Uncut Poetry

Of Love (& other bouts of sadness)

I’ve been thinking these past few days of sanctuaries - of how we take some for granted, how we crave for some. Sometimes both at the same time. I also think of how homes are most often our sanctuaries - but so are memories, so are our desires, as also our regrets. We regret chances we got and didn’t hold onto - we console ourselves that the chances at least stopped by at our doorstep.
 
Of course, the shelter of first choice, and last resort, is often a person. Someone who listens, doesn’t spoil things with advice, has a broad shoulder to put our hard head on, and arms wide enough to embrace our biggest sadnesses. More than the person we love, often it’s the person who is the least judgemental that we turn to.
 
Often mere presence helps, sometimes it’s just a coffee and a slow moving conversation discussing trifles and insignificances. But often, there is just no substitute for the physical presence of a person. I have felt real hurt inside in the region of my arms and chest, hurt with the desire to have someone sink there, to hold onto someone, to feel familiar texture of skin on my skin. To deeply inhale a familiar scent, a body odour which resides in every layer of my memory.
 
One feels bereft without this simple physicality and the sadness is insurmountable. We realize, at such times, how much we are finally beings invariably left by the creator in the care of other beings. However much we might reject their company or shun them because of their irritations, their presence is often the difference between maintaining our sanity and losing it. In however infinitesimal degree it might be.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the space loves seeks to grow:
What I Miss is the Tender Moment
Living in a World Deficient in Hugs
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.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
Music: Wide Worlds by Tim KuligFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10273-wide-worldsLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Tragedy of the Other

Like almost every human being in this world, I am perforce political. The fact that I rarely let that side of me seep into my art, hasn’t stopped me from seeing, reading, feeling, reacting. And the singular skew of the narrative and the increasing sharpness of tone of response, and the frightening cohesion of ideologues is disturbing.
 
It’s a tragedy of our times that time and again we face a world where human beings are razed into dust - and we are asked to be selectively outraged. One foetus torn out of a mother’s womb is less talked about then the bombed-out hospital full of children which is cynically being used to shelter terrorists.
 
I read, I observe, academically, artistically, with growing dismay. I can see how everything is distorted, where bastions of free media are compromised, and ideology masquerades as unbiased thinking, mendacity struts as editorial slant.
 
The manipulation of images and stories, the surging protests, the singular pointedness of agony without referencing reasons, are not so much changing my world as making it progressively clear how we are puppets in the industry of the proselyte.
 
I see good friends, well-meaning chums, whose centrist belief of live-and-let-live, has conjoined with mine, and we have been similarly outraged at extremities of all kinds. Until we started noticing the growing mendacity of feed, the slow poisoning of the story-telling, as it were. And the horrors of both the right and left paled in front of the terror of the liberal. The facade of civilisation and the plum accents of those who stood cemented in medieval thought was flooding both news and the timelines.
 
The thinker Naval Ravikant wrote in his almanack “Any belief you took in a package … is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles. I try not to have too much I’ve pre-decided. I think creating identities and labels locks you in and keeps you from seeing the truth.” For good measure he added “ To be honest, speak without identity.”
 
And as the world was beset with one calamitous flagration after another, it was clear how truth was always the first victim in the tragedy. Newspapers had vitriolic opinion pieces masquerading as front page news items, prominent news channels had clear religious agendas behind their reputation of credibility, poets tore their hearts out only when deaths occurred on one side of the border.
 
All this was open secret for those who studied, observed, knew. What’s new is how ruthlessly the present tragedy has revealed the hypocrisies of peddlers.  The fangs have been revealed for the whole world to see. But are we learning? Go back to what Naval had said. We are all so intricately tied with our ideologies and beliefs that to now abandon them is to lose the core of what we stood for. We would be ‘othered’ in the very society which has given us our identity. So we keep quiet. And the overwhelming lie of the aggressor grows and fills the empty space.
 
I write this as my attempt to reclaim that lost space inside me. I want to take a stand for myself. To delve deeper into the history and culture and devilish agenda  to understand the cynicism of the narrative disguised as a torn body or a dulcet poem.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the futility of wars and ideologies:
No Revolution is Complete Without a Ruined Soul
For Anyone Who Bleeds
Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh
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: Clockwork Lullaby by Otis GallowayFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10482-clockwork-lullabyLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Mornings (as entry points to life)

Mornings are such fabulous entry points. This time of dark departures and silent welcomes. Something which is sheltered tenderly through the night is brought out, a chance to wipe every falling tear, the time to see if blossoms can blossom to wipe the night’s sorrow, when the pleasure of the view far surpasses the depth of a nightmare. 
 
I often wake up feeling stale, helplessly hoping for streaks of light, and step out into the uncertain dawn, which wonders about its status, but still moves ahead with its uncertainties. And that gives confidence, that emerging of an old world as new. And I step out naked to all feelings, open to change, open to jettison the old, to make way for acts of strange bravery.
 
There’s this tingling, as the skies find ways to give into colour, just as a singer says “this is the naked truth, this is the light”. And you wonder if this is a start or a break, for truths have to be given their due in ways you will never realize. Pulchritude has a price, you think, but you postpone the thought, as there is too much to absorb - thinking can be done later. And you realize there is only one place to go - forward.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the grace of mornings:
Lovers in the Morning
A Morning Ramble on How Love is Rediscovered at the Bottom of Rubble
Sipping Tea in a Rumi 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.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
 
Music: Tranquil Fields Peaceful by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/5769-tranquil-fields-peacefulLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: Sunny Morning by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7813-sunny-morningLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Love as a Snack

As the years have gone by, I must confess life has confused more than clarified. Possibly life is a tease, urging me to study the deeper truths of our being, meditate on possibilities, and find what sustains, what doesn’t.
 
And till that happens, I stay in the splendid anagrams of my confusions. And first up on that is - love. Having a life full of seeing it, reading of it, passing through it, being abandoned by it, seeing it implode around me, knowing it to be the ash it is, love is a puzzle, to say the least.
 
I have lost the definition of what it is. I have seen what people who are in it do, I have seen it’s destructive power, I have seen it as obsession,  I have read, seen, experienced the art created for it by people who are in it or without.
 
I have seen it being called out as permanent, life-affirming, what makes the world go around. But when I examine it, I see it more as courtesy, as priority; and as time goes by, as duty, as habit.
 
Love grows into strange synonyms.
 
And I muse, sometimes dismayed, more often merely cynical, wondering if love wasn't just an invention for propagation, to give emotion to procreation, a feel-good, an entertainment, a  melodramatic journey to pain through joy.
 
Beyond the hyperbole of spiritual bliss (which is too beatific to be true), and the purple prose of the besotted  (which is too pink for good health), I only see forbearance of the patient, life as a means to navigate relationships, find balance in confusion, and awareness in illusion.
 
Lovers are all purveyors and creators, ready for fiction - and forever eager to believe their own tales.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love's myriad sides:
Living in a World Deficient in Hugs
I Will Leave The Last Line For You To Fill
Of Rain-Engulfed Rooms and Lovers In Spate
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: Rising Sun by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/86-rising-sunLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

What I Miss is The Tender Moment

I keep returning to the themes of missing out on the small things which make us feel human, nay, which reward us because we are human. And how their absence is often the biggest tragedy of our lives.
 
Often the absence is because of unawareness; but when we yearn for them, search for them, the tangibility of tragedy is like physical pain. Our home then becomes just an address, often the one we love becomes just a habit. And roiled in the battles of the day, we lose out on the tender moment.
 
The unasked for hug, tracing shadows on her dimpled back, searching for each other’s hands when your favourite song plays, to be aware of each other’s presence wherever you might be in a crowded room,  the poems you read together, the time the tears flow and you know you’ve crossed the line, knowing your silences to be pauses to heal, the non-judgemental indulgence, the forgiveness for being our worst selves at the end of a gruelling day.
 
Our individual recognitions coming out of us or to us as small prayers, and the entirety of our lives suddenly surrounded with an illimitable grace, brighter than light, softer than dawn, the minutiae becoming bigger than the biggest triumph we can conceive of in our lives.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the grace and beauty of small things:
This: One Grace
One Morning, The Ants
Mother's Rambling Lessons On Life Imparted in Morning Walks in My Childhood
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: Relaxing Guitar by LironFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7722-relaxing-guitarLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Loneliness (oh these rains)

The more I live the more I understand - and appreciate - the import of interconnectedness and transience of all things.
 
The rains come, and so does a gnawing feeling seeking something undefinable; love comes with its fullness, and we wait for the infinitesimal more; the lane we stay is alive with sandwich cafés and chairs on pavements and we sit alone, worse, feeling alone; the temple bells and the sound of om carries to us and we think of our place in the world. The universe carries us in its arms into its enveloping warmth, and we don’t recognise the gift.
 
And in the flood of disappointments, we conjure love as mere presence, failing to recognise that it is first a feeling, and then touch. We become prisoners of our own unending emptiness, without first immersing ourselves in what we have already been gifted.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how rains and storms come into our lives:
Of Rain-Engulfed Rooms and Lovers in Spate
Dancing in the Rains
Waiting for a Storm
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: Lonely Fish by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4655-lonely-fishLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Darkness

Of course, relationships have rules. The fact that we are animals plus, a more evolved species, only recognizes the fact that humans are feeling, trusting, hurting beings. And in the depth of that reality lies the fact of what makes us much more than merely sentient.
 
Alas, there are also transient feelings which gatecrash this party of lifelong-commitments. Because beneath the veneer of manicured gardens are also wild roses desperate to break free. Because relationships are intrinsically a riddle of staying tied and breaking free, of committing and struggling to keep commitments, of staying steady to a promise and getting drunk to a vision. Is it the challenge of a temptation or the end of a search? Is it a conflict you are searching for, or an existential crisis our heart is seeking to resolve? We are lucky if our promise to ourselves, to a loved one, also brings in a concomitant connect which evolves, is elastic to change, sensitive to conflict, kind to intransigence.
 
There’s always the reality of returning home. Or the wreckage we leave in the wake of our uncertain hearts. In a world where nothing is fixed, we seem like perpetrators, but often are no more than victims.
 
In a world of  shifting loyalties and drifting moral codes, of seeking ways to fill the holes in our souls, of deciding to live in half-lights of incomplete satisfaction, in places of permanent twilight under the summer noon, we find the best ways to find love and life.  We are lucky if we  get it on first strike, or we remain seekers - whether we finally drift or not.
 
In a relationship crumbing to touch, irrespective of what we do with our body, we have already drifted  - our hearts have found nooks to rest, our thoughts have found spaces to withdraw, for a promise made we have already compromised with the only life we have been bestowed.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on transience and drift:
Favourite People (who we love and leave)
Letting Go (A Childhood Song)
No Revolution is Complete Without a Ruined Soul
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: Rookie by Phat SoundsFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11661-rookieLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Balancing Beginnings

Unrevealed to us, the universe is working for us. Like master chefs will have you bite into something bitter before bringing in a sweet savoury, life will spin out the worst  - only to balance it out in mysterious ways.
 
It’s my firm belief that if we are open with all our senses  to our inner beings and the world outside, we will capture the subtle genuflection of the universe’s grace. It could be the sudden advent of an astringent odour from childhood, it could be the perfect amalgam of rain and a heart-aching tune coming out from a window, it could be the touch of a hand as you feel an evening’s loneliness grow in you, it could be a flower crumbling and falling in front of your eyes almost crying “Witness me”.
 
And we see this, and we absorb it all, and immediately put it into a context as minutiae which gives us intimations of the universe. And we are not alone, with our grief, our struggle, our desires, our disappointments. We are no longer alone. Our hidden sorrow is counterbalanced by a secret smile, our emptiness is filled by the fullness of someone’s joy bursting to fill the world.
 
Even in the worst of the times, we need to have the explorer mind, because riches abound in the world, and are often found at the precipice of  arduousness and the inflection point of ardor. The universe balances everything out.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how life often means stopping to experience it:
This: One Grace
One Morning, the Ants
A Garden of Departures
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: Shadows Of Autumn [Full version] by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11652-shadows-of-autumn-full-versionLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Why We Should be Happy With Berry Jam on Table Edges

I see young people together, in love, in lust, lost, planning an event, a day or a life, and I see impatience, I see the desire for appropriation. I see conclusions rather than drifting coffee aroma, I see hard closed city alleys rather than coastlines lazily disappearing into beautiful haze. I see uncomfortable hiatuses, wounded silences, I see complaints where there should be enquiries. I see good times as planned methods instead of uncapped madnesses.
 
My heart breaks to see ordinariness being discounted so deeply. Nobody likes a small life, but nobody can ignite the heart without seeing light glisten in a raindrop. And why is it so difficult to let life unfold in its uncomplicated munificence instead of trying to continually force its hand? There’s only so much that the heart or a life can manufacture, as the machinery will be wrenched and what will come out will maim.
 
Let each other be free, I say, let the other fail. In the frailty will lie the kernel of the strength of what both of you will mean to each other. Beyond pretense, beyond the need for proof, beyond the desire to make a point.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how small things can be so big in our lives:
Living in a World Deficient in Hugs
My Mother is Full of Water and Ready for Sonography
One Morning, The Ants
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: Summer Morning [Full version] by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11262-summer-morning-full-versionLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
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
 

Across The Universe

I remember the story of a bunch of strangers taking shelter under a tree on a stormy night. They could see bolts of lightning falling all around and charring trees. They looked around and saw that they were all high caste Brahmins except for one poor simpering low caste Sudra, who could suddenly see all eyes on him. One particularly arrogant Brahmin pointed his finger at him and said “He is the one who will bring us bad fortune!” And in a flash he was thrown out into the storm, above all entreaties. The poor man ran into the forest, soaked to the skin, looking for some other shelter. And right then, a bolt of lightning fell on that tree and all the high caste Brahmins were charred to death. It was actually the Sudra’s presence which was protecting them all.
 
I remember this story every time my loved one and I have a tiff. The commonness of daily life chips away at the magic of bonds inexorably. Plus life extends far beyond our most primary relationships: the hours of a day are appurtenant to the time we spend with them. There is so much more which goes on in our lives over and above one relationship. And we need to keep floating through those also, so we come out of them richer, unscathed, protected.
 
And in the ups and downs of my trajectory in the world, I know I’m protected because of her. How do I know? I know it in my bones. I know it because of the purity she brings into us - her unrelenting unapologetic unstinting stand beside me, the unblemished crystal of presence, the absoluteness of her continuing forgiveness. She is nature’s inexorability -  just as the sun finds its way every morning, just the way a bud bursts in spite of not being noticed - in spite of everything, she never leaves my side when it matters. She is inexhaustible - when I’m about to give up she somehow transfers her energy, her very being to me, and is luminescent in spite of being empty.
So much of our lives needs to be spent in utter gratefulness - the inexhaustible supply of grace which we encounter, is enough to put us forever into the universe’s debt.
 
But nature  has simplified it for us - we just need to look out for that one magical person - and know where our universe resides.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems about those who are just that much more special:
I Fell In Love With You (Again) Beside The Tin of Sardines
As We Meet Again At The End of The Day
Gather Me
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: Adventure by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6092-adventureLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license