Uncut Poetry

The Truth of Lies

"I will learn someday that truth
is a flight from penumbra to light,
from the man scared to show his scars,
to the child I can be to the world;
            there’s innocence in truth,
            it makes others reveal their wounds."
 
The biggest truth of lies is also the most uncomfortable - we tell lies to deflect our truths, not only from others but also ourselves . If we are sensitive to ourselves and our worlds, we find a twitch in our conscience. If we are inured and leathered and layered, we ski over the the thinnest ice with complete elan and disregard.
 
What makes us tell lies?
 
Of course, when truths are uncomfortable, if we are revealed to be perpetrators, when the charter of accountability is much greater than the act’s payback. More debilitatingly, when we wish harm unto someone, or are not ready to reveal the truth of what we are. Ensconced in the thin layer of a lie is the desire of image or deflection. So much of what we are is predicated on what we say - we naturally believe each other, and to lie is to create an image of others or ourselves which is skewed as per our own warped imagination.
 
What of the discovery of an untruth?
 
We are intrinsically innocent to belief, which is also why when our trust in the other’s truth is broken, it is nigh impossible to put it back into a pristine state again. Lives change with one untruth - battles are won or lost, relationships sustain or don’t, courage is found or varnished.
 
But what does it do to the perpetrator of the lie?
 
From time immemorial, the hauntings of lies have destroyed men, as they have not been able to see their own ugliness in the mirror. A man with a conscience is a man forever vulnerable to truth's perpetuating call. Because that’s what it really is. Truths are never clarion calls, they are never drumbeats, they lie quietly as facts, without squealing, without prancing. But  - away from the deflection, away from the glare - they grow in size, in stature, as prosaic as fact, as quiet as an ambush. And when they are revealed, they unwittingly explode, besmirching the ones who ignored it, wounding the ones discovering it. 
 
What about people who boldly ignore ramifications of revelations, who start and end from an instinct of self-preservation or self-aggrandizement? When they embrace untruth with aplomb and carry it through with bold disregard to anything and everything. We all know such people - bold, brazen, ballsy. Likeable people too, powerful ones often, but purveyors of stories. Perpetual liars, often carrying it as a pathological disease.  Is there an Armageddon for them, a final retribution, something which brings back the balance to truth?
 
Much as we might wish for redemption, the fact is that the world celebrates the bold, people who can get away with anything if they are brazen enough. It is the nature of the beast that with aggression, one can hold on to one’s  lies and ward off truth’s gentle assertions. Liars persevere, they even prosper. They find their suns and preen in their shadowless brightness. We can wish karma to find them at some point, but that is in the air and often wishful thinking.
 
Truths and lies are personal choices. Their ramifications can torpedo targets or self-inhilate the purveyor. If people can risk relationships for a simple lie, then possibly there is a backstory and they were victims first; if they can risk reputations, they are probably blasé in thinking that nothing can destroy them. Either way, a liar is risking a lot with no line of sight of the harm he creates. Wittingly or unwittingly.
 
What the worth of a lie is often sought  to be found in the value of its intent or its history. Like everything else, it is but a reflection of every person's owned and personal integrity.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty and heartbreak of life:
Lovers of Broken Mountains
Chemo: As I Battle Myself
How She Knew (that he was unfaithful)
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Mystical Autumn by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9755-mystical-autumnLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Let Life Break Your Heart

Each one of us is such a complex mess. Even the most sorted of us passes through noisy bazaars of wavering decisions, competing choices and moral dilemmas. And we invariably are victims of our own pitiable choices. The right and wrong of things is often simpler to decipher than what is right or wrong in the moment. Our ethical dilemma is often a post-act regret or engendered by the heat of revelation. We slip, we regret, we get punished. Then we either move on - or rot in the prison of our conscience.
 
But it’s a tragedy of our times that we are often characterised as the sum of just one mistake, just one proclivity, just one flaw. There’s a judgement passed.  And our place in the sun is snatched and we are relegated to the darkest recesses of the universe. Every good we have ever done is subsumed in the tsunami of one deviance, one error.
 
As we sit at the wrong end of a poorly-defined and often hypocritical judgement criteria, we find ourselves judging ourselves and sinking into a cesspool of self-incrimination. Life presents itself in its darkest hues.
 
We are often our worst not because we are but because the world expects it of us. What is the road to redemption for us who’ve given up on ourselves? Standing in the glare of judgement, we often forget that on the margins of life are waiting it’s grace and kindness. It could be in the form of a person, a poem, an incident, a purpose or a remembrance. That’s life’s hidden sunbeam. The one which is our ladder to reclaim ourselves.
 
Finally, we have to give meaning to our own lives. Those who stand in judgement are only reflecting their own shadows, and we have to emerge out of those. When we step out of the minefields of our mistakes and the world's opinions, we find endless fields of flowers and sunlight. We would finally be home.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty and heartbreak of life:
How I Stumbled in My Search for Eternity
An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness
The Tragedy of Seeing Life As A Broken Enterprise
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: You Can't Stay Here by Michal MojzykiewiczFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10070-you-cant-stay-hereLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://soundcloud.com/michaldrums
 

A Guide To The Difficult Art of Life (Whilst Making Love)

"We made love in our own way,
not calamitous, not celebratory in the end,
she didn’t relent, I didn’t fail,
my love redeemed at the altar of sex.
 
I held her close, more comfort than desire,
we both knew we’d now reached a phase -
for love is a feral cry in some throats,
and in some it survives with a gentle ache."
 
I think too much has been said of the sublimity of lovemaking and too title of it’s difficulties. The mechanics are intuitive, not the art. There are subtleties which makes the endeavour one of discovery. You can very well put your foot on the pedal and race the car away, but to drive whilst appreciating the passing scenery, to manage the bumps on the road, and to reach the destination drenched in beauty is an experience which goes beyond elemental understanding.
 
And what about the time when the body ages and desire doesn’t? Or when you age and your partner doesn’t? Lovemaking then is both a rare whiskey and a marathon. When you get there, it’s a relief first and then a celebration; if you don’t, it’s a recognition that time and tide always have their sad messages.
 
But more than anything else it is an insight into the kindness and affection of partners in love - how do they face changes of diminishing desire or sheer inability. The broader lesson is how relationships need to be open to change and find ways of resolution rather they letting issues  overwhelm them.
 
The tenacity of a relationship will be tested, time and again, in all kinds of ways - and one of the most moving testaments to it is of acceptance. When we love the soul of a man, small things are quirks, big things are quiddities, and everything is an opportunity to again find grace in the enjoined life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on finding grace in lovemaking:
Such are Such Days (or the days I make love to her)
Finding Souls Between Their Legs
Map My Body, Lover
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Hopeful by Phat SoundsFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10130-hopefulLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhatSounds74
Music: You Did This by Phat SoundsFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10132-you-did-thisLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhatSounds74
 
 

How Can I Remain Calm

"I have seen the future hold stars
in its hands not knowing
how plastic were dreams.
I didn’t want the sound of my
breaking heart resound such
that the solar system be proved
wrong but I have seen seamless
skies filled with light and wonder
to be only refractions from the jagged
shards of broken hearts."
 
I have seen the most deprived child dream. Dream to become an astronaut, nothing less. Her family eats one meal a day, sends her to a school to give alphabets to her dreams, and tells her in the night before she goes to sleep hungry that this is her life, there’s nothing beyond. But nothing can stop her from dreaming.
 
When I talk to her, her eyes have still not dimmed of their stars, and she speaks in broken English and tells me why she loves the school. It is her escape from reality, which she hopes will be the wormhole out of her black hole. Into another dimension, into another realm, into another world.
 
At what juncture of their lives, do the dreams of children start to break?
 
As I try in my own ways to find a trapdoor to get them out of the swelter of their hopeless basement lives, I know it’s a battle. I focus on one, and the faces of a multitude appear - with the largest eyes and the brightest dreams you can imagine. And I’m overwhelmed. And I lose focus. And I lose sight of the fact that change occurs one at a time. One dream at a time. One pair of bright eyes at a time.
 
In the infinity of inequities, what might feel like the Sisyphean rock, is actually the journey inside - because destinations are never reached through a single highway, but invariably transverse the small dirt tracks and country roads, where we drive through clouds of dust, hoping to find clear skies and pellucid streams.
 
As we work together, they holding on to their dreams and I seeking out roads from reality to find the highway to their dreams, I often find the enormity of inequity. But what in our lives, if ever, is easy. And I can only tell, about ageless truths which say - if you hold on long enough, if you badger the universe inexorably, if you keep battling bad fortune with your sweat and blood pouring out of you, something will change - maybe as a principle, maybe as luck, maybe as a mere dent. And I will tell them each battle is an opening, a ladder, a progression into a different future - and nothing ever goes waste.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on childhood and its dreams:
When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train
Difficult Child
Those Days of a Lost Summer
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: The Song Of Sirens by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9663-the-song-of-sirensLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/
 

The One Who Left (Herself Behind)

Life pauses when heartbreaks occur - and then it doesn’t. It’s the nature of the beast that nothing stops. But momentum is often not a substitute for reparation. Time sutures wounds, but the scar is insubstitutable - and it often glows when we are lonely. And as memories tumble in, we tumble down. What comes as a rush are gestures and flourishes, the quirky and the infinitesimal, and the forgotten becomes unforgettable. We remember nothing huge but remember her hugely. For the fact is that people remain as traces, as the fine dust which settles on furniture and can clog our system without us being aware of it.
 
Nostalgia, thus, is more insidious than presence.
 
What is it about those who depart or leave us? Is love forever an interruption? Is it’s value always attached to departures and heartbreak? Is it the universe’s way of redeeming our lives but also punishing us for our non-attention when it might be needed the most? Is love’s exposition - as we see it in our peripheral vision - the one true measure of its bounty? The tiny unasked for gestures, the tea, the pat, the hug, the laugh. The light which comes from silence, the comfort which comes from presence.
 
We are engulfed in the generosity of people who we unrelentingly take for granted. And whose grace, tragically, lies unrequited till it is just too late.
 
No wonder, nostalgia is finally tragedy couched in a wistful smile.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on leaving and staying -
A City Made of Our Sighs
Departures
Distances: Kaifi Azmi Ke Liye
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Rising Sun by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/86-rising-sunLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 
 

Infinite Tenderness

One of the abiding joys of growing old together is to remember insignificant minutiae - some which hurt like pebbles in a shoe and some which effortlessly made us remember why we were together.
 
To persevere in the complex dynamic of personal desires and conjoined plans is itself  a triumph. For if there’s one thing which relationships demand - after they’ve concretised the shaky foundations of love and blown apart its airy notions - is to see each other with new eyes after years of togetherness. To jettison back-stories, to wipe out bad behaviour, and to sit firmly on the conjoined hard earth, and look at the stardust (even if it’s a fistful) which got made together. Possibilities of persistence lie embedded in the ephemeral  and the insignificant, which we take the trouble to notice.
 
What gives us joy is not emblazoned in the skies. It comes unexpectedly as teardrops, and finds its way into us as a brook. We have to know how to lean in and how to linger, we have to know how to let the fragments pass us by - as is their won't - but not to lose the grace they invariably leave in their wake.
 
So much of what we are is predicated on things we don’t even notice - things which pass through the slivers of our thoughtlessness. It could be the cup of tea appearing before us every morning, it could be the slant of winter sun straining to reach out to our cold body, it could be the whiff of perfume which leaves us in restless anticipation. But these are the things which goldplate our brassy days and render magic where we think none is possible - if only we have the eyes to see it.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the tenderness of love -
I Love You
I Can Be Your Poem
Lovers In The Morning
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
 
Music: Paradise Of Love by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9358-paradise-of-loveLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
 
 
 
 

The Life & Times of a Song

I can never forget the Sharukh Khan movie, Main Hoon Na, when a celestial orchestra comes in and he automatically starts singing , as soon as he sees the gorgeous Sushmita Sen being her ethereal self in incredible sarees.  And I remember thinking -  this is a superb idea, and what wouldn’t I do to have this facility from god?! But, alas, as the heavens never listened in to my desires, I curate my own music for my variegated moods.
 
I play music to the beat of my breath. As I brush my teeth, as I move from one place to another, as I work on a desk. It’s soft, When I want to concentrate on other things; it’s loud, when I’m drifting through life’s unavoidable drudgery; and the decibels become ruthless, when I’m head banging with issues.
 
Every morning as I go out for my jog, I run into an orchestra of shrill joy! I doubt if anything ever receives the welcome which birds give to every dawn. It’s the universe’s urging to living beings to realise we are alive - which also means being alive to all possibilities.
 
When I was growing, and had a house in Tribeni in Bengal and had the dark river Hooghly winding by, every night at nine I was out in the verandah with my battery-operated radio, to hear a sampling of old and current Hindi songs. It was always curated for a dulcet mood, just right for the time before bed. I used to put the radio on the concrete balustrade, and then jump to sit alongside. And I knew in the rows of houses, demarcated by flower beds and vegetable patches, several of my friends were doing exactly what I was. And the river flowed by silently behind me, as both of us eased into the folding night.
 
In my school and college days, to discover a song which we fell in love with meant we should know the lyrics to hum along with. Remember, those  were pre-internet days, and there was nothing available on tap. But for a buck we used to get cyclostyled booklets, printed on the most abysmally cheap paper, with the lyrics of the songs of the particular movie we wanted . And we used to memorise the l to heart. And that’s  how I discovered songs to be  poetry set to music.
 
Today, for this poetry podcast, I cannot think my poems without a musical underpinning. If the musical notes and my poetry mesh well, I feel heady.  I love hearing Call Me By Your Name or Bringing The Storm Home, for example, because the music seems to have been created just for those poems. (I feel this! Do you too?)
 
I see musician friends create music the way I write poetry - as a calling, as a compulsion, as survival. And I can imagine the experience of writing musical notes and lyrics to be as gorgeously uplifting as finishing a poem, making its way into tunes, after working out of split arteries.
 
As I hear the incredible thump and vigour and magic of ‘Varaha Roopam’ from ‘Kantara’, as I sit on my desk and write this, I know music as transcendental - something from beyond, something to take us beyond.
 
The poems mentioned here, where I feel the music magically meshes into the words are -
Bringing The Storm Home
Call Me By Your Name
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Illustration - Giselle Dekel
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Odyssee by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/56-odysseeLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Music: The Way To Kataka by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11-the-way-to-katakaLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 
 

In the Winter of Our Relationships

NOTE - There are some recording audio disturbances in the first minute. Do excuse. 
 
What is it about conversations, that the ones most essential, are the ones we avoid the most?
 
With our anger or distress brimming over, are we afraid to show the power the other has over us to leave us with such vulnerability? Are we just frightened of the uncharted route the conversation might take? Are we afraid that however tenuous the fraught relationship, this was still one precious relationship, and why should we ruin it by cleaving it apart?
 
Or are we simply afraid to face our own truths, in the voices we still love or once loved dearly?
 
I’m personally afraid of strong reactions, of reactions which start at point a and then proceed to reach point z in a rush, annihilating everything in their wake. Conversations have often turned to slugging matches, and invariably resulted in arteries of our inner being being torn into shreds.
 
So many of my conversations have got completely emotionally wrought, where views are construed as accusations, where thoughts to resolve are taken as signs of intolerance, where everything ends with the words “You hate what I say and think and do. I will just withdraw into myself and not utter a word again.”
 
Conversations seeking reconciliation have ended in more distances.
 
What do we do to have conversations which bring us closer, to have distrust change into trust and our relationship to then build on that, to see honest feedback about the other’s characteristics, not as things we dislike but as the desire of a loved one to help the other.
 
I have realised that the depth of a relationship doesnt have a natural correlation with its width. Often the longest bonds are deep in habit and shallow in their richness. It is not a question of seeing each other’s best and worst and knowing each other inside out, but a simple question of respect. When you try to understand what the other means to say, when you try to know what makes the other do what they do, when you have faith enough to know that listening and absorbing are more difficult but more rewarding than merely reacting.
 
The persistence of a bond is a miracle, but seeking its depth with grace is a bigger one.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on collapsing relationships -
Favourite People (Who We Love & Leave)
The Door Is Unlocked. I Am Awake
Love's Night of the Long Knives
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Primeval [Electronic] by BanjopickerdeeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9988-primeval-electronicLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
 
 

And I Know These of You

One of the unending and unerring charms of knowing people is to know them as flawed people, whose very kinks make them the weird loveable irritating entities, who infuriate us but equally make us caring custodians of them.
 
The particularities of their weirdness is not meant for history books. It is often no more than the whimsy of habit, the caprice of reaction, or the peculiarity of a stand they take - nothing which takes away from who they are, nothing which requires a shovel to check their depths.
 
Ever so often, relationships get predicated on these quirks, which are no more, or less, than the ripples on a pond from a wind which decides to blow on it. If we reject the pond, we lose the treasures which lie in its depths.
 
To know, to understand, to adopt (and adapt to) each other’s quiddities is to have character and latitude, because it entails that we have the ability to look beyond the obvious brass to see the gold inside. And to realise that we are equally flawed and, in our peculiar ways, fun. If only someone could look beyond.
 
And to meet someone who gives us a glimpse into the gentle and the outrageous, the tangy and the plain, the obvious and the awesome, is to have encountered a whole universe in a person. To reject someone like this because the odd thing makes their heart go a-flutter, or they slurp soup in hideous ways, is the biggest injustice we can do to ourselves. Groan, growl, but persevere. There’s too much richness inside, which would require years to explore, and a lifetime to savour.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the lovable weirdness of people -
Dancing in the Rains
An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness
In the Darkness of Our Autobiographies
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Paradise Of Love by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9358-paradise-of-loveLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
Music: From my Heart With Love by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6267-from-my-heart-with-loveLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
 

Such are Such Days (or the days I make love to her)

Making love can be the tenderest experience of a day. Truth be told, the day should start and end with it - with nothing, nothing else to take away from its tangy exuberance. Those moments should be the day. But - we have to move on. There are things to be done. There are commitments to fulfil, a job to go to, groceries to be bought, a plumber to be contacted.
 
And suddenly such days get redefined, the Northern Lights lose their effulgence, not only by contrast, but because everything humdrum brings its drama into our senses. And we lose the one thing which should have been the only thing which was defining life that day.
 
What is it about us that, time and again, we lose sight of the ethereal and the beautiful. That we take lovemaking - this experience of life, death and rebirth - as a commonplace occurrence, as an ability available on tap - and hence lesser for it. Why do we human beings always diminish our own worlds and find ways to move on - when we should be hiding, lingering, treasuring. And not letting go of these moments where meaning is discerned, and everything else falls by the wayside.
 
Making love is our wildest and tenderest manifestation as sentient human beings. And for us to let an occasion pass or devolve into insignificance is nothing short of a tragedy. We speak too much of work-life balance and too little of work-sex balance. As one fully-alive philosopher once said - “Make love not war.” It might not solve the world’s problems, but it would definitely send us out into the world wishing for only good things to happen to it!
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on making love -
Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys
Finding Souls Between Their Legs
Why Don't You Make Love To Me Anymore?
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
 
Music: Sailing Through The Wide Sea by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6243-sailing-through-the-wide-seaLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles