Uncut Poetry

When We Were One With The Stars

"Heaven is above and I know where I am,
At the corner of the interstate,
I couldn't let you go,
I could not let go yet."
 
I have just collaborated with Alma Roxx in their new single "Interstate (when we were one with the stars)". My poem is embedded into this song.
 
Alma Roxx is the brainchild of Oregon based producer/songwriter Renny Currin. Often times a genre bending sound, Roxx delivers infectious melodies married with sensitive lyrics.
Ryan Minor states in his Bottle Conjuror music blog that Alma Roxx's sound is "as if Simon and Garfunkel, Animal Collective, Beck, Mac Demarco and Stephen Malkmus decided to do a collaboration with Thom Yorke acting as producer and beat maker."
 
Alma Roxx calls their sound as something which is in the intersection of psychedelic pop and sheer chill. It makes for a compelling listen. 
 
This song - and my poetry in it - deals with death, remembrance, waiting and reconciliations. The lyrics, the music and the poetry seamlessly and tenderly explore loss. 
 
As Gabby (@oddgeezerfineart) says - "this tune will hit you like a sack of bricks, pick you up, dust you off and drive you forward."
 
Catch the full song at the following links - 
 
https://almaroxx.bandcamp.com/track/interstate-when-we-were-one-with-the-stars-feat-sunil-bhandari
 
or
 
https://open.spotify.com/track/3rV5c5hlYBNxNqxcpM4cjv?si=viI8v3h9Qz2Z4aIXF8YK7Q
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
 
I am a poet based in India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available as Kindle on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 

A Love Poem to an Office

People who don't know me are surprised that I don't sleep with a blanket of moonlight and a pillow full of stars.
But I have a day-life and it's in an office.
And it's a place which has consumed a large part of my life - and, alas, is rarely acknowledged by me in my poetry. Even though it has given me a livelihood and a distinct place in the world.
So I decided to make amends. 
Today's poem is a love song to my office.
 
I am Sunil Bhandari.
I am a poet based in India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com

Rediscovering the Flawed Beauty of Love

One of the abiding tragedies of love is the lack of breathing space between lovers. The freedom they experienced, and which brought them together to begin with, suddenly switches into ownership and expectations which can never ever match with what is ordinarily possible. People, more often than not, don't drift apart, they merely suck the oxygen from around the very person they fell in love with, because she was free.
 
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.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 

Let Them Bring Any Year

"She knows love, /
because love was an answer /
sheared of every question /
unburdened with doubt, /
unremarkable as fact."
 
As we come to the close of an extraordinary year, and wait for its end, we hope there would finally be a pause to the disruption of lives, families, places, things, routines.
But when has the drama of life ever ended?
 
And as someone I love dearly struggles, I turn again and again to poetry. In reading it, in writing it, to seek forbearance, to resolve reasons, to look back with fondness, to look forward for grace.....
 
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.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
 

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.