Uncut Poetry

Memory Keeper

The bane of my life has been my memory. I forget. I forget prodigiously. Names, faces, conversations. Don’t even get me to started on dates and numbers, groan. In office, at home, I struggle with narrating incidents, at remembering places, things we saw and ate at specific places.
 
I had a girl who worked for me who, after a decade, still remembered the make of the shirt and the colour of socks I’d worn when I’d first interviewed her.
 
I guess there are bigger tragedies in life (people are still dying hungry!), but more than a patchy whitewash of remembrance, this creates a strange spiritual hole in me, which I carry as regret inside me.
 
But on the flip side, I have also forgotten grievances and regrets, I forget details of battles,  I’ve forgotten details of when friends had tried to pull fast ones on me, the pain some had left, the times I’d weeped into the night because words had hurt. I’d forgotten the details, soon I’d forgotten who’d said or done what.
 
Forgetfulness then is just another way for forgiveness. 
 
But there are deeper cuts.
 
I’ve forgotten details of the afternoon when my son was born, I’ve forgotten the look on my dad’s face (ecstatic I’m told) when I’d passed my first professional exams. Or my mother’s hug (unending, I’m told) when she held the first copy of my first book. I’ve forgotten words spoken softly to me, poems written for me, silences I’ve shared, the memories of hands held in crowded rooms, playing the fool, the hi jinks.
 
The entirety of what is gone is like a lost country of reminiscence.
 
And that hurts.
 
What then remains is an existential mystery, where I pathetically flounder inside the lost meadows of my own heart. My happiness itself seems ragged and pockmarked and I walk around within a permanent cave of dissatisfaction.
 
I wish sometime I would have a memory keeper, like the old royalty had - someone doing a record-keeping celestially or by being beside me.
 
This poem is then a seeking of a blessing,  a gently yearning desire to remember, and if that’s not possible, have someone I  love to remember for me.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the hauntings of memory:
Letting Go (a childhood song)
The Passing of Autumn
When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train
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 following music was used for this media project:
Music: Relaxation [instrumental, sounds of birds] by Edvardas SenFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10002-relaxation-instrumental-sounds-of-birdsLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Replay: Favourite People (Who We Love and Leave)

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it!
 
We are what we are. But we are also all the people who have arrived, moved on, stayed in our lives. People whose very touch may feel like a hug or an abandonment , a benediction or a scare. People we’ve loved  and fought with, people we’ve been secretive about, those we’ve cried for, those who’ve cried because of us. Just as relationships change, we are changeable too.
 
We are what we are. But we are also the slipstream of our old loves, the undercurrent of those who hurt us, the flotsam of those we wronged. We are also the pressed flowers of compliments, kept long after the fragrance has gone; we are the lees of the good times which make us remember springs and mists; we are the dregs of the nights of short tempers and long knives.
 
There is so much that is extraordinary in mundane lives, that one wonders what is evanescent and what stays. Would the quiet moment in a sun drop count? Would a poem which made me cry stay? Would the fleeting memory of a summer love still overwhelm after years?
 
How does memory work? Is it a crucible or a sieve? Does it hold what it does to keep it shimmering and intact for an insignificant day? Or does it let everything percolate down into a cesspool of oblivion, just keeping back those morsels which then find place in our souls.
 
Every one of us then is an amalgam of the dullness and magic of every person we meet, every feeling we feel, every hurt we give, every bruise we carry. We are never merely the wind and the woods, the street and the home - we are also the stars, the black holes, the pulsars  - we are the whole universe.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on resolving relationships  -
I Never Wanted Parts of You Which Were Easy
Capturing The Feeling 
Stories Which Survive
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

Miles Apart

I have always wondered about those who are in love and stay cities away from each other, and colleagues who are ready to stay apart for their careers. And I’m gobsmacked at how they make it happen. I’ve asked several of them about it, and the answer is always accompanied by a sigh and the answer “Life.” As if what determined their choices was something out of their control. Which was of course both true and not true.
 
But I was more interested in how they made it happen? How they kept their feelings of tenderness and care alive, how did they show their best and their worst to each other, how could they bridge the gap of physicality and touch  - all the ingredients which are so essential for a relationship to breathe and exist.
 
Can sulking have the same impact across zoom? How can kissing on phone substitute for the real thing? Without a body beside you, do you slowly start preferring your solitary conquering of the bed? Whom do you turn to when nightmares or worse crises hit you? Do you discover that an empty home has teeth and too many dark corners?
 
Does a conjoined love story finally find its own solitary life story?
 
It is easy to promise to each other that you are the start and the end of a tie, that when the moonbeam hits the pillow beside yours you are filled with an ache which just doesn’t go. Because distances erode. Because nothing can substitute the look of an eye, the deep hidden ring of a guffaw, the comfort and continuing thrill of a safe and familiar touch. We are finally physical people, who flower in presence - there is one sun in the sky to fill the world with its nourishment but one in our lives to fill us with the glow and nurture so essential for our souls.
 
However much our hearts are full of what we mean for each other, there’s a point where our yearning will ask a question - and with great chagrin we will discover that the answers are no longer clear.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the difficulties of relationships  -
Love (then) Is Also Patience
I Should Have Loved More Wisely (they say)
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 following music was used for this media project:Music: Memories by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8554-memoriesLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

One Quiet Woman is Much Like Another

Agency! Agency! That’s what people would say - women lack agency, that self-respect, which would allow them to accept no nonsense from their partners. Violence? Infidelity? These were lines which once crossed were unretractable, unforgivable.
 
But women do the unthinkable - they scream and shout, but they also forgive, they also stay on. And in that one decision seems to lie embodied their helplessness, as they sacrifice their intrinsic force, jettison their innate power, lay down their weaponry  without stepping into the fighting ring.
 
Or - is that true?
 
Are these the contradictions which women of our age display - strong in peacetime, weak in battle? Brilliant in picking out the diamonds, floundering in the play in the dirt? 
 
But here’s the catch - are they ironically being stronger for it?
 
Because when you step back, and look at people like you would look at stars - with both wonder and perspective - you realise that maybe, maybe, it all matters so little. Foibles are weaknesses, the one who is beautiful in body is often the weakest in spirit, that however gnarled the deed, human beings are also intrinsically gorgeous. That from a past fraught with conflict, there comes a realisation of the most soul-searching kind.  That in the universe of people, there are bound to be hurtling comets along with the stars, out of control, with strange inner workings, but who also might be gentle souls, whose generosity makes them leave their light behind, long after they are gone.
 
And through the pain of being taken for granted, of being cheated, of facing inequities, there is a dawn of realisations and reconciliations. Because people change. Because couched in the worst of us, often lies our most vulnerable parts which might be the reason for what we do. For when people crack, often it lets out the acid, venom and bile which was poisoning everything inside, by accumulating without any way to run out.
 
People change. There are multiple dawns inside them. And reincarnations. There’s so much which burns up and burns out. They are often destroyed before they re-emerge as the best versions of what they always were but did not - maybe could not - show.
 
Often there is no patience for this, often no scope, no width, no chance. Often the tidal waves of distress and pain of loved ones are enough to inundate whole lives. It’s a valid reaction. They are consumed by circumstances. And find their best selves compromised by the worst their partners can show.
 
Maybe, maybe, that is fine too.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on truth and untruths - 
The Truth of Lies
Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys
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 following music was used for this media project:Music: Atlantis by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8784-atlantisLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Compatriots of Trust

It’s so easy to say that trust is absolute. That what is trustworthy has to be fully so, or not at all. In the grey complexities of life, it’s both the toughest give and often an unreasonable ask.
 
Humans are fragile, they are also duplicitous. They lie, betray a trust of years, but are ironically ready to lay their lives on line when it comes to things they care for - and for those whose very trust they may have betrayed. Ensconced in the biggest tragedy of human nature often lies it’s gold mine. Because if there’s one truth which sustains our relationships and keeps things afloat is our changeability, our evolution. We learn, we relearn, as life goes on we rediscover priorities, within our wounds we find the kernel of redemption.
 
But the tragedy lies with the victims, the ones whose trust is betrayed. Because they lie injured, hurt, their belief in tatters, and their very core shaken. For them to go back to a more pristine time in such a relationship is asking for the impossible. How can such a person ever trust again? And that is where we have to steel ourselves.
 
When I stand in front of someone who has betrayed me, these are the two thoughts I hold inside. Will my trust be again forsaken? Can I be the same again with this person? Time will tell. But I will force myself to give it a shot. I will set up a personal ecosystem of  forgiveness and communication. And I have the company of author Maya Angelou, who in her inimitably gentle and forthright way said “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
 
But author Shannon L Adler said something very revealing years back which I haven’t forgotten  - “People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.”  I have held that thought as close to my heart as I have Jesus’s exhortation “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.”
 
Life's navigation through trust issues thus find its granular path to resolution.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on things which wound our souls  -
If I Commit Suicide
Finding Ways to Survive (Each Other)
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.
 
The following music was used for this media project:Music: Weightless by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9092-weightlessLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

If I Commit Suicide

If I commit suicide, it will be on a happy day. I would wrap the day as efficiently as I would wrap my life. Instructions clear, bank accounts safe, investments earmarked. I would make your favourite dish (stuffed aubergine with sun dried tomatoes), serve it with garlic bread, call in your favourite ice cream (Jamoca Almond Fudge) and have a glass of chianti on the side, as you look on in wonder. I would watch you with pleasure as the sun sets and fills you with its glow.
 
In the end, I would have attempted to give you what neither you nor I could give each other - care. Oh, I am not fussing the good things, which we performed with discipline - we would always end our days with our duty to each other completed to perfection.
 
But we would also be - polite but insidious, thoughtful but sarcastic: we would hollow each other, tired of figuring out each other’s metaphors.
 
For we had become proficient in knowing what hurt both of us, as we talked of making sense and losing our minds. We always thought we would find love right in front of each other, preordained, either as a beginning or as a finality, but instead we found storms brewing in living rooms and broken teacups in the backyards.
 
What is it about ordinary lives that it’s intimations of helplessness are far more severe than the defeat of a cherished dream?
 
Thought by thought, remark by remark, word by word, we were chipped, alienated, distanced. Until we were frightened of ourselves, doubtful of our very place in the universe, and felt undeserving of the sheltering skies or the unquestioning beauty of the world.
 
There’s so much I will miss. Stories of others where they’d found the meaning which had always eluded me, empty chairs left behind after the music was over and we overflowed, the slant of flower-laden boughs as they smiled and encroached into my walk, the careless spread of broken blossoms lying as inspiration, the warm glow of evenings without chatter or insistences.
 
But then it would all be overlaid with the intonations of familiar voices as they slowly entangled me as aural nooses. That’s when I knew it was time.
 
It would be appropriate that I would leave so serenely, as my entire life has been an exercise in evolving quietly in the backyards of my own despair, so much so that I would bleed and I myself would not know.
 
Who says suicide is drama where the protagonist doesn’t know the end? I know. I know you will break, you will be inconsolable - but not irreparable. You are strong and practical. And you will find solace in my note which would unequivocally say it was not your fault. That it was my choice, my choice alone. You will be massively inconvenienced but not irreconcilably. You will regret my guts to give in fatally and finally  to my anguish - after all, we had our own happy metre to figure out who made the other more melancholic.
 
I will probably play Maksim’s Hana’s Eyes,  as I would lie back and let my life leave me behind as a shell without any sense of presence. I was always a murmur, I will leave as a whisper.
 
I hope I will finally come home to me.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on death and its redemptions  -
When Breath Becomes Air
The Things We Become When We Leave
What Do I Leave Behind
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 following music was used for this media project:Music: Heart Love by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9259-heart-loveLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Sunset at Glengorm by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4437-sunset-at-glengormLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Finding Home in Broken Places

It’s one of the ironies of life that we spend more time searching for what’s wrong and flawed in those we love than on the pleasure their presence provides us. We are crotchety with praise. We could be pillows or doors for them, we could be their skies or their earth, their truth when they require it, their boost, their grace, their heft.  We forget they are breathing masses of soul, liable to be torn, likely to bleed. That they need to be embraced more often then turned away from.
 
And I wonder why are we like this?
 
Why are we hard, unrelenting, unkind, with those who deserve the best we can give, the finest of what makes us loveable and liveable. Is it something in the bones of our species that we hold ourselves back - see danger first, untruth, a selfish play, a ploy? Instead of belief and warmth, we first walk through the ugly and the unlovable. It’s almost as if we are going towards something which would put us into a path of perdition/engulf us with distrust, as if we expected it, almost wanted it. That is how strong our primordial instinct to be wary is. And we are ready to be hurt, we want to be proven that people are the worst versions of themselves, irrespective of how we might have been otherwise. Cynicism it seems is hardwired into our DNA.
 
And in that one tragic bent of thought, we lose the gold-flecking possibilities in our relationships.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems about the places we consider home  -
Finally Home
A Home As An Open Dream
Rediscovering Heaven
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 following music was used for this media project:Music: Medieval Love by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9366-medieval-loveLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Replay : Come When The Heat Of Noon Has Still Not Dimmed

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it!
 
"Come.
Come softly.
Come when the heat of noon has still not dimmed.
Come when the streets have stopped asking questions.
Come when the world has left its own care to us.
Come."
 
In anticipation lies a whole universe. In the waiting lies the shape, the sound, the colour, the contour of beauty.
 
In a world strewn with disappointments, of truths with no spine, and lies with fashionable make-up on, often the only solace lies in the wonder and the dream. And particularly in love, anticipation is often the beginning, the glue, and the end. Particularly, as we wait...
 
Because in that hiatus of restless emptiness, our heart and mind have conversations, nay, battles. There are questions asked, doubts raised, admonishments given. With great rapidity, joy and misery tumble around in a struggle for supremacy - there’s nothing real, but everything seems real. We dread excuses, we anticipate excuses, we destroy excuses.
 
In a span of few moments - minutes - which have the jaggedness  of hours, hearts are deciphered, conclusions are drawn, decisions are hewn into stony consciousness. But everything seems fragile.
 
And then the wait finishes. The nervousness melts. Questions are unquestioned. Answers no longer require stilts. There is light. There is air. Before it all ends, there is life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on conundrums of life  -
What Do I Leave Behind?
In The Darkness of Our Autobiographies
The Complex Algorithms of Giving
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 -
Heart Love by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/9259-heart-loveLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

I Fell In Love With You (Again) Beside The Tin of Sardines

People who are permanent fixtures in our lives still have that unique ability to make happiness spring upon us. It could be something big like a surprise party, or it could be something infinitesimally small like quietly following you to the mall so you could then have a quick happy moment over coffee. Loved ones know how to pull in disparate threads of our being, and weave an ordinary but extraordinary hour out of it, the way we gather the scattered beams of dusk and find a quiet sanctuary in it.
 
These slivers we steal from our daily routines are the ones which give meaning to life. Business, work, our daily responsibilities are what give us a means to live, to find a place in society which often defines us with what we do, but the private time we can steal to be with a loved one, the visit we make to an art gallery on the way back home, the poem we write as an overflow to a haunting of the night, the music we turn to when we seek answers - these are things which give meaning to our existence.
 
Time and again, whenever I have sat back and thought of the times which would probably flash through my mind in the last seconds of my existence, they are invariably the seemingly meaningless ones - standing at the window watching the setting sun reflect on the ponds beside my house, seeing a TikTok video together and laughing uncontrollably, reading something moving and sharing it immediately whilst glowing inside to have added a dollop of sunlight into someone’s ordinary day, talking quietly about how much we miss someone we’d loved with equal immensity, seeing a painting together and then turning to see tears in each other’s eyes. The memory of happiness on each others faces when we meet after a long parting, the sound of her voice saying “I will take care, don’t worry.”
 
People sometimes tell me they haven’t taken a holiday for years, and I silently wonder - haven’t they gone back to a loved one every night?
 
The things which enrich us are often the things we label as ‘boring’ - before we know what’s better.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems about people we are lucky to have in our lives   -
As we Meet Again At The End of The Day
This : One Grace
The Comfort of Her Being
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 following music was used for this media project:Music: Open Sea (Piano) by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9420-open-sea-pianoLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Relaxation 3 by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9629-relaxation-3License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

As We Meet Again At The End of The Day

Come evening, I am breathless to come home. Nearer I get, faster the knots in my shoulders ease.  I turn my car into the driveway, a few floors below you, and start to forget what I thought I would carry as an elongated wound of the day. 
 
I think we make too much of the world’s tribulations and deprivations, as if we are amidst the most dire times of all centuries put together, straining to find equilibrium again. We both carry enough balm in the history of our sharing, to self-heal.
 
I know you would have already unburdened yourself of your day, to be light for me. I enter the glow of our home. You are in your favourite chair, your feet tucked under yourself, your phone at a 45 degree angle as you read your book on it. You look up and give a small secret smile which only I am able to see. I know I’m inside a perfect moment.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the unexpected tenderness which ordinary days bring to us  -
Tenderness In The Pause
This : One Grace
Infinite Tenderness
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 following music was used for this media project:
Music: Cheezy Piano Medley by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4833-cheezy-piano-medleyLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license