Uncut Poetry

In the Softest Sunshine of Winter

"I'd think
the time for recrimination is long
past it's witching hour.
Your hand is still a stiff board
when I reach out to it,
and your body is still your own
when I embrace it.
You've been an icicle
all through summer,
but the time for bonfires is in -
you have to let your long limbs
find their way around me again."
 
The ebb and flow of love, the turning away and the turning towards its glow, the little angers, the tiny bursts of disappointments - love's hurts which linger as love-bites, it's fast-changing seasons which invariably segue into its winter glow - love should always land in soft places, however hard the terrain it transverses.
 
Because you can't give up on love. You have to be sensitive to its changing moods. And you have to fall in love again and again and again with the same person. Because you are also a changeable being, and possibly becoming unlovable.
 
But when you open yourselves up to the adventures of each other, of traversing through each other's changing landscapes, you realize that love doesn't want constancy, it seeks renewal, resurrection, reinvention. In one person lies the love of a multitude. You only need to recognize that. And work towards the greatest travel adventure of your life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the variegated colors of love -
The Final Goodbye (or Why Lovers Decide to Die Together)
These Darned Long Distance Relationships
Why Don't You Make Love to Me Anymore?
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Reaching The Sky  [Long Version] by Alexander NakaradaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6222-reaching-the-sky--long-versionLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Door is Unlocked. I am Awake.

Endings are ruthless. They make you forget every bit of acid existing in relationships in a moment. Regret pours in like the flood of a broken dam. But when the last line has been crossed, when the artery is cut to kill, the path reaches a crevasse - another step is a step into the valley of death.
 
Deep inside all lovers know when that point has been reached. But hope - that great harbinger of false dawns - persists. It attempts to give color to what is irrevocably grey. And makes the one who been walked out from, to wait, to think, of the strands of gold in the bushels of weed.
 
But nothing works.
 
Time slowly covers the one who waits in a thin coverlet of regret which, in time,  becomes a thick blanket of bitterness. There's no "I'm glad you were here" which remains. It's only "Why did you even come into my life."
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of hope and regret -
A City Made of Our Sighs
Departures
Love (After The Stories Are Told)
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
New Beginning  by Rafael KruxLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/5692-new-beginning-License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh

"Somewhere in the air, something whizzed past. 
I looked up to see Daar ji's kurta turn into 
a gorgeous crimson flower,
with a small black pinpoint center."
 
This poem is about what happens when a young child goes to Jallianwala Bagh with his grandfather on that fateful day in 1919.
 
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on 13 April 1919. A large but peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab to celebrate the important Hindu and Sikh festival of Baisakhi, and peacefully protest the arrest of two national leaders, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew.
 
In response to the public gathering, the British Brigadier-General R. E. H. Dyer surrounded the Bagh with his soldiers. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, he ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was exhausted Estimates of those killed run into 1000s with over 1,200 other people injured.
 
Apart from the many deaths directly from the shooting, a number of people died of crushing in the stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting.  120 bodies were removed from the well. The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew was declared, and more who had been injured then died during the night.
 
The level of casual brutality, and lack of any accountability, stunned the entire nation. The ineffective inquiry, together with the initial accolades for Dyer, fuelled great widespread anger against the British among the Indian populace, leading to the non-cooperation movement of 1920–22.  Some historians consider the episode a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India.
 
Britain never formally apologized for the massacre but expressed "regret" in 2019.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of tragedies we all face in our lives - 
The Final Goodbye (or Why Lovers Decide to Die Together)
Chemo: As I Battle Myself
Love's Night of the Long Knives
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
On Fire by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5147-on-fireLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

The Final Good-bye (or Why Lovers Decide to Die Together)

"Keep looking at me as we die,
let your look be in my final sigh,
we've been compatriots of beginnings 
of which we thought there was no end -
maybe, we'll be every love's destiny,
a passing on, when there's no real reason why,
except
tiredness, tiredness, tiredness."
 
Procreation is atavistic. But what about death wish? Not that point where a soul tethers at the edge of depression, but the one where you want to end things because there's nothing left beyond except pain, when life becomes a litany of diminishing returns. When looking back is the only pleasure left. And the future can't possibly hold anything more to revel in.
 
Life comes time-stamped for its beginning.  But why not for it's end too?  That point when wishes are empty of their mojo. When bodies rediscover their frailty, and are forever at the brink of breaking, inside or outside. When you look at the one you love the most, and she looks back, and the same despair rises inside both of you at the same time - the preordained fact of one of you being left alone.
 
Should ethics, should law, allow lovers to die together, when they want to? To find their peace just the way they find their love? Why should there be pain when there's nothing left to learn from it? When karma has nothing left to show or showcase? When the only questions left are of beauty created in togetherness, and the sheer meaningless of being left alone.
 
There should always be a time to do the right thing.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of death and the spirituality inherent in it -
An Epitaph Made of Light & Air
Chemo: As I Battle Myself
A Tragedy With Two Faces
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Fly by Luca FraulaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/8313-flyLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Searching for Coffee in Jaipur

"Peacocks are raucous and find roofs with easy comfort -
there is still place in this concrete jungle, even if
some hearts go for a walk in search of a soul.
 
Do we find comfort in the quiet disregard of the unfamiliar?"
 
Our search for the soul of a city is ever so twisted, as it should be. A city needs to be lived in. On its streets, one needs to be mauled with aromas, with its obsessions, with its politics, with its unkindness, with its unseeing generosities, what keeps it awake at night, and what its mornings bring forth.
 
A visitor passing by will only see it's freshly painted hoardings, not it's tiredness. It's facades and it's colors might give it the sheen it wants to project, but you often have to only turn a corner to see it's permanent shadows.
 
So then, it's a good idea to spend time in a pavement tea stall or a café in the middle of its bustling heart, and immerse oneself in its cadences and concerns, it's voices and noises, what passes by, who stays, what sticks and what's evanescent, the words which are spoken and laughed away and the sentences which linger, coalesce and fall as hard as stones and refuse to be swept away.
 
The soul is there for you to see.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of cities, and the love for them -
Indian Summers
Calcutta - A Lover's Epitaph
A City Made of Our Sighs
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Adventure by Alexander NakaradaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6092-adventureLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Finding Souls Between Their Legs

"Come to my house one afternoon,
my bed's unmade for all lovers of mine,
we will find ourselves at our wildest & truest 
when we reach the third bottle of wine.
 
You can kiss me roughly, and push me down,
and I will tell you once more -
though you know thirty per cent of what I am,
tonight you can be hundred per cent my man."
 
I've always wondered what happens when two lonely souls meet. Are they able to recognize each other through their masks - of verbosity or sullenness?  Is there repulsion of seeing someone who also suffers? Or is loneliness a magnet?
 
What ensues? Deep sharing? A slow fanning of embers, to seek life in what is moribund? Love- as something you can't help feeling? Or Lovemaking as an empty surrogate, which makes you lonelier after the act is done and done with?
 
Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. It can run deep in the being of a person, as much a part of one’s self as talking easily or having skin which glows.
 
As Olivia Laing says in her haunting book "The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone" -
 
"Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last."
 
Are you lonely? Write in. We'll share a poem or two. Maybe a smile.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of loneliness and yearning - 
These Darned Long Distance Relationships
Hope is Merely Fear With a Poor Choice of Lipstick
Love is an Unreasonable Yearner
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Misty Lights  by Rafael KruxLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/5686-misty-lights-License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Lost Atlas of Belonging

 
"I am tired
of finding you 
in places 
watermarked with 
our senses."
 
The moment of change is a poem. The tranquil chaos of pain is a poem. The end of love is itself a poem. It's just that a poet can put it all into words.
 
For a heartbroken lover, the city becomes a map of things found and lost at the same time. The heart becomes an almanac of bruises and scars. Everything precious seems to be lost, but there is still something which is held on tight. 
 
And nothing, nothing remains the same, even as life continues just the way it is.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of yearning of and in cities - 
Indian Summers
Calcutta - A Lover's Epitaph
A City Made of Our Sighs
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
End Of Summer by Frank SchröterLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6633-end-of-summerLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

These Darned Long Distance Relationships

"I inhale the fragrance of lavender
from a candle lit at 559,
I know you'd call at 6,
and I want to feel as if you're here."
 
By itself, love is a beating heart. Never ceases, never stops. It's just we, who fill it with our own insecurities, our fragility, our loneliness.
 
We doubt ourselves hence we doubt the other, and view love as a paradigm of insecurity when all it is a temple which awaits return.
 
They say love requires oxygen, reaffirmation, rejuvenation. When the truth is that all it requires is faith. In the ebb and flow of our moods and the seasons, we mistake the passing feeling as a change of heart, and we take decisions of incompatibility and parting with such vigour, that heartbreak then  truly ensues. And where a simple conversation and a recall of old pledges is called for, it's tragedy which befalls.
 
So many lives are left to waste because they hear and believe the songs of a passing troubadour.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of difficult love -
I Love You
Love (After the Stories Are Told)
On Breaking Up (Without Breaking)
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Farm [full version] by Alexander NakaradaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/8206-farm-full-versionLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Why Don‘t You Make Love to Me Anymore?

"There's so much I can give you yet,
for I'm a poem you left three-fourths of the way,
I promise I still have a syntax in bed,
which might surprise the metaphor in you."
 
What's love if there is no mischief in it? What's love of it doesn't become lazy sometimes and has to be given a jolt!
 
In the infinite comfort of being the cynosure of one true love, also lies the seeds of it being taken for granted. As our soul preens in its attention, it also stretches like happy cat, and settles into the comfortable nook of warm laziness.
 
And things slip. Dates are forgotten, attention wavers, things are forgotten to be told. Every morning you reach for the phone as soon as you awaken, rather than that warm body sleeping beside you. And you stop making love.
 
And in that one silly aberration, slips away the connect which enjoins two people into something more infinite, where 'carnal' is spelt as 'constant'  and 'lusting' as 'lasting'.
 
All it requires is a nudge, often a metaphysical elbow in the ribs, and sometimes a literal kick in the pants, to bring each other back to the primal feeling - that strange world which only love provides - when the world gives you everything you've ever wanted, but there's just not enough of it.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of reclamation and right -
Perils of Breakup Sex (or Why I Can't Keep My Legs Closed for You?
Bringing the Storm Home
Making Love in a Cathedral on a Rainy day
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Warm Sunset by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/8070-warm-sunsetLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away

Excerpt from "It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away"*
 
"Why do we do anything
for the people we love, you asked,
isn't everything a poem we write for the other,
every day, day in day out?
Then why is love demanded as diligence,
when you can have it as grace?"
 
Hear the full poem in the latest episode of Uncut Poetry Podcast
 
We take so much for granted. The air we breathe, the flowers we touch, the curve of the path we walk on every morning, the very person sleeping beside us, who we profess to love more than anything in this world.
 
Inherent in this are our years of upbringing, our lack of sensitivity to look at things differently, the daiquiri   of convenience and disregard. And as our outlook gets fossilized, we steadily slip into the dogma of defense. We stand on the pulpit of so-called tradition and preach, we refuse to pay cognizance to the subtlety of changing outlooks, and how everything old wasn't holy.
 
But change is inevitable - and insidious. It will come, it will happen. We can resist and have the spine of our tenet cracked, or change and let the fullness of a new creed flood us with its dazzling  effulgence.
 
(* this is a line from 'Plainwater' by Anne Carson)
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of reclamation and right -
The Power of No
Stories Which Survive
Rediscovering the Flawed Beauty of Love
Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.
 
Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry. 
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Oceans Of Tranquility by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6869-oceans-of-tranquilityLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license