of religion and humble reverence is much too great for them to comprehend. They do not even bow in their own prayers and their places of worship are not in their comfort zone.

Just as in our families, no one would dare come into our homes where a couple is intimate and united, no lover, no fitna, no suspicions.

So it is in our lands, these imbeciles are the vultures who come when the elephants fight.

T-junctions lead to mid life crisis

2007-03-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

There are a few days in a life that are memorable.
The day you were born,
The first day of school,
The first award... a graduation.
The first kiss...the first real orgasm,
The wedding day.
The day a loved one dies.
Sometimes no decisions lead to these days -
somethings happen because they are meant to be.

But the time we come to a T-junction in our lives,
The moment we cannot go ahead we can
go only left or right with a simple yes or no choice,
those days they come ever so often.
Your pick will either hold you up or bring you down.
One will haunt you forever

When you are in the midst of your life,
the part they call the crisis,
so called because your blunders are ripened,
your foot is decaying in your mouth.
and the T-junction decisions you made are
slapping you in your old face, spitting at you even.

T-junctions,
I hate them.
I see them everywhere,
people asking me what to do,
and I want to tell them but won't
I have my own yes or no to grind,
right or left,
only time will tell,
which one is right and which is wrong.

2007-03-01T13:38:00.000-08:00

Oprah says, "Think BIG"
I say, yeah, why not, go ahead think, think all you like.
Thinking never killed anyone.
People who think big always make something of themselves.
Its almost as if they thought themselves into becoming something.
Something bigger than the thought, even bigger than the dream.

Dale Carnegie, well he said, "Hold that dream."
That's all one really needs to do, is to hold on, I guess.
Dreams come from somewhere, no one yet knows.
But those damn dreams they cause such a stir in the head,
that they whole being gets moved to do unbelieveable things.

You might think its a madness,
parents definitely dont know what it is,
what makes their children assend so high.
People cant think what it could be.
But from the gutters of life, sometimes.
Amazing greatness emerges....
and when it is questioned, it always says ...
it can't be true, can it? How could it be?

2007-03-01T07:31:00.000-08:00

I don't know.
It's a wonder what we do with our lives,
We call ourselves the empowered human race,
Yet we are so weak.

Weak with our time,
our moment
weak with our self esteem

2007-02-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

Human beings.
What a race.
How powerful.
what a farce.

2007-02-27T07:09:00.000-08:00

This is unreal,
it can't be happening,
it can't be me.

Thoughts,
- when achieving dreams,
- at the dusk of one's life
- when something horrible happens to you,
rape murder war disease

2007-02-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

New promises,
Built on broken hearts

A new slate
on an old frame

clean and clear
a motive

a page
a new rage

i'll hold my breathe
no more

2007-02-22T09:25:00.000-08:00

Twenty different things are happening all at the same time,
I dont know what to do first,
Actually I do know but I don't have the luxury to chose,
I do what is needed to be done at the time it needs to be done,
and not what I want to do at that time at that moment,
I can't make my time of the day improve itself with improvising,
I do what needs to be done to get things done.

2007-02-20T09:52:00.000-08:00

im drowning in something like quicksand
see people they drown in water
and the amount of water in which one drowns is
directly proportional to time left on earth
and so my water is depleted and there is more earth

thus i struggle against things i may not
its called procrastination by critics
and being a mother by friends

i learnt i am a procrastinator when it comes to my life
i put myself last
show me someone how not to do that
or need i down and give myself a spanking or something
teach me a lesson to live my life first and then be
there for those who really dont want me to
live for them the way i do.

A journey away from the swamps

2006-08-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

Many, many years ago, when I was a child living in Mombasa, a small town on the Indian Ocean, I would sit on the low branches on one of the mangrove trees on the beach outside our home. The mangrove grove was a drop down from our house, so when I was there, it were as if I had left and gone to another place and I could imagine that I was far far away. Far from the stuff that hurts a kid when she is growing up.

It was a time of confusion. Many things about life confused me then. But most of all it confused me to have to love so much, that there could be no other people with whom you would rather be, yet they were the same people who taught you things in a most painful way.

Now, I am many many miles away from the pale stench of the bubbles that came out of the roots at the mangrove swamp, a place I spent so much time wondering how it will all be for me in my future. Wondering why it is so hard to grow up, why it is that I cannot get it right and whether growing up is worth the trouble. How I often wondered how much grown am I destined to be.

Each day came and went in a blurr of happenings. A child accepts being tossed around, taken here and there, errands, invitations, school, etcetera and in these passages of days the years of my life unfolded. Some are forgotten some now memories are the discoveries I made along the path that led me away from my mangrove haunt to here: frustrating obstacles, blessed bridges, wonderous magic carpets, bitter bad weather and cleansing broomsticks.

Mangrove have roots that protrude from the ground poking upwards and these sometimes hurt my bare feet not to mention the horrible black, soft, gooey soil that stained me and my clothes and made me stink. Oh, and being bitten by mosquitoes and getting sick with malaria for days on end. These inflictions seem no different in the aftermath of some of the stuff that I came across on the road to aging.

The dark murky soil of the swamp, the obscure adventures, each day different yet so similar, churned in the couldron of my life to form a good picture of the stage set for me to play my part; they are a good reference to measure from.

In the swamp I saw nice flowers wither away in the bright African heat while brown and hard the branches that hurt me - scathing me, stayed on and on, lingering each day, waiting and living, it seemed, to brush against some creature to scrape and let blood. And I saw the cool clean water of the tide come in and wash the grime away and soothe the tears on my body with a slight salty sting.

Now I am here, past my many phases and finally onto a path that leads to knowing, to understanding. I am at the place where I am past the crying and wondering why. I am where I am aware and undaunted. I am past the stage of disillusionment and through with surprise and shock. I am where I wanted to be, only better, finer and smoother than I ever thought I could be.

So whoever in my past saw that toy dingy I let out with the letter pasted on the deck, asking where and how and when it will be for me that I cry no more and ask not why it hurts so much, I need to let you know that it is good now, I know now what I had needed to know then and I don't cry anymore, even the scars are fading and I am where I was going.

A spec of time on planet Earth.

2006-07-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

A spec of time on planet Earth.
So many people, each a different soul,
more than a billion, out there.
In this fleeting moment, I wonder.
How many have what I do?
As I lie here close to you, and I shut my eyes,
I smell you oozing out of your pores.
Through which you sweat to feed
and clothe me and those I have borne.

As if I were a watchful eye, cast in the clouds,
This tiny little spec of time, I see the sun rising
on an Oriental rice field, upon a woman with her child
tied to her back, who tends the ground
and hums to whom she has borne.

I find a woman on a camel on a scorching land,
wrapped up like a secret gift in her Arabian
clothes, she sways with the camel. Eyes cast
on a mirage or a horizon, led by a string tied
to the nose of the camel by the man,
she glances at him for a split moment
as he conquers this desert to which he is borne.

My eye in the clouds, it sees the thirsty
huge fertile mass where rain seldom comes
and many a clan is wiped out of hunger.
I see a small girl with streaks of tears
on her smooth skin, because as of now,
just at this very moment, she is orphaned,
and now none exists to whom she was borne.

So many people out there, so many souls,
how many sleep in peace, to be sure of peace,
and how many are at the peril of the works of leaders, unkind,
with not a moment to thinkof them;
the many who will smell the blood as it spills
of those with whom they were borne?

Tasnim Jivaji
July 22, 2006