Uncut Poetry

Lovers In The Morning

And today, I introduce you to two lovers who finally get to disengage from each other's limbs and  beings, and come out to seek some coffee and fresh air. Their smiles are soft, their skin glows.
 
And all I can do is to sit on the side, a grizzled veteran of many stories, and watch them with a peculiar sense of knowing and pleasure.....

How To Make Love To A Haibun!

Paresh Tiwari, Writer & Illustrator and Maestro of Haiku & Haibun, leads us into the minimalist, sparse, meditative and beautiful world of Haiku and Haibun.
 
Like the deep woods, it is a world full of mystery, seduction and contemplation.
 
Once there, you will not want to come out....

Love (After The Stories Are Told)

So much happens in our minds! Often, the adventures in our heads are more exciting than the ones happening in our real lives. But when our imaginings take precedence in our relationships over reality, and we conjure the worst, the die is cast for dire consequences.
Love can survive the worst, because intrinsically it is forgiving - but how can it contest the power of imagination? When what you imagine is worse than what happens, isn't the battle already lost? 

One Summer

Growing up is a time of luxurious waste. And in that indolence often lies the true meaning of living in the moment. It's only in looking back that we realize how precious that time was, & how much of us has been built in the heat & the sweat & the coolness of that time.
 
We are, in later life, what life gave us in those heady days - when nothing often meant everything.
 

Tea-a-Tete with Mum & Dad

So much of me is my parents. My love for poetry is from my mother. My practical life is from my father. And as I have conversations with them, I realize both of them are actually universe's first and the most beautiful poems gifted to me. No wonder, poetry is life. 
 
And today I have two poems, one each for the two who mean the most to me. 
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Childhood by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/childhood
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Distances: Kaifi Azmi Ke Liye

The gorgeous poetry in the song 'Main yeh sochkar' by Kaifi Azmi from the film Haqeeqat, has heartbreak written into its very fibre.
 
The finality of endings is often unavoidable, often known, but never ever easy.
 
Love's tenure is a story of irony wrapped in an unhealed scar which neither heals, nor desires healing. 
 

Fear In A Prayer's Home

We are so quick to judge violence as communal, religion as bigoted, and protest as biased.
 
But do we realize the person we threw our abuses at is also a person who trudges back to a home, tired, bloodied, pilloried.
 
That this man does believe in the power of a prayer. And when he runs down the street with fire in his hand and screaming God's name, he is merely invoking the name to protect himself from himself.

Map My Body, Lover

What is love, or love-making, worth, if it's not mischievous? It's high is a question of physics and biology, but for it to be life sustaining, it requires playfulness, good old conversation, a lot of giving and a lot of taking.
 
It's one of those strange things where you burn and then come out more alive. 

In Concert

They say everyone is happy in similar ways, but pain catches everybody differently. Even when it is shared, pain is a burden which has to be borne alone.
But pain is also a doorway to compassion, to understanding, to appreciation. And life telescopes through pain, into its most elemental. We are truth, we are awake... even as things fade away. 

Her Grace Without Notice

So much of our mental space is spent in recrimination of those who deserve nothing less than our deepest gratitude, and for what? Small hurts, a word we didn't like, a gesture which didn't suit us?
 
But happily, we all have in our lives people who forget quickly and forgive generously. Their grace is what quietly gives our lives its rich textures. Can we be that person?