Category: devotional | bhakti poetry

Khaliya: birthday poem

Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

the sun in my mind aging by one
the tinkle of golden anklets calling from the forest of monal
the blood of my womb coalescing into bruised grass
the clouds of silk blushing against my cheeks
the burn of my skin drying before the unforgiving light
the sound of my shame vibrating in my chest
the cold untangling my fingers’ grasp on fears seeded into me as child

i
sometimes wish i was satisfied by easy
by swinging my feet over the white picket fence holding hands with perfect suitability
but the fire in my belly scorches
and i know i’m not

i
sometimes wish to rest
but the fire in my belly scorches
and i know i have to keep moving

🏔 Khaliya, from my birthday poem. 🤎

in Gangotrī i screamed for the Lord (excerpt) | the Monsoon One and the pilgrim | téa nicolae

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(..) my cheeks, full in lilies
my mind, anointed by the half-moon bathing the Śivling

i walked and walked and walked
hungry for a glimpse of your feet

at crossroads
my torturous One of Monsoon
devised a game:

i felt
his lips
hovering
on my hair, hands, and eyelids
yet when i turned
my mouth
to claim
my longing
i could only kiss
a devious scent of lotus

the empty air
and a devious scent of lotus

after ten, twenty
thirty turns
and one hundred and eight hot tears
the mountain road came to a halt

you, nowhere to be found.
only a devious scent of lotus.

a perfume so deceitful
that when the milky ocean
was churned in the first aeon
the asuras did not taste nectar
for they chose not the elixir
but the conch streaming it instead

last crossroads in sight,
i screamed

ENOUGH.
MY LORD, IT IS ENOUGH.

TEAR MY CENTER
WED MY NAVEL

DO NOT HIDE FROM ME.

Gangā sizzled as your lotus scent filled my nostrils
maddened, i looked around for You, when, a whisper:

𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒉𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒔.

🌙 excerpt from a poem from my upcoming collection “the Monsoon One and the pilgrim”. photo: Gangotrī at night. the Himālayas are calling again. 💛

on the banks of Gaṅgā | Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭamī poem

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on the banks of Gaṅgā

you held me all night, my Lord
unseen to the eye,
your grace, a lover’s touch, wrapped my skin
unheard to the ears,
your name, my japa, vibrated through my braincells

Monsoon One, do you long for me as fully as i long for you?
do you call on me as ardently as i call on you?
you do, don’t you, my Lord?
i am not alone in this quest

for every step i take towards you,
you take two towards me
for every tear i spill in yearning for you,
you ignite vīrya in my skin tissue
for every test of yours that i fail,
you yank me freer of delusion

i see it now, Hari.
you have been pulling me
by my hair and hands to you.
it was all you. it was always all you.

if i run to you as fast as my legs can take me,
will you meet me halfway?

you will, won’t you, my Lord?

🦚 Happy Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭamī! 🙏 poem from my upcoming collection “the Monsoon One and the pilgrim”. 💛

twenty-four summers rekindle the fire

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in my sixteenth autumn, Nature called me to her,
burned into my cells the yearning to meet my depths
and i tasted myself wildly in her fold
until wisteria tangled my feet
and life pulled me from myself by my hair
and i lost the thread, the web, the call.

𝒊 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍
i told the river as it broke through my skin
i forgot the lessons, i forgot the actual call.
i could only hear an echo of it and i followed fragments of memory. it seemed like the call. it felt like the call. it wasn’t. i was just a girl.

your terence said, if you are to follow,
only follow Nature.
it is funny, how sixteen autumns of cracking fire could understand
what twenty springs of dimmed flame did not.

twenty four summers rekindle the fire with rage, bare skin and an open chest,
and with my girlhood as the blood offering.

watch me
answering your call again
with my hair burnt and my thighs bled.

like the dragon woman who ate horseflesh in the red sea,
i sink my teeth into my girlhood and consume it rapaciously in the forest.

mad eyes, i pledge:
this time, it will just be me,
and you, and the wildness.

to seal my heart / is to deprive myself of God | bhakti poem by téa nicolae

Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

in the depths of betrayal,

do not, under any circumstance,

seal your heart.

for years, you intricately

pushed yourself to unglue it.

to forfeit that effort

is to lose the rawness of God

tasting herself in you

as both the flutter in your womb

and as the pain in your left lung.

to seal my heart
is to deprive myself of God.


in this life,
there is much i have allowed.


but this,
this, i will not allow.

______________

~ note to myself. 🖤

your mouth is the fire | bhakti poem by téa nicolae

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your call is the cinder
your mouth is the fire
burning the tips of my fingers,
weaving my thoughts in gold wire.

my tears are the milk,
my oblations are the flowers
gliding onto the blest thāli,
pouring into fire that devours.

your curls are the waves,
your teeth are the moons
cooling the ārti of my heart ,
more precious than kingly boons.

my love is the oath,
my longing is the path
jostling me to you,
enough to endure the world’s wrath.

monsoon one, tell me
when my yearning reaches the skies
are you the sunlight
bathing my eyes?

Glossary
thāli – metal plate used in rituals of worship, on which offerings of fire and water are laid.
ārti – Sanskrit for ‘affliction’ or ‘distress’, as well as an alternative modern spelling for āratī, a ritual in which the light of a burning flame is offered to deities.

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。 my creative contribution to the Florilegium Anthology .❀。• *₊°。 ❀°

🖤🥀🌼 FLORILEGIUM 🥀🌼🖤 is an anthology of fiction & non-fiction literature compiled by the 2022 cohort of the Warwick Writing Programme, birthed out of love for writing and out of commitment to expression and self-discovery through the art of writing. Florilegium features 21 emerging writers and it holds short stories, flash fiction & poetry. it was a pure delight to work on this collection with my very talented colleagues and it is a joy to see it out in print! the Florilegium launch was held in february in London 🖤 photos from the launch below!

lemon tree flare | bhakti poem by Téa Nicolae

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i had thought
that i was just a girl
who wanted to plant lemon trees
but my hot blood scorched
the vine trailing on the windowsill.


Keśava,
you are pulling me to you by my teeth
and i follow happily.

exploring the warm tones of warwickshire beauty 💛


i followed you into the seven seas
and i followed you into the circle of mountains
i have been calling you with folded hands
and now i will dance to you
with my mouth open
and with flowers woven into my skin tissue.


monsoon one,
did you know
that the crevices of my heart
can hold you whole?
did you know
that the fire in my belly
can swallow the three worlds?


i know you did,
Hari.
i know you did.

Homam – Bhakti Poem by Téa Nicolae

Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

happy Mahāśivarātri! 🙏 reflecting today on the need to destroy within that which is familiar to be reborn as new. a poem inspired by the homam witnessed at the Chidambaram Temple (pictured):


Agni
is starved


mantra pours into the fire
ghee pours into the fire
milk pours into the fire
curd pours into the fire
sugar pours into the fire
silk pours into the fire


fear pours into the fire
past pours into the fire
doubt pours into the fire
attachment pours into the fire
woe pours into the fire
ire pours into the fire


Agni
licks his lips


quenching the homam within,
i wear the embers on my eyelids
with each blink
i regenerate.


Har Har Mahādeva!


🔱 further context: scholar Richard K. Payne explores homa as symbiosis between fire, the deity invoked in and concomitantly identified with the fire, and with the practitioner, who themselves becomes ‘ritually identified with both the deity and the fire’. in this, the offerings immolated in the fire are connoted with ‘spiritual obstacles that impede the practitioner from full awakening’. most significantly, ‘the practitioner’s own inherent wisdom is identified with the fire, and just as the offerings are transformed and purified, the practitioner’s own spiritual obstacles are, as well’. (2017)
Payne interestingly identifies two strains of interpretation of the ritual: first, ‘the yogic interiorization of ritual found in post-Vedic Indian religion, more as a form of esoteric physiology than as a psychologized understanding of visualization’; second, ‘the sexual symbolism’ ‘attached to all aspects of fire rituals’. (2017)

Caturāvṛtti Tarpaṇam | bhakti poem by Téa Nicolae

Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

my Lord,

melt me on the betelnut leaf

show me that i am rough on the surface

but soft all the way through

my rugged edges,

my delusions of mass

my convictions of being,

my frights of flow

in the melding of haldi

and sanctified water,

apaḥ sips my contractions

pours of holy water,

my fissures dissolve into You

fingertips adorned in yellow hue

and moist eyes of velvet,

i throw my head back and gasp

𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓂𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝒷𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒

🌼 photos: the ecstatic Caturāvṛtti Tarpaṇam, completed in forty-one days.

She dances me to her call | bhakti poem by Téa Nicolae

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in the depths of my being, She dances me to her call:

“come to me. I want all of you, my child. no part of you is too dark, too gritty, too cruel for me. I claim all of you.”

Māiyā! your waves carry your call and roll it against my chest. i seek you with my breath, eyes, hands, and knees. my lungs seek you like they seek air.

Ya Devī! soothing her tears,

Kṛṣṇa told Pāñcālī

that just as you, Śrī Gaṅgā, hold and wash all pollutions yet are ever-pristine,

so does the fallen empress remain untainted by her shame.

aches bathed in your luster,

i plead:

take all of me, Devī.

leave nothing of me behind.

establish me in knowing

that despite my wrongs, fears and corruptions, i, too,

your fragment in the microcosm,

remain unmarred.

may the holy flow of your untamed waters

sweeten the harshness i bear towards myself and the world

soften the rigid corners straining my being

loosen the knots hindering you from coursing within me.

Śrī Mātre Namaḥ. 🙏

photos: before & after bathing in the waters of Śrī Gaṅgā in the auspicious Gangotri. Śabda Yātra. 🙏 the blessing of blessings. 💙