Uncut Poetry

The Space Between Our Words

Why don't we have honest conversations with the ones we love the most? Why don't we listen - really listen - without comments, without reply, without retort - when they attempt to tell us what hurts, where it hurts, and how the hurt devastates them.
 
So much of the pain we cause, and we feel, is avoidable. Not because we don't tell enough - but because we don't listen enough. The smallest of things becomes intractable, our understanding of what things mean have no relationship to what it actually meant. We don't clarify, we conclude, and are damned for it.
 
Bridges which connect love become chasms, and we stand at both ends and wonder - what happened, how did two beautiful people find their worst selves in the relationship which mattered the most.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the dissonance in relationships  - 
A Love Letter from a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated wife
A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt
Lovers Who Synchronise (& those who don't)
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' 
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 -
Sehnsucht by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sehnsucht
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

A Poem as a Gift for a Girl With No Confidence in Herself

Poems have a way of showing truths and making us recognize what we are often blind to - that the best we have is adequate and the worst we think we are can also be beautiful.
There is so much we lose out to life because of our fears - of what we think we are, of what others might think we are, of what the world thinks when we fail.
 
The sad truth is - nobody cares. Everybody is immersed in their own stories, and beyond a flurry of gossip, have scarcely any mind space for anybody else.
 
Only the ones who care for us, are the ones who feel for us, in ways which are genuine and true and beautiful.
 
And when they hold us close, in spite (and often because) of what we are, we become the beauty they see in us, we are rendered marvellous, we see the infinite in ourselves because that is the core of us - the boundless possibility, the opening of a flower inside us, the feeling of being with the divine, of being blessed.
 
And all because someone found us worthy of time, of attention. Of a sliver of love. Maybe a poem.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how we blossom into the person we should be - 
Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day
I Have Watched You Make the Ordinary Holy
When We Know Love as Found
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Feelings 2 by Frank Schroeter
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/feelings-2
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

I Think I Can Be An Adventure With You

As new year eves crack our worlds open into two - a past and a future - albeit as tenuous in concept as they come, deep inside we know the celebrations - like those we do for birthdays - is just messaging of mortality for all things we hold dear.
 
And embedded within that reality is our realization that the experiences and relationships we live and seek and want to linger in are what sustains and gives meaning to our breath, the limited number that we have.
 
The songs we hear together, the storms we take shelter from, the books we cry together to, the traumas we live together through. Life's fullness manifests itself in our life through our shared experiences. Moments ripen into full fruits when we experience them as summer, letting its warmth flood us into sweet submission.
 
Our lives our only half of their possibility if we consider the indulgences which enrich our lives as ordinary. Or things in passing. The kisses we steal, the hands we hold in the dark, the crook of our arms we give for rest, are more precious to remembrance when we look back than any tinsel star or success in passing. Public adulation is the worst. It engulfs us without redemption, leaving us hungrier for being there, and empty when it passes away.
 
I'm quite sure god lives his life through what we do. And I think the sensory is what he would remember, the unexpected adventure, the advent of serenity because we chose to do nothing one winter morning but sit with our ageing father to look out onto the changing skies.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty of things pass - 
When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train
One Summer
Rediscovering Heaven
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Liberty Quest by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/liberty-quest
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Stealing Beauty

We are privileged enough to linger in beauty without thinking of livelihood.
We spend time with the skies, linger over petunias, chrysanthemums, dahlias and marigolds as they burst in exuberance, watch a frog jump onto a lotus leaf, spend a day in Givenchy, go rapturous over a Zaha Hadid design, go pensive over a Selma poem, linger over a drying leaf in the walking path, bite slowly into the sumptuous juiciness of an Alfonso, spend a day reading a Ludlum, just sit in the winter sun.
 
I am blessed to have a mother who read poetry to me in childhood, and still points out passages which linger. My legacy to my boy, and to those who spend time with me, has always been to point out, read with, talk about the riches strewn all over our universe, things which make life worth living. Going high on a swing, playing cricket in the burnished neighbourhood field, hang on the balustrade of a verandah as we see the summer sun throw a million colours into the lakes beside our house.
 
When we travel, we do so in beauty. Van Goghs we love, local Banksys, rapturous sunrises we travel miles to see, music concerts we see from the fan pit, ruins whose stories we listen with rapt attention, theatre we see, discuss and then discuss again. And the poetry and the books, which are sewn into the fabric of our breath.
 
And the people, our people we love and refuse to take for granted, the people who we don't know but who are all universes in themselves. All who can be portals, gurus, path seekers or companions. These are the ones who make all the difference in our search for what is most precious to the sublime thing called life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on beauty we find in our worlds - 
Rediscovering Heaven
When We Were One With The Stars
Kintsugi
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
You & Me Forever by Musiclfiles
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/you-&-me-forever
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

A Love Letter from a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated Wife

Darling, make no mistake.
 
There's so much of you I crave and care for. My morning gratitude wishes are of you, whatever nightmare you might have put me through a sweaty night.
 
I've learnt the hard way that married life is less a game of naughts and crosses, and more of remembrances and erasures. Because the burden of memory in a marriage is Krishna's Butterball rock in Mahabalipura, balancing on a point.
 
But, gosh, how much you can cry. Tears are your inbuilt bazookas. And your hysteria is no match to the desperation in my rising voice. And we find reason jettisoned, and notion & conjecture reigning. We become our speculation of each other. We make each other the worst versions of ourselves.
 
You want primacy - to both have the headlights shine on you - and be the headlamp. And I acknowledge it - the moment you see the softness in my eyes and I slip my hand in yours, it's me feeling gushy inside. You have my heart, my fealty, my side, my air, my breath. And then you start off on what's wrong. The fantasy of what's wrong. The perception, the illusion. And I am gobsmacked. What is the genesis of it all? Here we were, happy, sentimental, beautiful together. And then - bam! - the genefluction.
 
What is the genesis of this reverse alchemy? Golden evenings descend into ironic discussions on you not being acknowledged enough; stellar afternoons drift into brassy discussions of how I fall short on your parameters: you clearly remember everything I've done wrong, not the effort I've put in to be the imperfect but hardworking lover.
 
And then I ask - why are we together? What are we doing with each other if we can't be wild roses in our most intimate moments, when I have to hold back afraid of what you'd think, when our conversation is of need and not comfort. When you don't believe me, and I can't ever know why you don't.
 
When all that we are and all that we need, alas, are different things, where, pray tell me, where is our meeting point? Where do we go, my love, where do we go from here?
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the frustrations of love - 
I Should Have Loved More Wisely (they say)
Love's Night of the Long Knives
Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke liye)
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Bells of the Burguoise by Tim Kulig
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/bells-of-the-burguoise
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Let There Be Fewer Stories This Winter

Summer makes me light and present. The monsoon pulls me into its flood of feelings. Autumn turns me inward—part stranger, part seeker.
 
But winter is where I truly awaken. In its drifting mists and sudden shafts of light, old emotions unseal themselves; warmth rises gently from the cold. My mind clears, my questions deepen, and I feel myself walking through unseen passages within.
 
I’m reminded that we are rarely as flawed as we imagine, our circumstances rarely as dire as our stories insist. The world is as complex or as ordinary as we choose to make it. Life’s puzzles soften when we stay still enough to let them simply pass through.
 
Perhaps that is why winter feels philosophical: it offers haze and clarity, cold and warmth, the riddle and its meaning. It asks for no quick truths—yet reveals them when I step back into the open.
 
Winter is what you make of it: always misty, always beautiful, always ready to lift its veils for you
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the the way seasons change - 
Those Days of a Lost Summer
The Passing of Autumn
The Slant of the Winter Sun
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Village Ambience by Alexander Nakarada
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/village-ambience
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Going Home

We are such fools, we are, knowing all about inevitabilities, but never (ever) prepared for them. We will lose loved ones, they will die, some in their prime, some before they would have discovered their worth, some even as they burned themselves on both ends.
 
Such is the life of denial we live. Refusing to acknowledge what we know as truth in the deepest fibre of our beings. And when the end does come, as of course it will, we are emotionally, spiritually, illogically, found wanting, found unprepared, found broken.
 
We refuse to acknowledge the known, and the known's blow lands on us like a bludgeon. And we are broken into smithereens.
 
When, if we had faced unto the reality of situations, we would have moulded our time, our priorities in elegant and deep engagements, which would have brought in a final grace in the ones we love to bits.
 
Because often, only too often, we have to let go - of those we love, of those we hold on too tightly to - because in that release, we are also freeing ourselves from the burden of living on, of being the one alive, of the guilt of destiny, of the luck of having some more breaths left.
 
The action of letting go is often the very action which gives us permission to live on.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ways death finds us - 
What Do I Leave Behind?
An Epitaph of Light & Air 
Chemo: As I Battle Myself
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Clean Soul by Kevin Macleod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/clean-soul
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

When We Know Love as Found

Love is as you define it. Often a search. Often a precipice. Often an infraction. Often an acceptance. More often then not, a home we finally settle in, a comfort, a place to step out from the edginess of search to build stories of reconciliations.
 
But life has its outtakes and inputs, twists and twirls, bells and whistles, which do not allow love to rest. Because it does not want one basic thing to be forgotten. That love is an effort. Love is a daily ritual. You fall in love again and again with the same person.
 
Beyond the words, lies the question of why it matters. Because even when undefined or unsaid, love comes in our lives in whisper-soft ways - in thought, in touch, in secret care.
Because the universe adores us. And spreads its munificence everywhere. No one can say she is unloved. She needs to only look out of the window and see an evening sky or feel a summer breeze.
 
Everything beautiful which loves us doesn't always come with announcements.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how whisper-soft is love - 
Lovers in the Morning
Coffee, You & Me
The Importance of Faith in Love
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Parting of the Ways Part 2 by Kevin Macleod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/parting-of-the-ways-part-2
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Valentine Shore

Everyone comes in our lives for a reason. The bad ones, the good ones. It is all revealed in time. Sometimes as a slow-burning mystery, sometimes as a spark in a deep night, sometimes in quiet secret ways even we fail to understand, until we get to look back and retrospect.
 
So many of our relationships tether on the edge, so many drift to seeming nothingness, so many are treacherous like the Annapurna slope, so many solid as resolve.
 
But the true charm of being with someone is the continuous mystery of what emerges, of discoveries and rediscoveries.
 
What sparkles could well burn out, what is secret might not stand the burden of revelation, what seems solid could be merely hollow shell.
 
That's the way bonds go, that's the direction love takes. It revels, it celebrates, it lets time and life determine the direction. Sometimes it leaves us mid-highway, sometimes it helps us navigate through cul de sacs, often it is our companion in long-distance runs, sometimes it goes for a sprint with us, and quickly falls by the wayside.
 
We keep searching for a shore in our relationships, forgetting that we should also be one for those who love us. To be a traveller is beautiful, but to finally rest is also not only a need but a necessity - for ourselves and for those who have covered a distance with us.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the gentleness of love's ways - 
I Love You
I Can Be Your Poem
A City Made of Our Sighs
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
Elysium by Alexander Nakarada
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/elysium
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt

So much of what we are is the amalgam of hurts we carry deep inside. As past life regression reveals, sometimes the hurt runs deep, bringing forward traces of what's left unresolved from the ages before.
 
However accomplished or complete we might think ourselves to be, we roam the world raw, susceptible to the random snide, reacting to the perceived insult, ultra-sensitive to derision.
 
And we react.
 
And commence an unending cycle of soul terrorism - attack, inflame, die. On the agency of words and bruised egos, we are ready to destroy and be destroyed.
 
We grow cynical, we grow tired. We encounter, and soon become, our worst selves.
 
We encounter the largesse of the universe, walk daily into its wonders, find its gorgeousness laid out for us in the most generous of ways - and walk away, impressed but untouched.
 
But come the snide, the insult, derision, and our very soul finds its lees. We scrape the bottom of what we are. We forget words are seasonal mists. They come and pass. It's often only a local pressure point which creates them, and they dissipate as geographies, seasons or clocks change.
 
The old adage of being still and letting the eddies of life flow over and around us, is soon forgotten. We become the current, the tide, the flood. And destroy beauty - around us, and within.
 
All we had to do was to let hurt come, do its deed and go. And for us to remain serene. Because things pass, feelings pass. If we remain centered, committed to our core, we remain what we are.
 
And paradoxically, the world around us, instead of collapsing, finds its best self, grows, and we grow with it.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the hurts and pain we feel ever so often - 
Hope is Merely Fear With a Poor Choice of Lipstick
Heartbreak
On Breaking Up (Without Breaking)
Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'
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 -
You Can't Stay Here by Michael Mojzykiewicz
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/you-can't-stay-here
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license