SWIRLING HAPPINESS

The world’s got a
Lilt in her step
Spring in her flight
Revelling in
Intoxicatingly frisky delight.

Nature’s frost bitten fingers
Tickle her spine
She smiles a bit, giggles awhile
Proceeds to guffaw with glee sublime.

The world’s
Paddling in the pool
Of garrulous grins
A whimsical tippler, a fool

Misery and Pain,
Passers-by quite strange
Ephemeral as evening rain.
All worries, stark sorrows
Flung carelessly
Into swirling chasms of happiness
Sucked into the vortex
Of giddy gladness
They flounder uselessly.
Moisten your lips
With the nectar of mirth

The world’s glugging unabashedly
In doubt or despair
Laugh uproariously
Or do you fancy a tranquil beam?

The world’s waltzing with joy
All smiles and laughs
Frolicking fantastically
In dizzy abandon
She pirouettes and whirls
The dance of ecstasy.


Malvika Parthasarathy
Cluny Convent High School

The flowers whispered enticingly to the man who......

The man who couldn’t speak or hear
Stood alone by the pot-holed road
That slithered up the mountains
Twisting, writhing, meandering its way
Round the regal cloak of jade
Snug in a tattered shawl
A cap barely concealing
The grey wisps that garnished his pate
Creases etched into his countenance
Unfathomably deep ravines
Round his chocolate eyes
He stood amidst a cluster of flowers
Flowers flecked with fairy dust
Shimering, bewitching shards of enchantment
Dancing frivolously upon velvet petals
That glimmered with ethereal gorgeousness
The air around him seemed to sing
In celebration of the beauty he saw
With those curiously crinkled eyes.
The flowers whispered enticingly
In a language neither of us could fathom
Murmurs sparked with magic mist
And smattered with frisky delight
Intoxicatingly ecstatic
Tempestuously wild.
The frayed shawl did not matter
The loneliness rather trifling
For the music of the flowers
Had seared through the silence
That had gnawed grittily at his soul
Reverberating, resonating
Through his hitherto dormant ears
With flamboyant mirth
Drunk with splendour
Mugged by inquisitiveness
His grotesquely gnarled fingers
Trembling, quivering
Closed in [pitifully hesitant]
On an unsuspecting flower
And he yanked.
The ocean of beauty
That had swathed his recuperating essence
No longer sang in feral glee
The spell that had entranced him
With a gift of giddy happiness
Broke with a painful snap
A single flower plucked from
The carpet of red and white
Withering with wretched anger
Burning with baleful betrayal
Thrust him
Firmly and angrily
Into the resounding loneliness
And all was quiet once more.

Malvika, Cluny Convent School