Category: poems

songs of youth | my first book of poetry is officially out!

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over the moon to share that my first collection of poetry, “songs of youth”, is officially out & available for purchase on amazon!! 🥰🤍 incredibly moving to hold my poetry in my hands for the first time today. 😊

🕊 “songs of youth” is a collection of poems written between the ages of sixteen and twenty. it explores the journey to adulthood through tones of teenage angst, grief and joy. brian molko of placebo, who was the soundtrack to my teenage years and the one who hypnotised me with rawness and alluring born-to-die sadness, once said that, when you are a teenager, you react to the world that surrounds you with great emotionality and intensity, with full heart. he mused that growing older is a process of finding semblances of sanity. this collection aims to illustrate exactly that; it is not written by an adult looking back with maturity, nor tenderness to their early years, but by the teenager who is in the midst of experiencing the turbulent highs and lows of being thrown into life. it explores the beginning of the search for the ‘I’. ​

🕊 kindle: https://amzn.eu/d/0duef5g
🕊 paperback: (available in most countries and to roll out in a few more soon!) https://amzn.eu/d/grVyxyZ

🕊 note: if you’re using kindle, please lower the text size to minimum to preserve the poetry formatting which is inherently tricky to convert digitally, as the larger fonts create misalignments within the text 🤍 thank you!!

🕊 huge thank you to my dearest friend Holly Robinson, who did me the great honour of gracing me with her talent by creating the cover art of my collection 🤍

🕊 i have created a new ig account where i will be sharing my poetry, you can find me at: @songs.of.youth 🖤

my poetry collection “songs of youth” is #3 on the hot new releases in women’s poetry list on amazon! 🥰💙 thank you to everyone who has been ordering & reading it, i am so moved. 🙏 it has been my childhood dream to have a book of my own and it is very fulfilling to have the dream materialise. the ending stanza of my collection is:

“in the light of sovereignty / my little girl is lovingly held / by my woman”

and it has surely felt like this to have my words published and shared with the world. so grateful. 💙

🕊 kindle: https://amzn.eu/d/0duef5g

🕊 paperback: (officially available in all the countries enrolled in amazon’s publishing program)

u.k. link: https://amzn.eu/d/0duef5g

u.s.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2SH6KN5

france: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0C2SH6KN5

italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0C2SH6KN5

just listed the first four here, do message me for the link if you are from another country & are interested in ordering 🖤

🕊 the gorgeous artwork is by the most talented Holly Robinson💙

thank you again to anyone reading my words & so much love 🤍

to live, to cry a little, to bring a touch of beauty

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the last few days have been tender, and last night i was happy to reconnect with a friend from university whom i studied film with. we exchanged kind words as well as poetry. after we both shared that we warmed each other’s hearts, i found myself thinking how much i treasure these brief moments of connection, yet how i often don’t enjoy them fully because i generally am so immersed in my mind palace and narratives, so overly focused on my insecurities, internal drama or questions of right and wrong that the beauty of life passes me by. i mentally noted a line i could have seen in a poem, ‘to bring and receive a little beauty to and from others is enough’, and i scribbled this quick poem this afternoon. 💗

to live
to cry a little
to bring a touch of beauty to others
to keep my heart soft even when i’m scared
to feel my childhood’s wounds with tenderness
to share my mind with fullness
to come to understand the world with my fingertips
what else is there

maybe i’m alright as i am 

the only one who can deliver you is yourself

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i was never a loyalist to my homeland,

but when i saw the trees

that had towered over my head

in my teenage years,

i graced the earth with my knees

and raged.

to the girl sitting by the lake

counting good omens on stones

and stringing her worth on fair words:

the only one

who can deliver you

from your despondency

is yourself.

reflections written in the park i walked every day in during the most tumultuous years of my teens. as the trees have changed, so have i, yet as the trees have remained the same, so have i. leaving home with renewed faith in the only one who can deliver me: myself. 🤍

📸: cișmigiu bloom!

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

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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. 🖤

king’s cross hotel – first draft

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i’m watching the rain wash the streets
thinking, fuck! like a smith beating a hammer hot, i’ve been warring with myself for too long.

when i was sixteen, i thought i was meek
so i slid viciousness between my teeth
when i was nineteen, i thought i was cruel
so i choked on sugarcane, oblivious that
it is impossible to only sustain yourself on rock candy
when i was twenty-two, i thought i couldn’t trust myself with my heart, so i gifted it in a music box
in the hopes new hands would care better for it

i watch my thoughts drop like pearls on canvas and decide that
my gospel is the chambers in my chest

the chambers in my chest
housing sweetness
the sweetness of the tears streaming down my cheeks under the neon lights on oxford road
the sweetness of the rage carving my fingertips in sand dunes
the sweetness of baring myself soft to a new pair of well-meaning hands despite fears of being young in all the wrong ways

i listen to the waves of being echoing in my navel and wonder
what if
my path is one of softening instead of breaking
what if
i can trust myself with my heart?

last night i felt alive under the lamp poles and monsoon sky, listening to lana singing about harry nilsson whispering in her ear, “come on, baby, you can drive” and i thought
come on, baby, i will drive.

“king’s cross hotel”, quick poem i wrote this morning watching the rain. early rough draft so bear with me. 🖤

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.

my youth spills on dancefloors by Téa Nicolae

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*poem published in Kamena Magazine, 2022. written in 2019. from my ‘teenage angst’ collection.

pitch-black clubs,
dazed fridays.
my youth pumps through my veins.

high heels,
shiny fake ids.
my youth grounds me.

grimy dance floors,

my youth bursts inside of me

it glides through me

wildly

as my heart throbs beneath my skin
matching the music’s beat

i please my youth
bending my body obediently
with the deafening bass

midnight
the synth dismantles my mind
and my limbs are not mine anymore
they follow the sound

there is no past
or future
only my body
spinning madly
only the music
twisting in my ears
only my youth
spilling on dance floors
from the crashed bottles of wine at my feet

Yajñasenī by Téa Nicolae

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she who was born of fire

she whose beauty enticed even the sun

i garland thee

she whose blood spilled on royal floors of marble

she whose woe scorched the Kurus

i weep with thee

she who was touched yet remained stainless

she whose dishevelled hair holds the griefs of woman

i pray with thee

Draupadī,

she who cried the tears of the women who walked this earth

i am thee.

*poem published in Śabda Magazine, vol. II.

collage i made of pooja sharma as the beloved empress. her performance is etched to my heart!

“defeat me” – poem, prayer for Naraka Caturdaśī

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defeat me,
monsoon one.
pierce through the weaponry of the self
until my armour plate breaks in two,
and i crumble at your feet
the way Naraka fell before you and Satyā.

show me mercy,
monsoon one.
before your sudarśana delivers my final blow,
hold me as one’s beloved would.
cradle me
the way you embraced your gopis
when swaying with the woods of Vṛndā.

dance me,
monsoon one,
to your flute’s tune
show me the hills
where the milkmaids bathed your feet with their tears.

let our waltz come to end
when my hand slips from yours…
then claim your victory over me,
Hari.
unchain me from my bonds of delusion
burn the bitterness weighing my heart
so we meld as one.
free me into union with you,
lover of Rādhā,
the way you wedded Naraka’s imprisoned women.

purifier of the fallen,
defeat me
and
allow me
rest
within you.

“defeat me”, poem / prayer for Naraka Caturdaśī… 💛 wishing a blessed Dīpāvali to all! may our ignorance dissolve into the light of consciousness as the asuras were absorbed into the devatās.

credit for the second, beautiful image: Madhav, unsplash.

tiny personal note: this is the first Dīpāvali i am spending in a place of my own, and it has been so precious to decorate my apartment (and even my rabbit’s hutch!) for the festival of lights. 💫 

grateful!

the tapestry behind me: the feet of Hari & Rādhārāṇī, by Harsh Malik. 💛