Uncut Poetry

My Little Zen Warrior

"Once, on Sundays, as I read the papers,
I saw a sunbeam make its way to her,
and her hair was suddenly aflame like a fuzzy halo,
as she lay on the carpet,
her face cupped in her palms,
lost in the world of wizards -
and the sun helplessly
putting the spotlight on her,
for the universe to gaze at her,
and no one else."
 
In Pema Chadron's  exquisite and heartfull book "When Things Fall Apart" she says -
"You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather."
 
This poem is about how children are natural zen individuals and how the universe recognizes them for what they are.
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
Follow Sunil on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
 
 

Kripa (a blessing from a daughter)

"I sit on the edge of the evening,
as I allow you to find your way:
the sea is low and I want you to know
what it is to tread the skies."
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
 
Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Indian Summers

Summer, of all seasons, is the one which brings us human beings into our most elemental  state - frank, often ugly, always true.
 
We indulge and never regret; we forgive and we mean it.
 
We know that what happens to us, is what we do onto others. And in that strange steaming symbiosis lies the powerlessness of our appetites - we are what the air makes us -  not good or bad - just stripped of everything, naked, true -  and for once not ashamed, and for once refusing to be shamed.
 
Summer is a body's sigh of being, as it realizes how everything is so fleeting. 
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
 
Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Seasons as Consultations to Life

I am amazed how we pass our lives through the magnificence of seasons, and how we change with them, as if they were our partners on a road to nowhere, somewhere.. .
 
Summer, winter, autumn, all come and go, as witnesses to our peculiarities, our small concerns, our happinesses which seem as tenous as sundrops , as also our sadnesses which seem to fill the universe...
 
But we just need to be open to their messages, to their careful power and their sensitive tellings - and we will see them as pointers to life, as instructions to find our way, as friends who will not speak but will tell us everything.....
 
We merely need to be aware, we merely need to be present.
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
 
Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

The Girl Who Could Lose Everything For Hope

Hope  is a strange beast. It is sometimes the only false note in our lives, and paradoxically - or because of that - is also the slender thread which keeps us alive to possibilities of life.
 
Little things take on meaning - little actions, little thoughts - nothing seems untoward or wasted.
 
Those who are too hopeful, are called foolish, sometimes foolish  optimists. But when something is a lifeline and gives meaning, how can that be bad.
 
Being foolish is a choice so many are willing to make simply because it gives an extra color to the dawn, removes the color of pain from an iridescent evening, gives something to look forward to in life when everything is gray and impenetrable and unreachable.
 
Hope is that dream which one can tangibly feel, like the bird which flies by but drops a broken feather in your hands - the bird might go away, but it does leave behind beauty, and something to hold onto....
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
 
Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
 
 
 

Love (then) Is Also Patience

There are two facts. One. Life is full of the unexpected. Two. It is long. These two facts are often forgotten when a couple mulls its differences.
 
One of the abiding tragedies of relationships is when couples don't give each other's differences the space and time they deserve.
 
But sharp edges find their corners smoothened with time; habits which were irritating become funny in nostalgia; wars become battles become skirmishes become peace summits with resolutions and amity.
 
Two people brought together, irrespective of whether they knew each other for years or not at all, will always start with finding their personal space being impinged upon time and again. Decisions which were individual now need discussion and mutual consent. The air in the room is shared. And it's not always comfortable. 
 
But one day, years later, on a day of deep depression, you suddenly receive the warmest embrace possible; in a happy moment alone, you find you are missing her. She becomes more than a habit. She becomes a part of your being. 
 
And that and that and that often takes time... 
 
Love then is also patience. 
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
 
Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
 
 
 
 

How She Knew (that he was unfaithful)

"Why do we cheat? And why do happy people cheat? And when we say "infidelity," what exactly do we mean? Is it a hookup, a love story, paid sex, a chat room, a massage with a happy ending? Why do we think that men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy, but women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy? And is an affair always the end of a relationship? 
 
"But as perpetrators have often said - it isn't always our partner that we are turning away from, but the person that we have ourselves become. And it isn't so much that we're looking for another person, as much as we are looking for another self. 
 
"As Marcel Proust said, it's our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person."
 
The healing, the renewal, begins there.
 
The above commentary is an extract from Esther Perel's stunning TED talk. 
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
 
 

In Which He Cries. And She Clears The Skies.

Coupledom is a nation by itself, with its own laws, thermodynamics and compulsions of chemistry.
At every moment of a couple's existence, the dynamics with each other swing and change - and if each of them are sensitive and aware, they give into the necessity to be the one who leads at one point and be the one who follows in the other.
And if one of them knows the address of scars and the other knows how to clear the skies, it's then a couple made in heaven....
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.

Perils of Breakup Sex (or Why I Can't Keep My Legs Closed for You)

Louise Gluck, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner, wrote a poem called 'The Encounter' -
 
You came to the side of the bed
and sat staring at me.
Then you kissed me-I felt
hot wax on my forehead.
I wanted it to leave a mark:
that’s how I knew I loved you.
Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,
to have something in the end...
 
My poem today follows the end which Louise Gluck talked about.

She's a Fierce One, My One

When we are loved and cared for, we should be ready to fight, being fought for or being fought with. 
 
Often, our definition of what is right and wrong has to be put away, and we have to battle for what's ours and what's right. 
 
And if we are injured, as the one for whom the battle took place, or because we were on the other side, we must then know that some battles which are fought with us are often the ones which would also save us. 
 
Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari. 
Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available for Kindle on Amazon.