Uncut Poetry

Survivors

I have always wondered about people who go through tragedy, and then fall into profound grief. Such that their lives change, trajectories bend, and a state of being moribund sets in.
 
In much of our existences, we are all living half-lives in our own way, pur-blind, half-dissatisfied, fully-disgruntled. The world refuses to work according to our diktats or wishes. And we are being continually rebuffed or embarrassed. Till we take it as normal. And then what do most of us do? Chin up. Take the blow. Move on. Things invariably add up somewhere. And find some sort of an equilibrium.
 
Because the future is a consummate stitcher of 'rafoo', a darner of torn existences.
 
But then there are those whose lives don't find their equilibrium, those who stay mired, however impractically we might think, in the turbid morbidity of past tragedies. For so many people, lives stop when their love dies, or heartbreak breaks a bond with life which they assumed was irrefutable, or a financial muscle breaks and their whole existence collapses.
 
They lose the will to find light, the flex to transition into an alternate reality, the humility to seek redemption, the ability to let go of happenstances and embrace realities, to learn, absorb, embrace and then become the light.
 
They never understand the value of taking life seriously but never so much that it becomes both a vice and a vise.
 
Because that's when they find themselves as castaways in their own stories, forgoing their ability to find a log, and the wind, to set sail again, this time with a fearlessness bordering on ferocity.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the dramas of life - 
Sometimes Life Leaves You Alone
Waiting for my flight to Chennai at the Kolkata airport
Why I Disagree With the Moon
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 -
 Blockbuster Atmosphere 9 Sadness by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/blockbuster-atmosphere-9-sadness
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Tell Me, Tell Me, How a Tear Was Born

There are so many microscopic things which happen which tend to change our lives - not in cataclysmic ways, but in infinitesimal ways making us the persons we become.
A word said in passing, a kindness shown when not expected, a smile out of the blue, a touch when unexpected.
 
And when a person opens up to you with all her vulnerabilities, bare to her soul, regardless of consequences, regardless of the delicate position which she places herself in, is the time when something inside us shifts. We learn of the preciousness of trust, how simple keepsakes can be life-changing, how devastating and life-affirming can a peek into someone else's truths can be.
 
Paradoxically, our complex journey through our lives is made richer when our choices become simpler. To pause to see, to stop to listen, to go silent to let the noise subside, to acknowledge presence, to reach out, to reach in. Each person we meet is actually a cornucopia of dreams, actualities, hopes and compulsions. To breath with them is to travel with clear eyes and a pellucid heart.
 
To know that to know a truth of another is just another way to find our own truths.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life and its infinite mysteries - 
Elegante Solitude
I Come With Mud
Assisted Suicide
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 -
Gracias by Sascha Ende
Kathrin by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Gracias
Link: https://filmmusic.io.en/song/Kathrin
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Here We Are In The Years

"My love, of a thousand reaffirmations,
we know we will never find ourselves in adequacies.
Beyond the blemishes you absorbed,
                            the ones I ignored,
it was enough for us to have found
the places where we fitted."
 
Who are we if not a pack of confusions and misdirections? Because we are so inadequate in our understanding of what we are, and what is truly important in our lives, we ever so often miss the very opportunity passing by us with a shy smile.
 
Until, through a strange alchemy of circumstances, we don't.
 
And we find something, we find someone. And everything changes.
 
There are a million reasons why something shouldn't work, a relationship should collapse, why an idea should die an immediate death, but something holds us up, gives us the courage of our convictions, a boldness which says "whatever be the consequence". 
 
And things happen, in their own messy ways, such that through the chaos emerges a new kind of light. Soft at times, harsh mostly, often accompanied with music, often blinding - but light it is. And through the clutter we see ourselves and our lives with clarity, and we finally recognize what is important to us.
 
And beyond the love we have for another, things, seasons, art, beyond all the lives we find - our love for ourselves.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on fractured relationships finding peace: 
When Did You Say
Living Inside a Wound
I Come With Mud
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 -
Blockbuster Atmosphere 10 Relaxation by Sascha Ende
Blockbuster Atmosphere 9 Sadness by Sascha Ende
 
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Blockbuster Atmosphere 10 Relaxation
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Blockbuster Atmosphere 9 Sadness
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

When Did You Say?

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

Will We Ever Trust The Skies Again?

Someone once said "The path of peace goes through power." It's not only the truth, but a reality. Sadly.
 
In a world largely ruled by men, rules are set as statements of power and domination. Even if someone seeks a hassle-free existence, unencumbered by positions, they are forced to seek bullies as allies, and are blackmailed in the name of security guarantee.
 
In the sick paradigm of domination, innocents are both targets and collateral. And we, who are unaffected till we are not, react in disgust, fear and with the full force of our prejudices. Somewhere in the chasm between left and right, right and wrong, righteousness and hope, prejudice and fact, we the innocents also become warmongers in the name of being opinion-makers. Even on the sidelines we bring in the full force of our prejudices and opinions, seeking to change who cannot be changed. Facts take flight, and we become mood makers, reflected in wayward news articles, op-eds masquerading as headlines, passion disguised as television reportage.
 
We the populace, the common people, thus also become warriors. And find that the battlefields and nationalism which conjoins us, does not stop us from fighting our own battles of our versions of right or wrong on social media, newspapers and tv channels. We stand divided. And we, the hoi polloi, become our own worst enemies.
 
And we find, later, much later, that we are the ones who are the ones who hollow a nation out. Much much after political parties have come and gone, our debilitating legacy stays on.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on country, war, and other confusions  - 
Politics on the Dining Table
Mr Hoskote, HAve You Visited Kashmir Recently?
For Anyone Who Bleeds
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 -
Sleepers by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Sleepers
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Sometimes Life Leaves You Alone

Vincent Van Gogh, possibly the loneliest man in history, once said - “A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.”
 
We are so much, and so little at the same time. As we transverse our fulfilments and relationships, seeing one flourish, and the other flounder. And we struggle to understand why. We find that we are that person who is loved outside as also the person agonizing over the one he loves the most.
 
So much of us lies unidentified. Why - we struggle to know ourselves! As we see ourselves in other people's eyes and are astonished that they see someone else altogether than the one we thought we knew.
 
Until the realization comes that we are illusions trying to find our own realities. And we transverse the world through the dream version of our lives. And we encounter strife and pain. Things start unravelling. And with dread within our hearts we know we are less than ideal.
 
And we find ourselves alone.
 
With space to not find someone else but to find ourselves.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loneliness and aloneness - 
Elegante Solitude
Sometimes We Remember So Hard
Those Days of a Lost Summer
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

Living Inside a Wound

Too often, only too often, couples live lives of quiet despair.
 
Without knowing that's not ordinary, that's not what coupledon is all about, that we can't have lifetimes compromised to the extent that an entirety passes by and there's nothing to show for it.
 
Life is valuable and nobody, no relationship, has a right to take away from the preciousness of each moment. Because we have too few in the entirety of a lifetime to be in a position to even lose a single one of them.
 
We need quick reparation, priority conversations, time to sort things out, to sit down with the intent of resolution, to come halfway - if not whole - to mend.
But that's easier said than done.
 
For the simple reason that hurts are deep-seated, more cavernous than ego. And fault lines once created are like deep crevasses. The solution is not bandaid, neither surgery because the scars which remain still hurt. It's only massive change and a change of attitude that will act as the silt to fill those fissures - a flood of gratefulness which would leave its residue behind, a continuous level of self-awareness of how our inadequacies are compensated by the other's presence.
 
Couples are a team, and much more than the centripetal forces of differences, it's the pre-assumption of intent which destroys. Close relationships have to start with gratefulness, take each other as gifts and stay in the moment, to find real joy.
Zen is not a strategy for love, it is the first principle. Nothing is impossible if intent and awareness are the emotions which lead.
 
Ordinary lives are then haloed in quiet beautiful ways.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the struggles which mark coupledom - 
Before Bruises Become Wounds
What is Loss, She Asked Me
Grief Strikes Where Love Struck First
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

As Summer Finds a Beginning

Summer is late in the city I stay in. There are discussions about it but no conclusions. Some say - enjoy the extended spring. Nobody minds, as there are high winds coming in from the south-west, and windows rattle. There is more time to get the air conditioners serviced.
 
But the intimations of summer have not ceased.
 
Much before the papers announced the hot days ahead, the mornings had started to get more humid. Joggers knew. Windows in cars started being closed and the air conditioning cranked up. Summer bushes along walking paths started flowering. Pink Bougainvillea, red frangipanis, yellow elders. Flower beds had amaranths, salvias and hollyhocks nodding away delightedly. And as I went to office, Red Road and the Victoria Memorial complex was strewn with gorgeous gulmohur and amaltas, the golden yellow shower tree, the purple jacaranda and the flaming royal poinciana. My drives every morning were ablaze with colour.
 
And I knew though it was a welcome, things would unravel in different ways.
The tar on the roads would start to melt, as would the barely hidden anger on the edges of side streets. People would tend to get tired faster and more irritated. Fuses would ignite and punches landed. Relationships would begin to unravel and truths told in harsh tones. People would fall into lust more than they fell in love. And there would be too many misdemeanours conducted by common people in commonplace ways.
 
But legendarily people understand. Even as they fight and argue, they understand that the heat is a character in every situation. People make plans to go to the hills but some refuse. Summers are when they reveal themselves to their own. They write their most honest poetry. And understand the enormity of their misdemeanours- and do not hesitate to ask for forgiveness.
 
Springs just make you glad, happy to be alive, perky without reason. Autumns are for deep depression, to think of the worst life has every given as just desserts: it's the time for seeking redemption. Winters are to freeze inside, to not reveal oneself. Everyone is too embroiled in one's own battles of seeking succour and warmth, to be able to think of being benevolent.
 
But summer is when we allow everything to fall apart. Our clothes, our defences, our truths, our untruths. Even as the most iridescent flowers burst uncontrollably in colours which sometimes hurt the eyes, something soft inside wants to tell truths. It seems easier to give in then rebel, or wallow in stories with long lives. It's good to be ordinary and open.
 
Summers are the time for both passions and truths to find their own paths of destruction or redemption. Whilst other seasons are one dimensional, summers are when the roads get forked, ready to form - or destroy you.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the the seasons of our world and lives - 
Those Days of a Lost Summer
In the Winter of Our Relationships
The Passing of Autumn
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 -
Sehnsucht by Sascha Ende
Summer Dream Instrumental by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Sehssucht
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Summer_dream_instrumental
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Return to You

The riches of our lives, even when we are not searching for it, is like the journey of Santiago, the young Andalusian shepherd boy in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. The treasure is always nearby, always close. We just don't have the eyes for it.
 
The treasure is often our search for meaning, sometimes it is the clarity we seek of what the fulcrum of our life is, so often it is our despair to put together the disparate parts of our lives into one knowing compass.
 
Most often it is our search for a person who gives meaning to our lives.
 
And we have to wander through our days and our dullness, the inequities and confusions, the seemingly directionless pull of our lives, the cornucopia of choices, or the dearth of choice. And we return home, tired, our ties crunched, our spirits defeated. No balm, no gentle commiseration, no time with the closest to us, seems to make a difference. And we keep searching, keep looking outwards, keep wondering what will give solace, give intent, bring significance. Who would be the compass and the companion, the commiserater and the catcher in the rye?
 
And in our search for an adult cradle, even as we lie curled on the lap of someone we care for,  laying bare our existential issues, we forget that possibly, this is the person who is both the destination and the means, the person who could hold us and lead us, the one who both understands and scolds, the one who is the wind beneath our wings and the first step of beauty in our lives.
 
And in that realization, lies the gorgeous reconciliation of our search, as we realize that who we thought of as an accessory, a necessity, a cultural perk, a socio-economic order, a social necessity, often a burden, an enforced liability in the form of a gift, is actually purpose and direction, succour and signal, a parachute and a mattress.
 
And in that realization we are like the prodigal son. Our return becomes then just a realization.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on elusive love - 
Before Bruises Become Wounds
Old Poems for Old Loves
Bella's Meadow
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 -
Der Kristall Ending by Sascha Ende
Der Kristall the Glade by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/der-kristall-ending
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/der-kristall-the-glade
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Elegante Solitude

Aloneness is forced, solitude is a choice. Loneliness forces me unwillingly to be with myself. But solitude, as the great Montaigne said, gives me a chance to know how to belong to myself. A mental stand - and an entire outlook changes.
 
But, of course, it is not so simple!
 
Ironically in our worlds, we have to forcefully claim our aloneness, often to fight for it. It is antithetical, nay, antisocial, to voluntarily eschew company, and be alone. In its own way, it's a rejection of social norms, company, to say that 'hey I prefer myself to you.' We are all meant to be social animals, and nothing should deviate from that. If you seek droplets of solitude - that is acceptable. We need 'me-time'. That's hip. It's new age, recommended.
 
But to deliberately and pointedly eschew company - to travel alone, to go to a film on one's own, to decline an invitation to a party for no reason whatsoever - is anathema, non-understandable, hence, well, 'unacceptable'!
 
Because nobody can understand solitude. 
 
How can I explain its texture, its ability to embrace like a warm comforting room, to give the feeling of teetering on the edge and of being held at the same time, of getting the feeling of being with a stranger you know well, of discovering the undefinable in the person who's definition you thought you had down pat, of having the full force of freedom with oneself and of pulling oneself back all the time, of being excited because you've just said yes to something which all company would have abhorred.
 
And one discovers what the great Soraya once said - "Sometimes being surrounded by everyone is the loneliest, because you’ll realize you have no one to turn to.”
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the loneliness - 
Sometimes We Remember So Hard
I Can Sense Her Loneliness
The Art of the Lonely Good Deed
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 -
Time Is Now by Sascha Ende
Colossus by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Time-Is-Now
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Colossus
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license