Uncut Poetry

Come When The Heat of Noon Has Still Not Dimmed

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

What Do I Leave Behind?

What do I leave behind? 
 
A folder named 'private poems'
full of diatribes against life,
a bunch of diaries full of tales
of unfinished love,
a half-eaten apple thrown
carelessly into the bush,
a spaniel with warm eyes
who will wait for my morning pat.
 
As I grow older, I often think of the legacy of me. Will I be remembered at all, or not; if yes, for what? Or is that even important, for I won’t be there either way - to see the inevitability of the human drama, and how we are but a traveler  in everyone’s life. We WILL be forgotten, we will be ashes and dust in people’s memory. People we love will find other people to share the tales of their breath and time.
 
Apart from my breath, nothing else will stop.
 
So how will the worth of my life ever be garnered, known? And what would it mean to me? What would it mean for the world?
 
I have lived a life I have filled with listening to the softest of tones, the pause I have revitalized with the feel of skin, the breath I have rediscovered in the euphoria of a note, the careless trails of things I have loved which I leave behind as discoverable secrets.
 
And my refrain reaches a realization. If it matters to me, it would just be enough.
 
Because a life well lived requires no legacy or memory or remembrance. It is self sufficient in itself, it is its own cache of fragrance and song. And traces of such a legacy will find its own place under every sun - like pollen which is unseen but remains in the sun to slowly descend into the beings of everyone who passes by.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on yearning  -
Who Do You Choose to Become When Alone
I Am a Residue of Life
It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away
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 -
Francescas Story by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/2981-francescas-storyLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Flucht (Romeos Erbe) by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3146-flucht-romeos-erbe-License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Complexity of Simple Lives

An ordinary life is so complex. In its unending inevitabilities and Gordian knots it is both an unravelling puzzle and an enduring mystery. To mesh our life’s experiences with those who we love, is itself a quotidian Everest to be conquered. And we slip, and we fail, and we try valiantly and fail miserably. And then we pick ourselves up and start all over again, and then we fail again. And then we find a rhythm and we lose it. Recriminations and regrets galore come into the equation, and we again seek balance and again find ourselves in the deep end.
 
What is it about ordinary lives? Why does nothing find an equilibrium? And why, when it seems tranquil, it sinks in a morass of habit.
 
What is a complete life, and how does a couple find it? Does it exist in sacrifice and adjustment or does it reside in the brave singularity of lives which happen to find togetherness.
 
As love stops  being a wandering minstrel and works towards finding tranquility in the domestic, the lines of everything gets blurred and within its confined confusion lies the truth of two fully alive people living half lives.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of ordinary lives  -
A Home as an Open Dream
Extraordinary Life
The Ageing of Love
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 -
Your name by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/13-your-nameLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Those Days of a Lost Summer

Youth is so wasted on the ones who carry it as a burden. The changes which wreck havoc to the body and heart are later looked back at as the sweetest damnation possible, irreplaceable but never ever lived through fully.
 
We all know and understand the alchemy of a moment richly lived, but still let it  pass us by ruthlessly, unthinkingly. Why do we consider time as a rich man’s wealth, when it can’t be hoarded or spent endlessly? In its strange and beautiful equalities, we realise it is the only thing bequeathed equitably to all.
 
But we are fooled by time’s serene passage, lulled to forget its irrevocability. And in that lassitude we end with half-lives. In our puzzling pursuit of things which finally matter little - lucre instead of light, breath in lieu of breathlessness - we take away the most precious gift we could give ourselves.
 
And when we realize our folly, often it is with nothing left in our banks - not health, not inclination, not circumstances - and what is lost is a glow, and the possibility of finding light - and being it.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the summers of our lives  -
A Summery Love Story (in the middle of winter) 
Indian Summers
Call Me By Your Name
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 Positive Way Of Hope Piano Solo by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/7522-the-positive-way-of-hope-piano-soloLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Complex Algorithms of Giving

People may love to give but they hate being asked to give. It’s almost as if there’s  something accusatory about being asked to be generous - as if so far you weren’t, and here comes this person saying, gently but firmly, “why don’t you at least do it now?”
 
It’s not that people can’t give - they can and they do. But there’s generally a calculation, a quick mental reconciliation of give-&-take, of subjective and objective returns, and a decision which is derivative - if the net result is a dopamine high, go for it. Else prevaricate.
 
More insidious are the false promises, people who can’t say no on the face, because they are feckless, and can’t face their own truths and enunciate them. These are people who can, who should, but won’t - they fudge, they lie, they want the proposal to die out of sheer tiredness.
 
But what about the time a person is duty bound to lend a hand? When morally, as a countryman, as a co-citizen, a co-human, as someone who speaks out against injustice, as someone who commiserated, who shed tears, about what can and what should be rectified, what about such a person? What do you do with them, when they refuse to reach out or reach in?
 
In the schemata of life, one needs to simply go on and ask. Show, talk, make aware, and then again -  show, talk, make aware. Often, change comes in tiptoes, it enters hearts like a whisper, unheralded, suddenly. A continuous litany of no’s suddenly opens a corridor of acceptance - asking you to walk in. Why does it happen? Why does a person change? What makes a person change?
 
Deep within the complexity of our beings lies the tenderness of our essential goodness. We often ourselves don’t know our mind, or it’s mindfulness. Even as a person seems to be closed to us, there's a quiet awareness, a forever openness. And it requires a happenstance, a feeling, an experience, a sharing, a word, an unsolicited kindness, to suddenly open the person up. The revelation is not of a change of heart but a revelation that the heart always existed. All that this inherent goodness requires  sometimes is a mirror to go behind the façade and show the person that he’s a much better person than he himself knew.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk about generosity -  
Her Grace Without Notice
Extraordinary Life
The 101 of How to Praise (someone you love)
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 -
Betelgeuse by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5780-betelgeuseLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Winter Night by Frank SchröterLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/6910-winter-nightLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

He Made Lasagna Before He Left

Heartbreak is often an ailment which is never prescribed for, but the one responsible for so much of what drives a person, often off a cliff, often into darknesses. In the stories of our fallen leaves lie traces of heady summers and barren winters. We are what we are, but so much of the blood we spill is because of the shrapnel of a broken heart’s pieces. In the morning of realizations lies the barrenness of what we could have been.
 
But the deepest cut is when the person we love - who we thought loved us too, no, who we KNEW loved us too - now says she loves ONLY  someone else. Is it a lapse of the flesh,  is it lust masquerading as love,  is it a discovery of a truer love? Is it a drift away from me, or a choice made in spite of me.   How much of what she was then a lie, how much a transformation? Is there the possibility of one heart holding two loves? Is that acceptable? Is it real?
 
The real challenge is to know it’s she - not me, if it’s perfidy, it’s a lesson for me not to be her, if it’s a change of heart, to learn grace instead and kindness, to learn and know what moving on means. To know that to be hurt might not be right, but could often be inevitable. But the universe always has something true for the truly hurt  - the possibility of survival, of finding grace in the deepest cut. And in that one benediction lies the possibility of finding the best in life, of finding the best in ourselves.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk about love in trouble -  
The Door is Unlocked. I am Awake.
The Final Goodbye (or Why Lovers Decide to Die Together)
The Improbability of Wishes
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 -
Sleepers by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3232-sleepersLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Blood & Light in the War Zone

"The dirt-encrusted tanks rumbled in single file,
the first driver, fatigued, suddenly braked,
as he saw a man kneeling, his hands out to stop the tank,
the driver looked down and wept, so did the man."
 
Chesterton said “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
 
What do we gain from war? The answers are all to do with geopolitics, belief, commerce or fear. What do we lose from war? The answers are so many that they are lost in the multitude of count.
 
In these lands, which were bequeathed to us as borderless and boundless stretches, men first came and claimed ownership. They then built barriers to differentiate and dissuade encroachment. And in one stroke, all kinds of barriers got established. And everybody was ready to defend or expand.
 
And war was enacted on the foundation of fear, of losing hegemony, of showing a perverse machismo, for power, for commerce. Man was ready to die in the firepit of battle, than be seen as weak for trying to save the earth from its scorching end. Man's massive ego rises and dies on the edge of its limitless foolishness.
 
As Eisenhower once said  “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
 
And the stories of heroism and tragedy never end. May it be Syria, Palestine, Iran, or Ukraine.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk about the tragedy of conflict -  
Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh
Love's Night of The Long Knives
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 -
The Final Countdown by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/125-the-final-countdownLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The March of the Hope by MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/8055-the-march-of-the-hopeLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Imagefilm 040 by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3151-imagefilm-040License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

In the Darkness of Our Autobiographies

We are often our own worst enemies. One mistake, one misdemeanor, and we hang ourselves before the world does. We deflate ourselves, we berate ourselves, we compare and invariably find ourselves falling short. Why? How can many of us find nothing right in ourselves whereas there are people in the world who can find nothing wrong in themselves! And in this game of self-obsession, where people are either the best or the worst, we bring into each situation not a recognition of its zen but our own stunted self-perception.
 
Dynamics of action are then driven not situationally - what the time and happenstance demands - but what the person wants. It’s a difference which makes the dynamics of results uneven and unpredictable. And each one of us more prone to our own vulnerabilities, and the situation to collapse within the black holes of our personalities.
 
But that’s the truth of us and what we touch. We can only be a sum  of our heights and recesses, the obsessions of our successes and the forceful blackouts of our failures. And we wish to revisit the glory of the same path for every endeavor and invariably encounter the pitfalls of commonality.
 
Darknesses are then an accumulation of too many bright spots.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk about self-discovery -  
Midas Touches Himself
Who Do You Choose to Become When Alone
I Am a Residue of Life
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 -
Betelgeuse by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5780-betelgeuseLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Lose a Lover Not a Friend

Too little, I feel, is talked about heartbreak which arises from friendships which come unstuck. It’s almost as if it doesn’t require comment or commiseration if it’s not love. There’s injustice there.  When the truth is that closely wrought bonds which are non sexual often give more shelter to the soul than love can ever do. Friendship is a live-in relationship for the soul. Where everything precious holds true, but no bond paper is signed. Friendship often frees you more preciously than how love binds you. Vikram Seth wrote in his poem, A Style of Loving - 
 
Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;The angled sunSlants honey-coloured raysThat lessen to the groundAs we bike throughThe corridor of Palm DriveWe twoHave reached a safety the yearsCan claim to have created:Unconsumated, thereforeUnjaded, unsated.Picnic, movie, ice-cream;Talk; to clear my headHot buttered rum - coffee for you;And so not to bedAnd so we have set the questionAside, gently.Were we to become loversWhere would our best friends be?You do not wish, nor ITo risk againThis savoured light for noon'sHigh joy or pain.
 
Love seeks adventure, friendship is already one; love is cautious as there is so much breakable which is at stake, but friendship thrives on risk - without it it withers, dies. There is reverse alchemy in friendship. What would life be without the wild indulgences with friends - the late nights, the drives, drinking binges, closing up to each other’s secrets, opening up to our  black holes. There is a bond of shared blood between friends which no amount of shared intimacy between lovers can ever be able to replace.
 
Friendships do turn to love affairs. And if expectations don’t drown its unfettered madness and outrageous  indulgences and intravenous bonding, it would be the greatest love affair possible.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of possibilities of friendship and love  -
A Summery Love Story (in the middle of winter) 
It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away
Call Me By Your Name
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 Zone by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/270-the-zoneLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Sounds of Living and the Dead

Do human beings only want graveyards on the face of this beautiful earth? With just about any reason to justify it. It could be religion, geopolitics, hegemony, hubris, world domination, strategy, business. Even if it entails sacrificing a whole populace, a country, people? Render devastation, and look at the lurid satellite images and say “It’s a small price to pay.” And if it’s a difference in colour of the skin - it’s no price at all. And if it’s someone who takes the name of a god you don't believe in? Huh, why ask? If it’s the west, the reason is commerce and supremacy; if it’s central, it is religion and angst; if it’s east, it’s an ancient philosophy of power; if it’s the far east, it’s simply a place in the sun; If it’s up north, it’s what you do to keep one’s power circle intact.
 
There are as many reasons to kill as there are people. We, the ultra-ordinary are the simpletons, crying over poetry for the right reason, directing our angst in erroneous directions.
 
At every point in our lives we are dispensable, our nullification rendering not even a murmur beyond the next spring. 
 
All we can hope to do is to seal our ears and turn to the ones we love the most, and bless ourselves with the air and the light and drifting leaves and shifting seasons and find our joy. Everything can be, and is, vapour. We should walk our hard ground till it lasts.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which are steeped with anguish  -
Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh 
The Final Goodbye (or Why Lovers Decide to Die Together) 
The Power of No 
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my 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