Uncut Poetry

Favourite People (Who We Love And Leave)

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
 

Dancing In The Rains

"I can see the wind pick up it’s pace.
The skies have turned moody again.
Will it be a blizzard, she piped in her little voice
holding tightly to my hand, lest I be blown away."
 
In life we are both the flow and the stock. The flight and the roots. Logical and unhinged. Reasonable and petulant. Generous and anarchic. We are all this, we are all this together. Often in seriatim, more often overlapping.
 
When a child quizzes us on the ironies of nature or the dualities of the universe, we realise how much of a paradoxical concoction we are. And not only do we hold these contrasts within us, we also get by with a balancing act. We are a miracle, of dreaming of rootlessness while working hard to be rooted. We sometimes fail ourselves by swinging one way or the other. But if we’ve nurtured ourselves well, we would not let strong winds blow us away, and still get to enjoy their breeziness in our hair.
 
A tree is an easy analogy.
 
But how do you explain to a child that if the tree doesn’t let it’s fruit fall or let go of the pollen in its flower, it will not spread out its goodness. That sowing your wild oats, with all its negative connotations, is also the way to expand your world. That being rootedness is a virtue but it should not translate as being stuck in the mud. That a mind has to be open and free, to let the winds from all directions to flow in, and out, and to take one to mysterious places.
 
Because the roots have to be inside, to be the  gyroscope when the compass goes wild, like the metal spine of a roller coaster which can throw you in all directions but will never let you fly wildly in thin air.
 
To be steady is an art, but to fly is the only way to grow.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on rains & storms -
Bringing The Storm Home
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.
 
 
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Flight Pack 1 - 4/6 (Segeln) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/179-flight-pack-1-46-segelnLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
 
Music: Childhood by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/448-childhoodLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de

And She Waited For My Call

"I have woken nights thinking of her
and then turned into myself
to dream other things.
She’s in my mind
but like shifting sands."
 
'Belonging' is a word which fills us up. It gives agency to us, a sense of community. We feel attached to kindred souls.
 
It could be with people who we connect with because of a commonality of interests or service, in which case we would be driftwood, sailing where our proclivities take us. Or we could belong to a family, which gives our heart a hearth, and our souls a conviction of acceptance. This is where we return even after misbehaviour, where our warts are not necessarily ignored, but are not put up as premier exhibits.
 
But the belonging to a heart is different than anything else. Because, more than acceptance, there is a sense of fusion. Where the veins and arteries connect inextricably, in ways that, after a while, one cannot make out the beginnings or the ends. Partners, spouses, lovers, friends - they are worlds, but who individually are separate universes of meaning and worth.
 
They are the ones who go beyond being caregivers - they are crucibles.
 
Because in that melting-pot, our miscibility is such that though our life’s rhythms might not be determined by them, our inner worlds are. In infinitesimal ways, we change with each other, we change for each other. Until we overlap such that we rejoice and give hurt and take injuries such that when we bleed, we find the blood coming out from the other’s pores.
 
We bloom together and we disintegrate together. We are both the flower and the dust.
 
No. We are not permanent. Nothing in this ageless firmament is. But we are the best till we last. When we belong to a heart, we ironically our our best self, even as we subsume our identity and dignity - and are blissful. It is not a euphoric state, but one where our sense of the moment and the truth of evanescence is enhanced by its incomparable and enduring beauty.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on distances -
On Breaking Up (Without Breaking)
Distances: Kaifi Azmi Ke Liye
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.
 
 
The following music was used for this media project: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
 

Difficult Child

"And then I tell myself -
he didn’t ask to be here."
 
An obedient  son is an oxymoron. Each one of us has rebelled in our own ways in our youth, and have generally not been worse for it (though who’s to say?!). But each story has its  variations. And parents have their own tales to tell. And as one myself, I have my tales - and travails!
 
A life is a gift in so many ways. And much more when you see the gifts which come unasked for. And the giving to one’s child has a tender inevitability to it, which makes it both a duty as also an unburdening - it’s a relief to be able to pass on what one has garnered in one’s life, for the simple alternative is to take it with oneself to one’s grave.
 
But the corollary which haunts is - why is this passage of rites so fraught?
 
But then I realise that I generalise, and there are so many imperceptible ways children learn - direct, osmosis, eavesdropping, whilst rebelling, whilst being rejected, when pushed away, when held close irrespective. Our relationship to our children is a lifelong work-in-progress, till the time (and even whilst) they start to tell us what to do.
 
Because there are no templates for care.
 
And then we understand the irony that we learn more as we seek to teach. And in that one realisation lies the light which then shines equally on both of us.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on children -
Daughters Who Don't Listen (and other ways to be brave)
Kripa (a blessing from a daughter)
My Little Zen Warrior
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 -
End Of Summer by Frank SchröterLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6633-end-of-summerLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Things We Become When We Leave

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

An Onanist’s Guide to Loneliness

"Someone brought wild flowers home,
and their pungent sweetness was a trauma
and I walked naked in the house, till I threw
them into a bin with three Hail Mary’s."
 
Self-gratification is a lonely enterprise packed with people. It is our encounter with fantasies but starts with a conversation with our loneliness.
 
We are often left alone, or are merely alone. While the world celebrates together, we are left with an aching need to connect.  In reaching out, we reach in; in finding purpose we find pudenda; while banishing wayward thoughts we find the wilderness of brambles.
 
There are ways to be, and be with, our best selves. As we explore our minds with books, or extrapolate our feelings to film characters, or discover levitation with music. But when we want everything together, bunched together with a promise of iridescent colours, where our agonies sing, where our driest lands grow moist enough for spring, when we know we have visitation rights to heaven - that’s when we choose ourselves over others.
 
To say it’s pleasure on tap or bliss in passing is to miss the point. The enormity of an intimate relationship with ourselves just cannot ever be undermined. For those short moments of ecstasy make us forget - however briefly - the extremity of the barrenness which invariably is the bane of our lives.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on intimacies -
Perils of Breakup Sex (Or Why I Can't Keep My Legs Closed For You)
Map My Body, Lover
Finding Souls Between Their Legs
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 -
Dragonsong by Alexander NakaradaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/9301-dragonsongLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ouroboros by Alexander NakaradaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/9370-ouroborosLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

A Garden of Departures

"The thorns sting, my palms bleed,
the blood stains the acquiescent leaves,
the morning breeze passes by, whispers -
don’t hold on to anything so tight."
 
I walk every morning on this walking path in the gated community I stay in. It’s an arboretum of colours and aromas. But much more than that, it is a passage of evanescence and disappearances. That gorgeous gladiola? Won’t be there the day after. The blazing gulmohur - here only for the summer. The yellow chandelier blossom - too fragile to even last a storm. The fragrant jasmine - empty after giving the entirety of its cachet of scent. The yellow-breasted frangipani? Hardy to look, easy to fall.
 
Everyday I see the shapes - bells and funnels,  flutes and trumpets, cups and hearts, bowls and spheres     - and I see their glory and their fall. I see how they find meaning in their being, an elegance in their stature - and a quietude in their demise. Their existence itself is drama - they don’t need to do anything to draw attention to themselves. They are touched by the eye which seeks pleasure - hidden or visible, they throw the same aroma, and preen quietly within their deep-seated beauty.
 
For me, every walk has meaning - a revelation, a realization, a reaffirmation. I learn - to pass by rather than hold on, love passionately but know the truth of passages, live every stage and love the demise, there’s beauty in the withering just as there’s tragedy in the beauty.
 
I come back from every walk alive to life because I have experienced the truth of departures.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the evanescent -
Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke liye)
Stories Which Survive
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 details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Sunset Fields by Alexander NakaradaLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/7979-sunset-fieldsLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Waiting For a Storm

"It's a moment before.
 
The stillness is of a zen monk,
the heaviness of a misdemeanor unconfessed,
the puddle is a pool with the sky in shame,
the renegade vine mumbling Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité."
 
A storm as as much an anticipation as it is an occurrence. And as in all things which we expect, which we wait for, there is endless trepidation, an asymmetric thudding, an irrational prescience, and an almost-joyous fear. We know it will change things, we know it will break the breakable and bend the bendable - we find hiding places, corners away from the airstream, we want lesser impact, we seek status quo.
 
And then we open the windows, and ourselves, to the storm.
 
In the schemata of willful resurrection, there is no sweeter joy than to find oneself in smithereens, to know we will find ourselves broken into pieces and nothing, nothing will put us back together in the same way. And in that broken down situation lies the promise of regeneration. Whilst we force ourselves into survival mode, if we are alive to storms, we will seek its destructive power. We will know that the storm will pass, we will know that we will survive, we know it will leave us cleansed, we know it will leave us changed.
 
So, I open my window to storms. I open myself up, to find a new me.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on storms, summers and other life-affirmations -
Bringing The Storm Home
A Summery Love Story (in the middle of winter)
Those Days of a Lost 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 -
Landing On The Spanish Lands by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6223-landing-on-the-spanish-landsLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Tragedy of Seeing Life as a Broken Enterprise

"Why do we complicate the nature of flowers,
even as they sway flawlessly on branches
unencumbered as they are with
either our memories of storms
or visions of a merciless autumn.
Maybe, maybe, I'm not ignited enough
to burn out visions of life which find fears
where I should have found the air to soar."
 
We see the world through the lens of our brokenness. Every time our mirror cracks and pieces of us lie at our feet, we scream into the elements. Much before we understand the potential of solace in the world's unflappability, we find symbols of intent and hurt. We lie bruised and we see blood in the claws of the skies, our hearts crumble and we find the miscibility of dust as perfidious, the world grows intractable to our desires, and we have problems with the hard ground we walk on. Time and again we weep and see flooded rivers in our rivulets.
 
What is it about the world that we first see it as an opponent rather than a facilitator? What is it about nature that we ignore it’s nurturing and only sense it’s destruction. As we walk through the fallen flowers of a storm’s  aftermath, we could drown in the incessant floods of grief, or make our peace in the infinite tenderness of a sky which still glistens. And learn that light is inside what might lie ruptured and torn.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on complexities of relationships  -
Why Don't You Make Love to Me Anymore?
That Gorgeous Evening When You Left
He Made Lasagna Before He Left
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 -
Golden Journey Under The Sky Of Autumn by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6202-golden-journey-under-the-sky-of-autumnLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

In The Drift We Will Find Our Certainties

"We walk under boughs heavy with fragrance,
petals touching our cheeks with infinitesimal tenderness,
and think back to how meaningless was what we’d said.
 
In a universe of a million possibilities, we could be a certainty,
but we suffered our uncertain inequities. 
 
We should have found tenderness like kittens venturing into the world -
with fright and wonder
and the ability to believe.
Alas, we stopped at our conceptions
of each other."
 
They say “The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.” In that one coruscating truth lies the crux of relationships. The question then is not of doubts or misgivings or dwindling love, but it is - have you given yourselves enough time? In that one question lies an irrevocable truth - things take no time to unravel but take time to settle.
 
You have to keep examining, you have to keep asking. Why don't you care? Why did you hurt me? Why did this happen? Why do you believe this about me?   Why did you do this?   The answers would be unsatisfactory, they will be evasive, but though they might not bring clarity to you, they will make the other think. And they will understand why you hurt, where you hurt. The shrapnel will be blunted.
 
At the same time, you are embracing your own strengths, the preciousness that you bring, the value of what you are, and it nullifies when others attempt to make you think less of yourself .
 
You will not like everything, but you will understand a few things. You will be able to cut through the fluff of your own misconceptions, and theirs, to understand the truth of what makes relationships work.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on complexities of relationships  -
Why Don't You Make Love to Me Anymore?
That Gorgeous Evening When You Left
He Made Lasagna Before He Left
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
Asperger by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/9264-aspergerLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license