.
-
zohiii 5w
when fireflies at twilight
swoon in circles like
little moon rocks
reflecting the desires
of lonely children,
the grass of my
backyard smells of
ashes from the pyres
of all the hunches
and organised crimes,
of all the times when
the roads diverged
and rights didn't feel
righteous enough,
or the lefts I left behind,
of all the times my
heart overpowered
my senses,
or words that I gulped
down before
reaching any ears;
what're we if not a
graveyard of dreams?
a smile that
perished before
blooming and a party
that was sucked by
the ennui of wandering
teenagers,
and it's appalling how
my memory works;
it makes me question
every moment—
"Did that really happen?"
and I lay back
distracted, from being
distraught,
because nothing
seems
real:
it's just have been
dreams after dreams,
or perhaps it's
merely a method of
denial, to ignore the
obvious and obnoxious,
and of course,
to bury regret in an
endless pit;
maybe I'll wake up
from this dream to
another one,
and as Billie Holiday
said,
"Death is no dream,"
but life is,
I'm certain,
maybe tomorrow,
when I wake up,
you'll be a dream too,
that I don't quite
remember now.
©zohiii -
zohiii 6w
with blurry sight,
you dared to glare deep into
the cracks of the
erupting mountains,
and the white-rabbit waves,
and the blinding stars;
crossed over at all
the possibilities,
when death was merely
a mistake away.
with hands such small,
you encompassed the entirety
of the universe,
inside your palms.
where does this strength,
immense enough,
come from?
whereof is it born?
this power that compels
you to believe in
happy tomorrows,
flushing with dreams;
with blurry sight,
you see the future—
ten years,
ten minutes,
ten blinks;
you gamble with time,
but time steals every round,
and whispers in your
ears with a wicked smile,
"Carpe diem!"
you know what plan
works the best?
no plan at all,
because no blueprint has
the bridges that
break apart at the edge
of forevers.
with blurry sight,
discard dreams,
behold reality.
©zohiii
Thanks @writersnetwork.
-
zohiii 6w
Nay, dwell not in the seeping roofs,
Hark, the battle cries of dying fires,
Search thee not in faraway nooks,
Of truth, truth that blazes the liars.
Of wind chimes, hearths, laughters,
Shall such a mortal vessel there be,
With flesh and blood that prospers,
I'll call it home, a heart that thinks of me.
©zohiii
Thanks @writersnetwork.
-
zohiii 6w
there's an end to suffering—
if only Dazai had
believed it,
perhaps then he'd not have
given up on living,
maybe he'd have found his
happiness hither
or thither,
and bloomed a few roses
out of his gloom,
maybe then it'd have been
easier to see the silver
lining in one dark cloud,
but as it stands,
there's no end to suffering,
or so I'd arbitrarily
believe.
©zohiii.
-
zohiii 8w
when the curfew ends
and the knell is hushed,
and the warplanes
retreat into their dens,
and the roads are
a bloodbath,
will ye be there
to spell out peace
letter by letter in your
nonchalant voice,
will ye be there
to clean the reluctant
stains off my cloak,
will ye be there
to whisper in my ear,
that the war was
inevitable—
will ye be there?
©zohiii
Hi, everyone, been long!.
-
zohiii 11w
on the crossroads,
sometimes there's this
the-world-is-ending high
pandemonium and
cataclysm,
that makes me press
my palms on ears to
let my sanity from
drifting away;
other times, it's silent—
as calm as a cuckoo's
nest after her mother
croon is sung,
or the sky at twilight;
the sole sound heard
far and wide is that of
verbs manifesting
themselves;
still I stand betwixt a
stream of passers-by,
and in that moment,
I live, before the silence
is consumed by the
hullabaloo yet again;
I dwell in the pauses,
the silence that they
oft call awkward,
the spaces that they
consider unnecessary,
the countable seconds
before the dusk
or dawn or the breath
of a shooting star;
I live there;
and I live in your eyes,
that possess the
prowess to hush the
needles of time
whenever you please;
I live whenever I look
in your eyes.
your worth is like a
dragon, but it's
tattooed on the nape
of your neck—
and you won't see it,
but I can, so would you
believe me if I said,
you're a fierce dragon,
with mighty
in its wrath wings,
and fire in your guts;
there's warmth
in your embrace;
time plays ring a ring
o' roses around you,
and the sky holds up
a little more
than usual, gazing you;
you are a pause,
a pause that always
rushes and slips away
from my fingers.
©zohiii
@raika_.
-
zohiii 12w
the last patches of fresh sunlight
routed away, summer anthems
whisked off from radios,
and the morning coffee
began cooling down sooner.
I tore from my cocoon,
to face cold winds against my skin;
cold breeze, harbinger of tears;
sliding the curtains to the sides,
I saw outside,
and I saw nothing.
it was Viserion's breath,
that enveloped all
enclosures in sight;
and I strode cluelessly,
like a ghost with no history
left behind and no history to
manufacture, I just walked.
and they say the best poetry is
found in the simplest things;
I saw something glittering
betwixt the thick layer of vague
compromising my vision,
and had a flashback,
of a textbook saying,
"beware! all that glitters,
is not gold." and I wondered,
what if the greed for gold
didn't drive me,
but the curiosity to find out
what sparkles, and parallels
the sheen of gold,
and isn't gold, so I could push
and become that thing,
because I sometimes glitter
too but they
say I'm worthless,
because the proverb will
always have gold,
but I'm merely a piece of
corroded copper.
cars zoom past,
and the drivers they raise eyebrows,
and they smirk and ask,
"why do you have to see poetry
in everything, what's wrong?"
and I fall back on silence,
because poetry seeks you
and you are a
mere vessel,
who when breached by beauty
is supposed to feel it,
and not withdraw,
it seeps and soaks like candy
in your veins,
so how can I not be a romantic,
even for catastrophes and
disasters?
"why do you not see poetry in
everything, what's wrong?"
Viserion's cold blood,
and freezing skin is scorched
from Apollo's wrath,
and his mighty breaths retreat,
I take the bridge that doesn't
burn from passion, and passing,
and throw my shoes in
the river that travels the world,
and kisses the sea at last.
from far, I see the doorknob
of my dull asylum,
but I spot a swallowtail
butterfly swooning in the
balcony around a sunflower,
and pass the door of gloom,
with brazen footsteps,
because I know, there'll always
be a poem, anywhere,
for everyone who craves it.
©zohiii
@raika_ #dragons
@writersnetwork thanks for reposting! :D.
-
zohiii 12w
in a sea of plain faces—
all as featureless as
the ones Bond's Mr. Oliver
saw on a dark, eerie night,
but the difference was
that it was broad daylight;
a handful few would
sigh at the feeling of
bathing in light,
feeling trapped
in the dark.
in blacks, a sea of
unknown faces,
there were voids in my
heart and each one
a living night of its own,
I couldn't see
anyone's face because
above their necks
there was nothing but
darkness,
no eyes to stare,
no lips to argue,
no nose to scrunch,
and then they all stood
up to leave;
bumping against my body,
as if I was unwanted,
unowned, orphaned,
abandoned, deserted, and
everything became
strange,
so strange.
I turned to the only face
I could see, covered
up in the smoke from
the incense sticks,
stuck inside a frame,
wept and mourned with
white-knuckled wails—
"firefly, you left soon,
but the night is growing cold,
no light to hold on,
the sunrise seems faraway,
why must fireflies die so young?"
©zohiii
• Last stanza is a tanka..
-
zohiii 12w
.
-
zohiii 12w
.
-
raika_ 8w
The city, at 2am
speaks to you
and makes sense
more than people
around you have
you slowly slide down
into an underpass
and rise with the road
and your mind dives
into it's own
little palace of gold
you drive across trees and canals
and take every turn,
you've never taken before
without a GPS
you explore,
the vastness, the beauty
the peace
the city tells you
some tales about
people and sunsets
but most of all
it lets you
tell your own story
as your car races towards
the far away lights
//the city at 2 am
lets you be
free
it lets you be
someone
you've never been
allowed to;
someone
you've always
wanted to be.
-raika
@allbymyselfCity lights
-
raika_ 8w
The Five Ws are basic questions used in research and investigations.
#mondo @allbymyself5 w's
1-Where do backspaced poems go?
Into the dark pits of a poets mind, where they settle in the emptiness and howl on nights when grey clouds cover the sky and it rains guilts.
2-Why do stars fall?
Everytime a heart breaks, sins disguised in wish fullfilling wrap by old wives' is thrown from beyond the skies into the sea of despair for forlorn souls to wish upon and find their way, back from love.
3-What does emptiness say?
It never needs to say a thing- it is the silence that slowly spreads through the cracks in bones, leaving the heart cold and poems empty.
4-Who are we?
A pile of mistakes and regrets, burying our past in flowers and rhymes; singing hymns about peace and love, while we kill ourselves along with the world, with our own pen.
5-When does a heart stop hurting?
In sugar-coated words, the ache lessens after a few miles you have walked and the few poems you have inked, but the harsh truth is- it never stops hurting. It never stops haunting.
-raika -
raika_ 8w
*typewriter clicks*
2017-2021
It all started in October of 2017 when I saw a whatsapp status of my English teacher. She had written this beautiful poem and so I decided to download this app, with this beautiful logo. I and my sister are not the ones who wrote poems or quotes but we loved writing essays and English and so that was the motivating force to our joining mirakee. My first username was raika_ashraf and my first ever quote was on the word of the day: Rivers.
After that I and my sister collaboratively wrote two to three quotes and she went off on her own from then. The first ever person or friend I made was satyamdharia, he was a really good friend but him and many others when found out I was from Pakistan, were very hesitant from there on.
Satyam was a really good friend of reshamthegreat and I admired Resham so much, she was the celebrity of that time and hence I got to know her slowly and it was the beginning of my journey and then I got to know so many people.
I wrote really cheesy and stupid quotes at the start and now when I look back I creep myself out but I think that was when I grew and became the person that I am today. In the first year on Mirakee I met this amazing group of friends (zafarkhan, shafia_khanam, shivam, yash, sehaj and milo) and we called ourselves Stalkers not because we stalked people (okay we did but not in the creepy way), what we did was read the people who were here before us and talked in comment boxes that one time we exceeded the limit of comments, I don't know how we did that! Those were really good days and my parents absolutely had no idea what did I do on my phone all day.
Suddenly, oh so suddenly things began to change and my group left mirakee, and so did so many other people - my mother found out about mirakee and read some chats with nivi where he said, 'You will be fifteen in January right?' and my mother scolded me for talking to guys and strangers and all that stuff and hence I took a break (my first ever break) from mirakee and this was after I wrote the post on Men's day.
When I came back nothing was the same, people I knew had left and believe me I do not exaggerate when I say I knew hundreds of people and when I came back I knew only a handful. Mirakee was a strange place to me and hence I left again. That was also the time when I wrote my first ever good write ups, the ones I myself like such as Mirakee-A writers paradise, Paper Planes etc. But I was not consistent and really sad and angry on mirakee and everyone who had left. I once commented on Shivam's post and then I posted those words too, they went like, 'When and why did you leave?' I remember people commenting on my write ups, we miss you come back and then finally I came back after getting over all the people who left and started writing one write up every day, and met sangfroid_soul and then slowly other friends of her and slowly more people on mirakee and zohiii of course. It was a new era, a new lifetime on mirakee which will not make sense to most of you, but everything changed for me. I had this rant account and this anonymous account which some claim to be my alternate personality. There was this phase when I changed my usernames so much and landed on raika but mirakee stopped allowing five lettered usernames and hence the underscore.
Debjit, Gaurav, Tarun, Avitaj, Moi and some more writers are some who were here when I started and they are still here (somehow). I remember reading old writers such as Bluebird, Nightwriter_i, Shizane, _nishta, and so many more (I have a whole list of these amazing writers if anyone needs) and I read them and missed the old mirakee even more. I used to read them when nights were hard to go through. So yes, a thankyou to these old writers, who are the real celebrities for me.
People started leaving yet again but this time I wasn't that bothered because I knew I would leave too, someday, maybe.
But in this second life on mirakee, I once again met this amazing group of girls, also known as Drug Divas and I'm so happy I was one of them. Writersbay being this really nice motive for me to write.
My mirakee journey has had alot of ups and downs, from being harassed because of nationality and religion to being respected by readers who love what I write to making friends, and finding my best friend Shafia.
I have been typing for a while now and it has gotten really long and yet I want to write so much of how I admired tengoku and never thought her and I will be friends and how I have this beautiful and huge block list and about the times when likes and reposts didn't matter, (they should really not matter) and how I got to talk to Bluebird (a huge fan moment) and also Avitaj, haha but yes! I have grown so much in these three plus years of my life and I will never regret downloading mirakee though I really hope they give us free drafts(trying my luck).
I don't know when I might leave mirakee or this world but mirakee for me has been this other dimension where I met people of all kinds especially from India and I am grateful to everyone, to the people I love and hate, adore, and those who creep me out and those I creep out and everyone. It has not always been a good journey but I think, what is a journey without any hardships? So I would like to say
*ink runs out*
What better day to write about mirakee than on Valentines day. My love, you have been really hard on me but then again, I have been really hard on you too. Forever and always, mirakee. (cheesy enough?) I know you love me Mirakee. Miss me when I leave.
#microblog
#iadoremirakee ©raikaMirakee
-
Issues
To have a father,
who won't remember
or care
for your heart
and the pains it drowns in
for all the tears that left
and all those that refused to leave
as he laughed off with men
and boys
caring so little about
the little girl in you
To have a father
running after everything else
but you
or your mother
running over your dreams
to fulfill someone else's
To have a father
and yet feel the void
standing beside your mother
What does it feel like?
I'm so numb to know. -
Grey~existence
A monotonous life,
a mundane lie-
follow the procedure
or question your existence;
both acts, at the end
welcome a crisis,
rage a war.
A war so violent
and fate so cruel;
doesn't kill the bodies
but wounds the soul.
There's a numbing ache
and a lingering pain,
a broken heart
and shredded dreams
there's so much more
than eyes perceive
or words portray.
It's a battlefield
abandoned and in blood
behind this skin
in these bones
A soul so naive
and heart so cold,
vision so blur
and existence, very grey.
-raika
//shades of her soul// -
Sky
If sky was a person,
he would've been an artist
with a trench coat
and a palate of pastel colours
mixing with muted ones,
creating beauty out of
a havoc,
mystique, dark and gentle
If sky was a person,
he would've had pale skin
with mauve cheeks
and pink lips;
you could've seen
the entire universe in those
deep grey eyes
under which darkness settles
and makes home
If sky was a person,
he would've been up at dawn
reading books
and by evening -
painting his chef d'oeuvre.
the shelf of his room would've had
cassettes from the 70's,
physics and history books,
Greek novels and a
collection of all the great works-
especially by Frida Kahlo,
Van Gogh and Leonardo Da Vinci
If sky was a person,
he wouldn't have any
best friends or lovers
but would've remembered
the name of every person
he met,
and he would've listened to
the stranger on the bus
rant out about her life
and the girl next door
would've came over and cried
about the howling darkness
of her soul
and he would've listened
and he would've been there
for the little boy
who wanted to paint
but the society had
cut his wings
If sky was a person,
his heart would've thundered
that you could've listened to it
from afar
but his footsteps would've been
light, like a
paper plane
flying in between the
oranges and the greys
But sky is not a person
and only sky
and if you'd look closely
you'll see,
a monster residing within the clouds
covered in blue
and believe me when I say
he is the most humane monster
you'll ever see
©raika -
raika_ 11w
The barefoot writer
He walks among dark alleys at night
looking for the lost calm
but goes home at two am
with hands full of chaos
and a heart darker than the sky
He sits by his table and writes about the
runaway love
and those million shards of
his heart
He goes to his balcony
and writes about the
man he saw lay dead
on the footpath
near his home,
he passes by everyday
and about the bull he saw lay dead
on the corner of a street
he will never pass by again
He walks steadily in his lawn
as secrets push against his chest
and when silence isn't enough
to keep the darkness inside,
he runs to his basement
and screams into the walls
enough to cage the demons for a while
He leaves the door open and
walks on unknown roads
at 5 am he climbs a hill
and stares at the sunrise
with a net in his hand,
in an attempt to catch peace
but when the words on page
turn to a spiral around his head
and the chains in his soul, rattle-
he jumps from the hill
and falls towards the end
//He was the barefoot writer
who roamed the city after midnight
looking for answers to questions
emptiness asked him//
©raika -
raika_ 12w
The man in blue
comes by every second Thursday
with a bundle of envelopes
and a rose for my sister
Three letters, we snatch
before he puts them in the box,
the ones with flowers drawn
on the bottom left corner
I, eurus and mum
sit by the fireplace that night
and read out loud
the three poems that survived
He is away on war,
the poet - my dad
and the words he sends
are the promises he couldn't keep
It's been a month
and the post man hasn't come
my sister's flowers have withered
and mom's heart beats slow
Four poem less thursdays pass
and the phone rings
eurus holds my hand as mom talks
eurus screams as mom falls
I am eighteen and a half
sitting by the hospital window
near the bed where lay mom and E,
with a promise in my hand
'
My death will never be my own
but of the three flowers I never saw bloom
I see the sunrise everyday
but I'm scared to see the sun set
when the waves take me away,
take care of our little east wind,
she's meant to fly, high and free;
read the poems I have written,
to our queen before she sleeps
Thunder,
when the waves take me away,
will you be the peace in the war their hearts will seek?
-the last words of a poet on war-'
A tear escaped and wiped,
I nod towards heaven and smile
-raika
"your death is not your own." a line by Sherlock Holmes.
Gladiolus is a flower which symbolises strength.
@allbymyself @zohiii©raika_
-
raika_ 12w
Not putting my copyright because it is inspired from another human being's story, so her copyright though she will never read it.
Also fellas, go easy on your parents, maybe? Give it a thought..
-
poeticgirl 12w
#foodconnection #wod :( #megwn #megmi
3rd pod. Wow
@mirakee and @writersnetwork honoured ♡Womanhood
Women, my amma says
Are supposed to remember
The algorithm for deliciousness
The art of broths
My amma at 17,
Traded books for a spatula
And yet, I don't know if it's her regret talking
Amma mastered making perfect circles
Of wheat doughs
When I , can't even get my incircles right.
'A woman's age', my amma says
'Is counted by burns on her wrists,
And scars on her back'
And not freckles? I ask
'Oh that's a big no.'
Ma, I saw her making payasam
For the courtier
My elder sister was seeing
'A woman', she said
'Should know the art of pleasing,
pseudo masculinity'
And her self-respect ?
'Doesn't exist',she whispers
Di, I saw her dressed
Draped in 24 yards of womanhood
Because a girl should be holy under the fabric
And blinding veils
And rice and dal
Fish and stews
And books and notes?
'Doesn't matter'
Pa, sits beside
'What's womanhood beyond
Curry and stews'
'It's a girl, who loves skies
Or someone
Who doesn't gets her incircles right
Someone who stands up'
So the dal and rice?
'The dal and rice,
Are a part of life'
'But womanhood is all YOU'
©poeticgirl
