Category: Title of the poetry collection, An Emotional Bedouin

Yesterday night I wept a lot
I wept like my Mini, who moaned all night 
roaming on our roof 
after losing her fellow
The fellow with whom she came to our home
With whom she has lived there for some time
and one day discovers that her fellow is not around

I could not sleep that night
A pain gripped my baby soul
inexperienced with the white snow 
that can fall in bulk and freeze an entire area
Amma consoled me, 
"I know what separation entails
Losing seven children in a row
I know what to feel, what to think
When lovely buds fall from the trees
When the tiny dresses dance in the air
A boulder on my shoulder
Two stones in my eyes...

From Amma's bedtime talks
I could not make out 
What Mini lost--a lover or a child?
I can never make out animals' age
even distinguish their countenances
As Rumi and Sumi are two sisters, but they do not look alike
But when Mini gives birth to four kittens in a bamboo vessel under our bed, I have seen 
how she shrieked 
how she remained limpid
before cleaning the newborns with her tongue

Yesterday I moaned like Mini
The morning came late then
The sun kicks on my window
I met her irritated 
strongly believing that 
Mini lost her lover

Only when a lover leaves
The rampant learns loneliness
Whatever sturdy the rampant is, 
They must fall like a honey-combed furniture
They must sing like a reed flute cut from the core.

======x=====

Umme Salma, 15/11/2025, Morning Toowong

Right beside my home
lies a deep forest
Whenever I open my window,
I often catch a glimpse of a blithe baukatha
dancing and tweeting
damn caring the cuckoos’ coo coo
or the crows’ caw caw
throughout Spring or Winter

The way the dawn scrubs clear the greasy night
I used to scrub the oil-black cooking pots
And keep watching the bird
With her dawny downy arts
She used to dazzle my sight
fly fly fly from the mango to the olive
to the rose to the tamarind
Tickle sickle all the wobbly branches

My eyes raced and danced with her
My heart wobbled like a feather
Words sprinkled clear from my lips:
"O, dear, why are you so garrulous?
Can’t you stop a sec and be regally frugal?
Don't you know 
That a Bau is not for katha?”

The questions dashed my eyes onto me
And excavated my bride-born identity
Whenever the bridal shower purifies you
You enter a deep social forest
Where sounds are hemmed
Expressions are stitched
Longings are measured

Baukatha, my love,
Can you tweet me
Why are things like this in women’s lives?
Why does a bride mean a deaf-mute
Like a gem-carrying frog that never opens its mouth
Should the gem be lost?

Is this for this?
Words became alien to me
In love or loneliness?
In denial or acceptance?
In loss or gain?
In blaming or shaming?
In anger or anguish?

Whenever I thought
I would speak
I would press an issue
I would raise my voice
I would say sweet nothings
I stumbled
Shy covered my joyful expressions
Shame shone my objecting dispersions

I am not losing my gem
I was not born to hurt and part
I am not to crack and break
I am not to make my world, a divide and a side:
A painful tide, a thorny ride for the greens for the buds….

Is this why I am now
A wordless actor within the hem of home?
A secluded writer whose words frogmarch?

===x=== 
Umme Salma, Toowong, 2025

I had a heavy hurt, you never said!
If you’d told me earlier, I would have been glad!
I could have smiled, I could have danced
I could have been a dervish, livid and tranced.
I could have opened my heart and let it thaw
In telling all the untold tales, in one go
Like the ice that melts in the sun
Like the rivers that run and turn.

But I know you, honey, more than I
Realise how tough and tricky to get by
Those taunts, those scorns that shower
Those questions killing manly powers
You can brace me whenever you desire
But prickly bouts you can’t transpire
Like the boat that leans on the port
Like the cloud that discos in rapport.

Yeah, I know you, love, more than me
No…no…I am not a super angry bee
I hide the grief that I always have
Realign them, hitting the sulking tab.
I never list them, feeling betrayed
Only deep sighs sliced my vocab
Like yesterdays that never ever return
Like Hasnahena, never bathes in the sun.

Umme Salma, Toowong, 2025

Like a tree
I feel free
These days
The sun hugs me
Sends some glee
In a wrap of luscious rays

I am what I am
I am what I do
Nothing more, nothing less
Till I reach 
Such a nice thought
I was snipped into a horrible mess

When you went
A dim light flickered 
A dark night triggered
My jasmine scent
faded; branches bent

Rain and rain 
Drained and drained
My eyes, my soul
Have you seen
How Corals thrash
When waters strain?

But 
these days
I can spread my heart
I can silk-pack my dirt
I can clear the cloud
I can leap and fly
Give life a tasty try
stormy smiley proud

Is a tree really free?
Can a tree really fly?
"O, damn critic 
Shut your frick
No question...No No question now
put back your arrow
please...to your bow."

Ah!

A long palm tree
Once wished to be free
Being the tallest in the woods
She dreamed of reaching the sky
With round leaves fly and fly 
far beyond the seen clouds

But alas!
When the storm ended
The wind sank its sail
The palm began to shiver:
terrified and bluish-pale 

She looked at her trunk
posted in the earthly bunk
And started to bite her nail
Oh, I love...I love the earth
I love the nook, the worldly hook
the soil... the story of my lovely trail 

Oh, like a tree
Am I then free?
Shut up, shut up
O, damn readers 
stop stop 
Stop sipping
from my migrant cup.

===x===
Umme Salma, Toowong, 31 October 2025

Am I
A cat?
Do I peep
for a place
Cosy?
A warm
breezy nook
in your heart
Quilty mart
soft
lush
rosy?

Am I your pet
Caught in the net?
You say, www
I grin and grin
up to the chin
Glow like a digital dew.

===x===

Umme Salma, 31 October 2025, Toowong

Sometimes
My heart rhymes
With the rain
With the pain
Which you pelt
Like stones
on the devil’s terrain

You
Who
I loved
With all emotions true

But
blue nights
Waved
the fights
Through narrow creeks
Words grated the guts
Sounds jarred the nuts
The house, a pile of bricks

Since then
Like a pecking pen
I cok cok cok
Pain puts my soul
In a tanduri chicken coal
Shock shock shock.

===x===

Umme Salma, 30/10/2025, Toowong

If everyone says so
Where will we go
If everyone says
The authority is right
Then who will fight
The unjust the injury
The red tape fury
Which clouds the power
Threatens to shower
Over the helpless?

Isn’t there a saying
That you must have
Among you
a people few
Who must
Call towards the just
Resist the bad
That grows like a fad
Among a people ?

Then why you are
Retreat not to suffer
the duty the burden
Clean up the thorns
From a human garden?
If you do so
You actually throw
The helpless the sufferer
Amid the ocean
They swim and sink
Sink and swim
And embrace the water
death- blue dream…

Pls don’t do so
Don’t say unflinchingly
The authority is right
Instead, with all the might
Resist, desist, and fight
The injustice the wrong
that like a multi-pronged
Noose throttles the poor
Tramples the innocent
buries the human
with the pandemonium song…

Umme Salma, Toowong, 14/10/2025

Will I fall asleep or stay awake?
Will I smile or weep?
Will I remember or forget?
Will I pet the pain or let it go?
Will I connect the dots or alienate them?
Will I embrace or break the brace?
Will I mend the wall as “good walls make good neighbours”
Or leave it broken for things to haunt?

The woman wonders

The woman wonders

Because

In life or death
In love or hatred
In light or darkness
In the home or diaspora
Whoever she seeks to hold dear
The clasping string is hurt and cut
Whoever she takes to be her pal
The lovely lace is worn and torn

A brother opens the oyster sore
A lover uncovers the reefed past
A partner reveals the cavernous deal
A relative unearths the cavitied vessels

which stabs… stabs… stabs her ruthlessly… ruthlessly… ruthlessly

Pains break us open to let the light enter
Rumi says and plays with the woman’s soul
Like Coolangatta waves play with the dead snails. 

Umme Salma, Toowong, May 2016.

Our agonies will never wither
They will come one after another
And fold us into nothing one day

Will our happiness wither?
No… no … They won’t too
One joy will follow another
And one day will unmake us

This routine plays with the girl’s heart
Like the dark bamboo bush, playing with the evening light
Like the white swans that play with the slithering snails

Many gushes of tears gather
Several flashes of smiles heap
In the girl’s deep bosom
Holding on to them,
The girl pants and says, “I am fine, I am okay.”

===X===

Umme Salma, Toowong, 2022