Uncut Poetry

A Sense of Her Tenderness

I doubt if there’s anybody who tends to words with such infinite tenderness. For her, they are rounded pebbles on a seashore, sea waves washing over naked feet, the gentle curve of the sea at the horizon.
 
She holds words the way I hold her.
 
But strangely when I think of her, it is always with a silent smile, like a truth which leaves us speechless, the way the sun slips out as a guest does when tired of a party.
 
I sometimes feel there’s too little of her in this world, someone who feels the world as a good place and sees it with forgiveness. I ask her what her greatest fear is and she says “Losing you.” I tease her and ask “Not losing yourself?” She looks at me and says “You’re there to find me. That’s why I can’t lose you.”
 
Then she adds “But I know something. In this life of unfinished hope, I also wish us dirt, passion, devotion. I want to burrow so deep into the entrails of life that I almost drown in its depths - and just because it can’t stand me anymore it spits me right out.”
 
I listen to her silently. And know the reason I love her is because she helps me see the wonder in everything which I fear. And in her boldness and her gentle desire lie her insistences. As if Hania Rani had given breath to her song ‘Esja’, and her notes wanted to break out and dance on the thinnest ice possible or at a precipice which could crumble and break.
 
And as we sit in the winter sun, our fingers intertwined, I realise how much she wanted to dance, with her words, with her life, with her being, with me. If life could be a music track, she would start with a hymn, let rap take over and then go out in a blaze of the most improvised jazz adventure possible!
 
And as I hold onto to her gentleness, I know her to be steel.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the serenity which comes with love -
Why We Should be Happy with Berry Jam of Table Edges
Come When The Heat of Noon Has Still Not Dimmed
I Fell In Love With You (Again) Beside the Tin of Sardines
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 -
Traveling OVer The Clouds by Musiclfiles

The Woman You See

We as persons are so much of the people who inhabit our lives. Not only by way of how they are connected to us and change the trajectory of our lives, but what they mean to us by way of how our souls evolve. But beyond it all is their influence on our minds and hearts to define to us what we are.
 
Sometimes we are unsure of our own abilities to achieve, to fulfil, to create. And though we might be brimming  with every talent, we might be an uncertain wreck inside, unable to comprehend the intensity of our own possibilities.
 
And then someone in our life comes by and refuses to accept our limitations.
 
They keep seeing beyond, they keep seeking more, they keep insisting that we are much more, that we are needlessly imprisoning ourselves in a low opinion of ourselves, and we can be beyond everything we can comprehend.
 
I remember a Japanese story where a girl considered plain by the whole world and jeered at whenever she came out of her house, is wooed by the most eligible man in the village, and he proposes with a record number of buffaloes, which nobody in the village could even comprehend. And soon enough the girl grows into becoming the beauty which her beau saw inside her.
 
Of course the story is allegorical, but it’s truth is not.
 
We grow into our best selves when someone refuses to believe that we are anything less.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love & trust -
The Importance of Faith in Love
I Can Be Your Poem
Her Grace without Notice
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 -
Crescendiocity by Alexander Nakarada

How a Poem Finds Itself

We are never as strong as we feel we are. What’s ostensible, what’s shown, matters little. As we walk, with our eyes wide open, sometimes in wonder, often in fear, we need someone beside us to interpret the world.
 
A conversation is the blood flow of a love story.
 
To be generous enough to listen without interpretation, to hear without interruption, is a gift we give our loved ones. Because we already trust them. And everything we share with them is only an expansion of the shared world. There’s nothing good or bad, we are not judges, we are partners, and when we choose to let the other know everything, we let them into the fragility of our beings. There’s first fear, a testing out, as it were, for nobody wants to be broken by unkind hands. Then there’s unabashed laughter. Tears come in the end. Because that’s when dams burst, and you don’t mind, because you know there is someone ready to catch every teardrop, so that the sorrow doesn’t go unacknowledged or wasted.
 
I think tenderness as a vital ingredient of love is often underestimated.
 
Knowing how the trajectory of our lives changes due to the entry of some people in our lives, we need a safe zone for our fears and vulnerabilities. Often we find it immediately, often we need to search on, often never.
 
Much more then the highs and the rush of dopamine which love gives, what finally sustains it is the generosity we accord each other as a place of protection. Where we know we can say anything without being judged, where we can be goofy without a cantankerous response. Or be afforded a strong attempt to understand even on disapproval of what we’ve revealed of ourselves.
 
Else then love is a snail out in a tentative dawn, which senses danger and withdraws within its shell, and finds it difficult to emerge again.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on poems themselves -
The Life & Times of a Song
Stopping by a Cafe to Drink a Poem
I Don't Think Poetry Will Save Us. But Yet, and Yet....
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: When Life Is Beautiful by KALAKFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11355-when-life-is-beautifulLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Your Body is a Truth

Deep inside, we all seek grounding.
 
In the complex hullabaloo of desires, facades and one-upmanship, within sudden dollops of searing clarity, we search for the timbre of our being and realise the glitzy syncretic synthetic fabric it is made of. And the disquiet emerges.
 
If the rot in our beings is not all-pervasive, the disquiet is a beginning to our conscience wanting redemption. We want to return to a point where we’d not lost our innocence though the ways of the world might have brought both wisdom and cynicism in its wake.
 
And this shows up in all our relationships. In the way we confess to love, in the way we make love. There are truths waiting to be revealed, there are truths wanting to be told. At our most elemental state, we seek the danger of vulnerability, to come clean with our soul. We are ready to lose much for a glimpse of that one clouded truth.
 
As we drift back into the other world of our lives, we then carry the revelation inside. We already know it’s power, we know it’s ability to cleanse, but we also know it’s revelatory power. And we decide, through its possibilities of disruption, to let’s it’s coruscating effulgence to emerge, and in one stroke bring us back to that state where we might stand damaged but we are cleansed. We are one with ourselves.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the loneliness of a craving body -
Flutter
Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys
An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness
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: Romantic Interlude [Full version] by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10421-romantic-interlude-full-versionLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: Time Of Mourning by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9646-time-of-mourningLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

What Stretches in Front

As 2023 turns its back with a sigh, we walk into a brand new year.
 
Hope - with all its bewitching deceptions - will make us wish for our best selves, to slough off the undesirable and ugly, and emerge fresh and wet, with unfazed optimism to conquer the world. But soon enough, we will know that, as always, all we need to do is to conquer ourselves.
 
And I sit down and make a list of what I want to leave behind in the old year and another list of what I want of the new year. And then I realise. - the new year wants nothing of me.
 
It’s a sobering thought.
 
And forces me to think of everyone in my life who loves me unquestionably, and expects nothing but an ear to listen as we sip our tea together, and a hand to hold as we go out into the world.
 
Hence my only wish for myself - and for everyone in this world - is that we honour time and we create space. For we have to both hurry in this life and not forget to savour the moment. Because we need to both honour our ambition and be beside those who need us beside them.
 
May we all be unafraid to do what we love, and find peace in the torn and tattered bounty of what we are.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ephemeral nature of time -
Letting go (because I am alive)
Memory Keeper
Falling Into a New Year
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: Moments by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11940-momentsLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Letting Go (because I’m alive)

One of the incredible things which are little talked about, but one which I notice ever so often around me, is how the loss of love often frees a person in magical ways.
 
I tell myself - it can’t be love if it’s absence gives the feeling of liberation. But I also know how life’s bounty comes in contrarian ways. There is life within love, but there could well be revelry beyond.
 
I know of at least two ladies, who have had solid and steady and happy married lives, but after the demise of their respective husbands, have rediscovered life in a million ways - the freedom to travel as they wished, of going out when they wanted, of dressing up as they wished. It was almost as if we were seeing a different persona emerging from a cocoon we did not even know existed.
 
The end of the world is never nigh. However deep the depths of our sorrow. It’s the simple truth of living. Nothing destroys us if we don’t allow it to - in fact within the seeds of the worst resides the incandescence of the best.
 
Because that is what life demands of us, to discover or (as in this case) rediscover the basic premise of living  -  to be both wild and wise.
 
Wisdom allows us to bear, forbear, adjust to, compromise with, until something breaks loose. And that could be with or without the person you love. If we are open to possibilities, there is nothing which will stop us from the rediscovery of the gorgeous in the mundane, of the magnificent beyond the obvious.
 
I hold on to love with my dear life, but I keep knocking out the walls of what’s routine, the dreary, the drab, to ensure that in this one life of mine, I do not lose out on seeing the sunrise when it needs to be seen just because someone wants me to sleep late - not just one day, but day after day.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the transience of of love -
The Things We Become When We Leave
Loneliness (oh these rains)
I Will Leave The Last Line For You To Fill
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: Garten Eden by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/477-garten-edenLicensed under
CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: Mystical Autumn by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9755-mystical-autumnLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Replay - The Complexity of Simple Lives

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed with the hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.
 
An ordinary life is so complex. In its unending inevitabilities and Gordian knots it is both an unravelling puzzle and an enduring mystery. To mesh our life’s experiences with those who we love, is itself a quotidian Everest to be conquered. And we slip, and we fail, and we try valiantly and fail miserably. And then we pick ourselves up and start all over again, and then we fail again. And then we find a rhythm and we lose it. Recriminations and regrets galore come into the equation, and we again seek balance and again find ourselves in the deep end.
 
What is it about ordinary lives? Why does nothing find an equilibrium? And why, when it seems tranquil, it sinks in a morass of habit.
 
What is a complete life, and how does a couple find it? Does it exist in sacrifice and adjustment or does it reside in the brave singularity of lives which happen to find togetherness.
 
As love stops  being a wandering minstrel and works towards finding tranquility in the domestic, the lines of everything gets blurred and within its confined confusion lies the truth of two fully alive people living half lives.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of ordinary lives  -
A Home as an Open Dream
Extraordinary Life
The Ageing of Love
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 -
Your name by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/13-your-nameLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Changing Your Address (on marrying & moving homes)

My son got married a few days back to his sweetheart. Both of them make an adorable couple.
 
As always I’m in awe of people in love who decide to marry each other. I know the atavistic urges and the reasons why we seek to gravitate towards a permanence in our deepest relationships, but I also know how the shelters of each other’s arms is ever so often open to storms and thunder. Roofs leak, houses get blown away. The reason why we marry could also be the reason we suffer.
 
But from time immemorial, marriage has been found to be a risk worth taking. Embedded in its imperfections, it’s scars, it’s lesions, are it’s flights.
 
But then, love always starts as an adventure, but finally seeks rest. And that takes time. And patience.
 
Like everything good, there is much which needs to be transversed, to be taken cognisance of - and forgotten. I sometimes feel sagas of love would do better with poor memories.
 
Do relationships get better with time? Do they eventually find plateaus of calm? What is the mystery of the alchemy which makes two different people find their peace together?
 
For me it’s - space and an ear.
 
Whatever is a couple’s decision on the most minute of things, it has to transverse a conversation, which has more listening then talking. We should never have a problem with a differing view - we grow as persons because of people who do not agree with us, but who have listened deeply and are also ready to change because of us.
 
Life is a cornucopia of choices. To restrict it to only our own world view is to asphyxiate (as fix see eyt) our very soul. To love a person is to love their differences, to let them enlarge our worlds, to help let us find meaning in every part of our separateness.
 
That’s why, whenever I wish for love I wish for disparities (for the adventure) and kindness (for the good sleep). I doubt if love would demand any other generosity than this.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the transitions of love:
The One Who Left (herself behind)
I Love You
The Importance of Faith in Love
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.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
Music: True Summer Love by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9369-true-summer-loveLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: End Of Summer by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6633-end-of-summerLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Birthday Musings of an Ageing Man

So much of old age - like life itself - is of acceptance.
 
I saw a young girl, without fear or preconception,  pet a dog which had just snapped at me. She simply found the love inside her and in some mysterious manner it transmitted to the dog. And I wondered if this wasn’t exactly what life was - like that instinctive dog, which subconsciously knew the deepest instinct of love or indifference.
 
And so much of how we age - happily forgetful or bitterly reminiscing - is how we’ve lived. We often forget that every breath given is a gift bequeathed to us. As also what we will be as we age. We could be dissolute but generous, we could be self focused but harmless, we could think first of ourselves but always with a good thought for others. And when we reach a genial age, we will have the legacy of smiles in our bag of memories and a rucksack of goodwill to help us get over the rocky terrain which old age invariably brings.
 
Grace is my favourite word. And when I see it in people, in their demeanour, thought or behaviour, I give into that generosity. Because that is what it is - the ability to maintain dignity and care and understanding in both good and bad times and in front of good and bad people. Because grace leaves levity in its wake.
 
For to be old - and then to pass on - and having left behind a space of serenity, is to have succeeded in life and to have shown death how exits should be made.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the tired grace of growing old
A Cynical Old Man Acknowledges His Birthday Very Grudgingly
Ruins Have Permanent Flames
The Ageing of Love
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.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
New Sky by Rafael Krux
Cold and Frightened by Steven O'Brien

Replay - The Things We Become When We Leave

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed with the hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.
 
"I have gone, love,
now let me go."
 
We are all changeable creatures. 50 billion of our cells die every day, physically we are not the same today as we were yesterday. And that irrefutable truth seeps into the very core of our beings. Every day, we change as persons too - imperceptibly, almost surreptitiously: the people we meet, the experiences we stumble into, what our senses see, what scares  our heart. If our beings revel in the scars and bleed in the unexpected, we are already what we were not.
 
And we start looking at everything and everyone with new eyes.
 
And often the direction of our life changes, the people we thought were inseparable to the importance of our lives, now look like milestones - without the love dimming, without the care diminishing, we know we have different directions to take. And we drift.
 
We do not break off relationships only out of bitterness or regret. Sometimes we also recognise that we have moved on, and moved in different directions. And we know it’s time to part, and we know the hurt we will leave behind. We know explanations might sound lame, and to say “I love you” whilst leaving, is contrarian and often unexplainable.
 
But our heart knows the truth - it often says that there are bigger issues than love, when our very existence is at stake, when the space we need to find for ourselves needs to be unencumbered, when what we stand for or seek, needs solitude because we’ve already crowded it with personalities and our own personas which require either recognition or elimination.
 
We do not leave anybody - we are only in search of a new self. And to find a new nook which says -“Stay”.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on departures -
That Gorgeous Evening When You Left
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 -
Evacuation by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8118-evacuationLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license