Uncut Poetry

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

Marriage:
it was the end of all illusions
and the beginning of philosophy:
 
marriage was a lesson in impermanence -
not an idea, a daily unfolding.
 
To remain calm in storms not of my making.
Dinner is late.
      Plans change.
          Cushions are moved.
I nod, smile, adapt.
an ardent disciple of Aurelius.
 
Closet space shrinks mysteriously.
my belongings become
philosophical concepts.
 
Arguments teach a truth:
words are insufficient.
 
“Where do you want to eat?”
“Anywhere.”
(Anywhere is wrong.)
And I discover the absurd
as Camus sighs in his grave.
 
I broach the thesis: “Let’s watch a movie.”
I receive the antithesis: “Let’s talk.”
And confront the synthesis:
talk about why no movie is being watched.
 
“What did I do wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
But something is wrong.
And thus begins a lifelong inquiry into metaphysics -
 
what can truly be known?
 
I examine questions of existentialism:
what gives life meaning?
Choice?
     Duty?
         Love?
 
I lay in bed,
see the fan whirl, and ask -
what is love, bereft of drama?
what is self, when it must bend?
what is happiness, when it must be shared?
 
What, indeed, is life,
when it seeks surrender,
but masquerades as gift.
 
Essay:
I sometimes feel that a philosopher dissects the deeper meanings of life, only to figure out that it is meaningless.
 
And invariably, it has to do with human interaction, thought, foibles, decisions, reactions. And within the rigour of its investigation and compulsions is the real time change which humans wrought on each other.
 
Marriage is the ultimate test of change and resilience. Crafted inside the crucible of love, it continuously tests the human power to forbear, resist, surrender and claim victory in survival.
 
A less cynical view would view the wedded journey as a partnership which keeps on recalibrating itself until it hits a rhythm and a seamless marching cadence.
 
In actuality it is a flawed construct, with a societal burden of "till death do us part". Which of course provides a longevity to breeding, rearing and mutual survival, but comes up wanting in providing universal succour.
 
We are complex creatures. Feeling, hurt, chemistry, comfort, vulnerability, ego, belief, residual memory, remembrance, all swirl inside us like a Milky Way seeking their pre-eminence. And invariably coming up short when sought singularly. Luckily we are social creatures , necessarily living in a world which won't exist if not for cohabitation and coexistence.
 
Thus ironically, the most successful marriages are the ones which recognise this need and build an ecosystem of relationships rather than one rooted in ownership, bound in jealousy, and closeted in insecurity.
 
And just this musing is what makes a simple man transition into philosophy.
 
Unknowingly, a man walks into marriage a simple human being  and walks out wiser.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on marriage and its consequences - 
She's a Fierce One, My One
Love's Night of the Long Knives
How She Knew (that he was unfaithful)
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Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Rising Sun by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/rising-sun
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Long Now of Us

I sometimes feel we would be better people if we were slaves to love. Not to work for it, not to fantasize about it, not try to record of its wonder - but just to ease into its trust and surrender.
 
Because the secret of love's power is not its ability to sway but its strength to render vulnerability as an essential ingredient.
 
It's contrarian in concept - showing your weakness to strengthen your relationship - but that is how love gifts nesting space. We are allowed to show our worst, safe in the belief that we will be accepted, advised, admonished but adored. And in that paradox lies the crux of our ability to survive the worst of what life invariably throws at us.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beautiful paradoxes of love - 
Where We Start & Where We End
The Space Between Our Words
The Ironies of Love
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
About Moments by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

A Child Mulling on Life Beside the Sea

The whole process of growing up has an inevitability- and a tragedy - attached to it. A child grows up believing - trusting everything and everyone. An innocence which is endearing - and often encouraged, possibly because of it's anachronism and the fact that an atavistic urge inside us reaches out to something which makes us remember days when we were less cynical, less pessimistic, less prone to mistrust.
 
But how fast realities catch up.
 
Our desire, nay, our encouragements for children to grow up to be 'good' human beings, bumps into reality checks. The advice is then tempered with small counsel like - be practical, don't be an innocent, you have to look out for yourself because who else will.
In a wildly confusing world, our children end up being human beings who are copycats of others- self absorbed, confused, unreconciled and ultimately neurotic.
Innocence - moribund or ignored - seeks its own burial grounds.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the sea and what it does to you - 
I Heard the Other Day
Kripa (a blessing from a daughter)
The Art of Living
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Sea Waves
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sea-waves
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Art of Living

I spent three days in Kochi, immersed in the art biennale. And wandering through the lanes, warehouses, waterways, and cafes of the city. The city was alive with art - representations of life, adn its anguish and joy. And hundreds of people from all over immersed in art, as something they now saw as they went to school or office. 
 
I recorded small pieces as I viewed the art, and have put them up here, unedited. 
 
They have the sound of the sea, the cadences of life as it passed even as its representation lay splattered in colour or metal in front of me. I loved doing this live recording of thoughts passing through my mind - sometimes shallow, sometimes deep. But all very me. 
 
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Sailing through the wide sea by Musiclfiles
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sailing through the sea
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Memories of Peppermint Mocha

It's a startling thought, that someday sometime, there's that final time - and never again - when you will meet someone, hold someone, say that word, share that laughter.
 
Then how do we know that it is not also the final time when we leave with a sharp word, a fight ending in tears, a time which leaves someone in despair, that final moment when the last memory is of pain given and anguish taken.
 
Life's profundities are often written in the simplest ways - to be kind, grateful, to listen, to respond gently. Our last memory has to be the one which we can live with without guilt or pain.
 
Then we can revisit everything which we loved about the one who has left us with gentleness, towards that memory, towards ourselves.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how time takes people away from us - 
An Epitaph Made of Light & Air
Chemo: as I battle myself
When We Were One With The Stars
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Falling Star by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/falling-star
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Lunatics in Search of Peace

Animals hunt to fill their stomachs. Humans do so for power and greed. And when they possess weapons of destruction, they think themselves to be invincible.
 
It's easy to say it's primordial, part of the ancient blood running in our veins, but it's also civilizational. Of having - or not having - a spiritual foundation, a religion which teaches inclusion and diversity, and not harp on a supreme monotheism.
 
The urge to convert, failing which to conquer, is the legacy of our flawed religious leaders, who were products of their time, and constructed manuals chocobloc with their fears, flaws and aneurysms of the times.
 
And they forced humanity to see divine in the monstrous.
 
And the moral underpinnings of every endeavour thus became vitiated and compromised.
 
And when men gave into their basest inclinations to acquire and rule, to preen and show, all hell broke loose. Under the guise of righteousness, they found justification to bring destruction, mayhem, deaths.
 
Alas, that is the legacy we will leave behind on this earth, which some day or the other we are bound to destroy - the proverbial cutting the branch on which we sit.
Because with hubris comes the suicidal instinct, of so-called glory above all else, justification above logic, of allowing ourselves to be destroyed as collateral damage just to prove a point of our invincibility.
 
A simple fact. There's never going to be peace on this earth. Men, religion and hubris will justify every vile crime done against humankind on this earth. Till we are all wiped off.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the miseries and damage of war - 
Sounds of the Living and the Dead
For Anyone Who Bleeds
Will We Ever Trust the Skies Again
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Evacuation by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/evacuation
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Ironies of Love

Words are all what we have, to conjoin or to distance each other, what can make the difference between making a bridge to cross differences, or to find dissonance to deepen chasms. Who are we if not the stray remark which hurt or the heartfelt apology which redeemed. Love finds its bedrock in the glad word: beyond the body pheromones is the reality of the feeling, the thought enunciated in ways which lays bare the truths of a person.
 
We are known (and too often judged) by what we say, because that is what mirrors our innermost beings, because that is what gets people to recognize what we feel, what we think, what the truths of our being are.
 
What else is there? How else can we tell someone we agree with them, that what we think is what is, that we can think the way we can think, that the depths in our beings is greater than what is ostensibly visible. That we like someone, that we sense a chemistry, that, yes, we may be in love.
 
But love, ah. That can have its own language.
 
Because so much of our relationship is not only what is said, but also how it is said. The innocuous remark with a particular tone, an expressionless declaration, a stray sentence, a throwaway statement, a simple reply laden with feeling.
 
Yes. The language of expression and silence and adoration which comes out of a person's very being - in the eyes, in touch, in the presence and in the absence. How, only too often, in love, words fail, but even then the message gets conveyed. Because, sometimes - only sometimes - wordlessness is the most powerful language possible. Being in love does put paradoxes into perspective, and well.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the slow charm of love - 
Let Me Sit Beside You, Quietly
When We Know Love as Found
It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
About Moments by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort

Relationships take time. Even 'love at first sight' is a construct only, finding immediate challenge in the crucible of real life. I know couples who have gone around for years, but find they scarcely know each other within the first week of married life.
 
The interesting dynamic is the setup provided by love. It could work in two dynamically different directions. It could make you accept what really comes your way with generosity and a desire to work through the unexpected discoveries in a person. The other extreme would be the crashing of expectations, and understating that what-you-thought-&-what-you-got were such such incredibly different things - to be jettisoned immediately.
 
Such does life give - and we choose to give away.
 
We need to understand that ties are always brittle to begin with. There's trust to be built, there's vulnerability to be shown, there are defeats to be accepted along with victories which need to be celebrated. In our attempt to be what we've shown ourselves to be, we should not forget that impressions cut both ways - and truths are often more charming than cultivated lies. We WANT our partners to be mere mortals living and breathing heartbreak, distress, irrationality, madness, quirkiness, and everything else which makes us human.
 
If within those realities, we are not accepted, maybe there is something else in store, someone else to grow with out there, who would enrich our lives in immeasurable ways.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how loves gives comfort - 
I Think I Can be an Adventure WIth You
When We Know Love As Found
Just be Air
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Epic Intro 2017 by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/epic-intro-2017
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Where We Start & Where We End

The charm and beguile of life is that it throws the unexpected with such unerring regularity.
 
We start something with an intent. But the universe has other ideas. We strive for bliss in flight and fall in love with the grizzly earth.  So much of what enriches our lives is the unexpected turn we took, the yes we said reluctantly, the adventure which emerges when we step out in the middle of a dull day.
 
We merely want to seduce someone and we unexpectedly fall in love. We want to escape tedium and we find meaning. We enter with curiosity and leave with a cornucopia of riches. We are kind and make lifelong bonds. We wake up early with deep reluctance and find the most glorious sunrise of the year.
 
So much of our life is the misadventure, the wrong turn, the searing confession, the moment of vulnerability. And the whole world opens up. All that is required is chutzpah, intent, the ability to look life in the eyes with brazen honesty and say "this is me, flawed yet beautiful, selfish but kind, always open, always learning, always ready."
 
And the universe just whisks us away, into its limitless mysteries.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how love evolves in beautiful ways - 
Aaschi
Bringing THe Storm Home
I Never Wanted Parts of You Which Were Easy
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
When Life is Beautiful by Kalak
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/when-life-is-beautiful
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Replay - When Did You Say?

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it,
 
Sometimes you just know.
 
As someone once said "I knew you were the one, as soon you walked into the room. There was light coming out of your ass!" Frankly, more often then not, love has less drama associated to its arrival, because it is really a feeling which grows and found incrementally, one conversation at a time, one walk at a time, one infraction at a time.
You know there's something happening inside you when there's an unexplainable feeling of excitement and queasiness and anticipation which starts to brew inside.
 
Why queasy, I have often wondered. And the only answer I get is that you start feeling that you are losing control. And it makes you nervous, helpless. But it's a feeling you enjoy, giving into it is akin to some other power taking control of how you feel and act. The more irrational the act you see yourself do, the more you see yourself say things which you didn't know you were capable of saying, the more you realize you are in the power of something transcendental. Something which will now never leave you unscathed or unchanged.
 
Love has made an entry.
 
Life as you know it ceases to exist. Sometimes infinitesimally, sometimes significantly, you find yourself change. Even when the high fades, and love becomes a normal part of what you live with, there's a glow which never leaves you. Even as obsession tapers into normalcy, you know your life is forever touched with magic.
 
The most significant change comes as you stop thinking in singular terms. Is it freedom curtailed, or life enchanted for its inclusion? If there's excitement inside thinking of experiences together, then you are on the way to a twosome. Plurality is only acceptable with its promise of shared experience if one does not consider sharing an encroachment or a loss of freedom.
 
Because love is, in so many ways, an acceptance and an accumulation. It's the difference between being breathless and gasping for breath. In that thin line of differentiation, lies the richness of our choices and the changeability of everything we stand for in life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the progression of love - 
I Come With Mud
I Said I Love You First
Quietly Yours
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Angels by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Angels
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license