Uncut Poetry

How I Stumbled in My Search for Eternity

What are we if not morsels in this universe searching for meaning? If we are alive to the moment we float through life; if we battle with time to get its predominance, we find passages with hurdles; and if we search and mull and have conversations with life to figure out it’s import, we find false endings.
 
What are we to do if not wrestle with ourselves, to give credence to our struggles?
 
We face life with our hands curled into fists, battle-ready, already battle-weary. We think it is a race to hit the tape, a game of dominance, to be something called the best. We get entangled in trappings and on a daily basis we diminish ourselves in a desperate bid to be a beast.
 
We forget, time and again, that we merely need to be the best of ourselves , to know the best of life. To know generosity, to know giving as the only way to get, to face vicissitudes with the excitement of a scholar discovering new principles.
 
But, over and above everything, to know that in seeking meaning, we give meaning. And nothing, nothing, goes waste. Everything we give of ourselves into the universe has a legacy, the fruits of which we might or might not see in our lifetimes. It could be tangible as art or the written word, or it could be amorphous as a thought, which still gets transmitted to the world in mysterious ways.
 
We are magicians. We should never forget that. But are we the ones who bring awe and wonder into the world or are we evil, using our talent and clout for personal gain which the universe deems as unwieldy and unsustainable. The messaging is clear and unambiguous, it’s we who are arrogant enough to ignore its signs. Untimely sickness, pain, loss. They all find their way into the vacuum which evil leaves. Generosity fills, and there is no space left for anything at all, because happiness is expansive enough to fill the universe.
 
The thunder which reverberates in our skies could bring rain which nourishes our soul further - or it could bring storms which destroy  everything which we built because we’d already destroyed the foundation on which we built our home on.
 
Eternity then is nothing more than the innocence  of our souls and the embracing of the thunder which engulfs our life perforce.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on questions relating to the meaning of life -
Rediscovering Heaven
Yes...
Seasons as Consultants to Life
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: Relaxation 4 by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9834-relaxation-4License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frank.schroeter.52
 

When I Hear the Whistle of a Passing Train

The passing of a speeding train. It’s whistle from afar. The smoke from the now-disappearing steam engines. The rapidly decreasing chug-chug as it leaves a railway station.
 
These sounds and images are sepia-tinted in my memory, fraying at the ends with passing time. But making me remember - what a time that was. And I drown so heavily in the past, that I wallow and I wonder - is nostalgia a benediction or a curse? Writers extol me - don’t drown in that lake, or your words would forever be cursed by mush and sentimentality. My heart says - linger, a little longer, before climbing the mountain of today.
 
When has a poet ever listened to his head?
I fallow.
 
I sometimes think the wonder which filled our Iives in our childhood had more stars than the skies - the innocence of growing up allowed anything and everything to fill its illimitable space. And as time passed by, the skies drowned in the depth of minutiae’s ocean. Till memories surfaced like flotsam when an ancient breeze came by to ripple the water’s surface. And we asked  ourselves “whither?”
 
Life’s trajectories always seem to take us away. Away from what we love, away from what we cared, away from things which made us the persons we were, away from what we now call ‘our roots’. But by then we are far gone, foregone. We are the rubber band which has been pulled beyond shape. And we look back, stretched and irredeemable, with yearning and regret.
 
I now know what the writers meant - and what they missed.
 
Nostalgia is a country for the tired soul. Its revisitation is not a weakness, because it is primarily a resting place. It is to do with standing at one’s own window, letting either the winter sun in or the falling dusk, and remember what it all meant, at a time when we were not in search of meaning at all. And how those times mean the world to us now. 
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems steeped in nostalgia -
Those Days of a Lost Summer
Lost Atlas of Belonging
One Summer
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: The Train in the Darkness by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7240-the-train-in-the-darknessLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
Music: Autumn Dusk by chilledmusicFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9843-autumn-duskLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
 

On Some Additions to Introspective Psychology

We lose out on so much of life because we know lesser and lesser of lucidity. We find knots where none exist. We tie ourselves up when there is nobody out to do it. What is it about the wiring of our brains that we revel in complexity and then dream of a simpler life?
 
It is the nature of the world we live in that pushes us towards choices and then watches in glee as we careen over the cliff. But life is nothing if not of the present and the persistent.
 
As a species we want to hurry - noodles in two minutes, love at first sight. Impossible deadlines and  divorce in a jiffy. Impatient to reach, desperate to get out. We have forgotten to linger, to let things find their own resolutions. We force issues, we lean into people. We seek marathons and then want to run them as 100 metre dashes. And in love?
 
In love we want eternities in our honeymoon, and honeymoons for our lives. There’s nothing which can possibly stop us from the enormity of life being taken as condensed editions of time itself. But the dynamics of the evolution of anything are only revealed to the one who’s patient.
 
Relationships evolve not over days, months or even years, but over lifetimes.
 
Finding familiarity is a function of patient excavation and not a case of fast dating. We need the night, we need the sunbeam, we have to weather the storms and seek shelter in the rain, we have to cook terrible meals and see sublime sunsets, we have to be terrible lovers and caring compatriots, we have to have a difficult child who we raise together to figure the blessing in our lives. The journey has to find the terror of the Tibetan highlands and the grandeur of the New Zealander passes. It has to take in the best and the worst. To find us naked and clothed, to see us alone and with witnesses. And then, and then only, can we say that we’ve found life in all its myriad shades and have known people as the stones or jewels that they truly are.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life's lucidities -
Flutter
In The Drift We Will Find Our Certainties
Capturing The Feeling
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: E.C.H.O by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9762-echoLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/
 

Flutter

So much of what we do is a matter of awakenings and slumber. Literally and figuratively, we go to sleep in doubt and awaken with certitudes. But ironically the importance lies in the drift. Because that’s when we are true to ourselves, and not berating the universe for its shingle or rust. The magic is in the moment.
 
To love, to ease into lovemaking and then to sigh into remission, are life’s unasked-for gifts, for us to know that whatever the flutter vicissitudes would bring into our worlds, there is always the concomitant  joy of paradise found. Because there are truths to discover and reconfirm, lies to uncover and not pay attention to, a life to ease oneself into.
 
We are always afraid of the first time. The anticipation ties knots inside and the expectation of disaster shackles our nerves. It’s a worn-out cliche now to talk about finding excitement beyond the pale of risk. In reality, there’s just one moment which could turn our life over. To be present. To be available. To let ourselves be the handmaiden of the moment. We are changed merely because we let ourselves ease through closed doors, with the believe that the arc lights were always ours.
 
As author Anne Lamott says so eloquently - “Grace always meets you exactly where you are, but does not leave you where it found you.”
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the joys and exasperations of lovemaking -
Finding Souls Between their Legs
Why Don't You Make Love To Me Anymore
Bringing The Storm Home
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: Imagefilm 015 by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/296-imagefilm-015License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Music: Heart Love by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9259-heart-loveLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
 
 

Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys

A marriage is already beset with contrariness in its very idea. They say, anthropologically, a marriage is against man’s overriding instinct to rampantly spread his seed, to ensure progeny from someone at least. Nature-wise, it goes against the principle of seeking fulfilment, because one person can rarely, if ever, fulfil the myriad parts of a person's needs. I can be gregarious but end up with a self effacing private wife. I’m bursting with the need to reach out, talk, swap tales and have a drunken Saturday night but end up with a husband who only wants to watch sports on tv. I might be spiritual in an unending search, and be with a wife in need of unending conversations.
 
And that’s when we start aching with the gaps inside. Of feeling life out as a ragtag enterprise with little redemption. One damning relationship is an irredeemable scar sometimes. And solutions are invariably forked.
 
Friendships made as an individual and not a couple or falling in love with another whilst married, are often two sides to a hard line - one side is sexless, another is not. For embedded in the institution of marriage are trust, hurt and jealousy. And none of these can be easily brushed off. As it often determines what can be embraced and what cannot.
 
It is easy to find reconciliations and touch points of comfort as one ages, if a couple has survived the vicissitudes and the incessant rambling of youth, because reaching a plateau of acceptability is itself an arduous task. But there is a stillness to be got, and a distillation of instincts which emerges as one grows old. For our needs, which have wild compasses in youth, finally find a North Star as age and time catch up.
 
After shrugging off the hunger for variety and the search for the verity, there’s a plateau a person reaches, distilled of distraction, a clear distillate of failed attempts, derived realisations and evolved priorities. We are finally reconciled. And know what’s important. Maybe it’s after having all experiences, that we are able to denounce some, maybe it’s after burning our relationships to near charred state that we realise what is most important.
 
But irrespective of the genesis being hypocrisy or awakement, there is a peace which emerges. Of knowing that what ensues is distraction-less, of knowing that like so much else, life is also an emblem of perception, perjury, preparation and peace. We complicate things needlessly when we have the strength to realise and redeem, we search for the new when our curiosity burns like the Northern Lights, we are ready to commit to the foolish when we have the time to live out its fallouts. But it all passes.
 
Marriage, which we enter sometimes duty-bound, sometimes as a mistaken culmination to love, is itself a complexity. But if we emerge from its initial skirmishes and subsequent battlefields, without fallen bodies and fatal injuries, we will find beauty embedded in its gashes and scars. Like so much else, two people together are a lesson in finding zen in unwashed dishes whilst standing on the corpses of past selves, smiling into the joint journey of survival. 
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the joy and challenges of marriage -
Love's Night of the Long Knives
Extraordinary Life
Why Don't You Make Love to Me Anymore
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Epic Intro 2017 by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/558-epic-intro-2017License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 Music: Die Unendliche Geschichte by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/512-die-unendliche-geschichteLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 
 

For Anyone Who Bleeds

These past few days, I’m thinking a lot about the reality of a nation, and time and again I’m coming back to the idea of a nation. I talk to people who love this country - possibly can die for it - but when questioned about the state of the nation, are either heartbroken, broken, or ready to break something.
 
There’s an atlas of indignation inside them and they follow its contours whenever the country is discussed. The atlas has only troughs and heights. But the tops are reached with difficulty and rarely, and they languish in the valley of their anger and despair. They conceive of the entirety of a nation’s complexity in a few algorithms of politics and society. Their mood is driven by the headlines, and the headlines are driven by the nature of the publication they read, and the publications are driven by what is most sensational on the day.
 
Regardless, our hearts are broken every morning.
 
Even as we breathe it’s air, and hum it’s tunes, even as we transverse the streets which we love as our own back door, and spend an evening with those who give meaning to our existence, we focus on our idea of what we think is happening to the country and hate half its politicians , and more debilitatingly, half its people.
 
Who are we judge? Who are we to judge people? Anyone as deeply flawed as we are, anyone with the prejudices we carry inside of us, is in no position to cast aside the belief systems of the other half. For in doing so, we are compromising the diversity of thoughts and beliefs of a mass of our brethren, we are rejecting them not for their humanity or generosity but because of what they believe in politically.
 
There are some wrongs, which are in the realm of black and white. But others are our ideas of situations and people. Nothing more nothing less. All we need is a quietude and a question, to reach out, to reach in. And then to walk side by side, comfortable in the knowledge that we both believe what we do, and are still terrific people to know.
 
The day we find our bridges over our most deep-seated resentments, we are on the way towards finding our nation’s true DNA and not get lost in our idea of what it is.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the triumph & tragedies of a nation:
Blood & Light in the War Zone
Sounds of Living & The Dead
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.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Gracias by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/260-graciasLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Music: Farm [full version] by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8206-farm-full-versionLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/
 

Windblown Om

Mornings are strange places. They are an urging, a calling, a welcoming. But often they are a desperation, a question, a challenge. We define it, the way we lean into it. But by its mere presence, it provides space to our lives.
 
If we seek to be presences, knowing how to let the universe pass through us such that we can be witnesses to our own lives and to the world, we can let the morning be a blessing. But if we seek to fight battles with its incessant periodicity, cursing it for its quotidian challenge and insistences, then we move into a war zone, battling  the spear of our despairing hope with our armour of resistance.
 
In a mentality which sees change as a needless challenge, each day is a burden to be carried through. We often wake up with either the hauntings of the night or with the dread of having an endless day.       
 
But. If you flip a switch inside and see the abundance being laid out for us, daily, day in day out, our lives suddenly fill up with an aching extravaganza. The question then is - how NOT to waste this blessing.
 
What we really need to do is to lean into the morning with a mind clear of of everything. We just need to listen to the morning sounds, just see it’s colours, run our fingers through its textures. We just need to let the universe frame our questions and give us the answers.
 
When we let the world carry our burden for us, then mornings are a prayer and the day a benediction.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the magic of mornings
Lovers in the Morning
Sipping Tea in a Rumi Morning
Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks
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: Cruising (Romeos Erbe) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3140-cruising-romeos-erbeLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Music: Season One Intro by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/254-season-one-introLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 

Let Everything Else Be, Let It Be

The what-ifs of life are a perennial enigma, a source of continual fascination.
 
What touches us does change us, what passes by always leaves it’s fragrance. The possibility of the butterfly effect - where everything changes at the flutter of a butterfly’s wings - and the intrigue of the sliding doors - what if the metro you were running for slides shut just when you got to it. Would your life be different if you’d reached a destination earlier? What if the delay caused made you to meet someone you connected at an immediate subliminal level?
 
Everything is speculation - but everything ELSE looks so much more promising and enticing.
 
Our choices, governed ostensibly by our thinking, are often themselves progeny of chance. I remember Tom Tykwer’s immensely philosophical and fascinating Run Lola Run, where Lola’s minutest action changed her fortune and those of everyone her life touched.
 
So is there a lesson in all of this for us? For love? For life? Possibly there is. Does it seem to say that life is not in the passive acceptance of what destiny throws at us, as if it’s an inevitability, but in an intense striving which then results in inevitabilities. For then it is time to be at peace  with what one gets.
 
But much more than anything in our lives, the thing which is most difficult to accept is to know when to stop spinning and to stop and gaze at the beauty of bustling flowers. And to fall in love with what one inevitably  has.
 
The adequacy of love is a perpetual quibble. There is nothing which satiates. Everything is an imbalance, everything is a quest. We mourn the absences in the person deigned for us. We hate the design of our fortune which keeps us out of introductions and  charmed circles. Within that disfigured womb of our expectations, we have to work out the contours of beauty if we have to maintain our sanity and find the stunning fulfilment which minutiae could confer, if only we had the eyes to see it. 
 
We would then be new people, happy to say - let everything be, let it be.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love's rocky terrain -
Favourite People (Who We Love & Leave)
He Made Lasagna Before He Left
The Final Goodbye (Or Why Lovers Decide To Die Together)
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 -
Imagefilm 015 by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/296-imagefilm-015License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Mellow Sweet Traditional Piano by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8885-mellow-sweet-traditional-pianoLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
 Sad Cinematic Background by MusicLFilesFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9230-sad-cinematic-backgroundLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles
 

When Breath Becomes Air

"I muse often of his being and his departure,
missing the softness of his glance.
He’d looked at me with happiness,
as if my presence itself
was good news."
 
So much about life is to know about death. In its very concept lies life’s only immutable truth.
 
As our days drift into countable numbers, we can either lean into the reality and wait, or fight the Dylanian battle of “not going gentle into the dark night”. But ever so often, there is no option. We become fortune’s arbitrary choice. We can only hope for painless exits. But regardless of what happens to us, death leaves behind a form of spiritual debris - the ones who loved both our silence and our chaos.
 
What is it, to be still alive when someone you love no longer is? What are the stories which now remain silenced? What are the changes we would have wrought in each other’s lives? Because relationships are forever budding, always a passage to something new, always gravitating to the other with new cells, if not new eyes.
 
So much of what we lose, when someone dies, has to do with things we were not always aware we cared for. The loss is greater for that late realisation.
 
So it comes back to our present with the ones we love. The only thing we can give - or receive - is companionship, presence.
 
On Sundays, as I sit at my desk, finishing my editing or writing my newsletter, I see my dad silently stand at the door and look at me. When I catch his glance, he smiles happily, and walks back to his room.
 
As our needs leave the bastion of greed, our simplest desires are enough for a comfortable easement into serenity. The ticking bomb of our mind finally finds a resting place
 
There’s something to be said about easing into death with equanimity. Everything falls by the wayside, only space and light remain. And in that peace, even the people we leave behind find their reconciliations. The drift stops. The breath which ceases  finds a new breath to breathe. Life finds fresh renewals. Death finds a new life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on being alive to death  -
What Do I Leave Behind
An Epitaph Made of Light & Air
I Love You
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: Lonesome by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/51-lonesomeLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Music: Gracias by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/260-graciasLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 
 

One Morning, The Ants

I like people who do their own thing. The youngest of the young, the maddest of the mad,  the dreamer in the group who gets ribbed, the one with the wildest theories, the one who always has the last laugh.
 
I love the ultra sensitive. The one whose heart breaks when she inadvertently steps on a tiny monsoon snail, the one who gets lost on the way to familiar destinations, the one who picks only fallen flowers for prayer, the child who goes into the meadow on the way to school.
 
These people are made of glass and heart, the strongest fibre and the most breakable material. Because all such people go against the grain, against the accepted, against the norm. And that is what makes them precious and dangerous and endangered. For to be different, is not to be of this firmament, is to think radically, and know the secret rules of flying. Such people are one with another realm. Such people need to be held close and, paradoxically, to be given their space - so they know their genius is not scorned into ash, or hastened into oblivion.
 
If as people we have to have inspiration, if as civilization we have to have radical minds, if as the human race, we need to figure out the unfathomable, these are the flames which need the cupped hands of all humanity to save them from extinguishment.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on being alive to life  -
The Sublime in The Ordinary 
Extraordinary Life
Mother's Rambling Lessons 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.
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
The following music was used for this media project:Music: Lonesome by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/51-lonesomeLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de