Uncut Poetry

That Dull Boring Place Called Life

As we age, we hark back to the ordinary. After we've seen it all, our sense of wonder might  not have dimmed, but it does become selective. And we know that though there is no end to discoveries, we find even a still moment is rich in repast.
 
And without wallowing in nostalgia, we remember simpler times. And we remember the glow of presence. No details are required, because the feeling remains. And we realize in all the iterations of love, the one which abides is of letting the ordinary surround us.
 
And we start the transition from being a participant to becoming an engender, from walking into sunlight to being the sunlight And we ease into the slow gold of easy conversation, the easygoing minute. Home is an excitement and an evening out is a cafe which allows leisurely lingering.
 
And in that transition, we embrace the beauty of boredom. Of recognizing that life's bounty is often nothing but the steady elongation of the pause between the storms we invariably step into every morning. 
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life and times - 
I Have Been Thinking of Life Again
Bella's Meadow
Life For Rent
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 -
Follow That Dream by Luca Fraula

An Ordinary Poem On Love

I write so much on so many things. Relationships is a recurrent topic, as I traverse myriad emotions. Because of them my heart and my mind are my poetry labs, and I'm never bereft of things to write about. And I'm amazed at the discoveries. Day in day out I find new ways in which I can hurt - and get hurt. There are old fault lines which never get repaired, and fresh wounds which find their way into scars.
 
Its facetious to say this is the cost of being in love, the price one pays to be vulnerable and open to both bliss and hurt.
 
Because much more than being, love is a realisation.
 
Because beyond its craggy transversion, it's a discovery of all the good residing in us, things we didn't know about ourselves, the essential purity which actually defines us. Beyond the drudgery, jaggedness,and angularity - which often becomes our character's annotation - lies the still clear water of shadows and sunlight, the beauty of which even we don't realize until the clear sight of love discovers it.
 
Because at the bottom of it, love is action. It is giving beyond our urgencies, our insipidity, our masquerade : love is the only emotion allowed entry into our fears, our secrets, our failures, the essence of us.
 
The dawning of this, with the advent of love, is to find the treasure each one of us really is.
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loss and desolation  - 
Grief Strikes Where Loves Struck First
Letting Go (because I'm alive)
The Things We Become When We Leave
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 -
Positano by Otis Galloway

That Ordinary Lie

What is the ethical and practical length we would go to save a relationship or a situation or ourselves? Is our segue into safety always self-protection and a rapid walk through a portal of lies? Or do we girdle up, step up, chin up - and say the truth (and nothing but the truth), consequences be damned.
 
Or do we tell ourselves - let's be practical. Let every situation determine our choice of what we say. We become chameleons of ethics, as it were. Maybe a person can't handle a particular truth and things would become bad (if not worse than bad). Or maybe you will finally tell the truth - but by and by.
 
But there is also the question of the little lies, the white ones, the ones which slip into togetherness like a whisper in the softness of a mutual feeling. The ones which seem harmless - but which, when they start getting recognised, chip away soundlessly at the very foundation of what the relation stands for.
 
But then there is also the nature of the congenital liar, as also the one for whom self-preservation - name, blame, fame - is primary. Where stories become second nature, and lies are a permanent armour. This then is not second nature - it is nature.
But most problematic, if not tragic, is when we don't want to lie, but decide to. Where the only immutable thing we've ever known is the conscience. But we still decide to lie, against the very fibre of our being. The very act then puts us into the dungeons of despair, when we know we've broken the first rule of relationships - trust. And even more than that, we've fallen in our eyes. A self-reductionist act, a diminishing, a shrinking.
 
There's a world of guilt one transverses into. A lifelong affliction. An unfolding of the soul, as we look at ourselves with both disdain and despair, the questioning never ceasing, the wheel of cause-&-effect stopping at the choice, a self-damnation.
 
A lie is then not a compromise, but a self-condemnation, a hanging without death.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on lies and truths  - 
Your Body is a Truth
Adventures in Two Worlds
The Truth of Lies
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 -
Crescendo by Alexander Nakarada

Before Bruises Become Wounds

George Meyer, a co-writer on The Simpsons, referred to marriage as “a stagnant cauldron of fermented resentments, scared and judgmental conformity, exaggerated concern for the children . . . and the secret dredging-up of erotic images from past lovers in a desperate and heartbreaking attempt to make spousal sex even possible.”
 
There's bitterness and cynicism there. That's a relationship at its very nadir, where there seems to be little hope for redemption. But, of course, that's not how things always work.
Most relationships work in the twilight zone. Part incandescent, part dark. Not so much hate or love, as simmer and freeze. And as is true with most extremities, there's a sense of humanity lost, of balance skewed, confronting more of what's lost then loss itself.
But we are humans: the more we hurt someone, the more we require healing; when falling out is often synonymous with falling down; and more we push people away, more we need them beside us.
 
The tragedy of people who injure others is not that they use their ability to draw blood, it is how much they would like to be the one who would rather bleed. Their natural disdain is for themselves - their lowest opinion is reserved for their own weaknesses. They are fragile waiting to be broken, to be destroyed, to find meaning in their extinction and maybe their exhumation.
 
Those who create tragedy are themselves tragediennes.
 
So much of the grace of good gurus is nothing but to teach not to judge and merely embrace what seems to be imploding in front of one's eyes.
 
Souls are redeemed by the mere act of acknowledgement. The words "I understand" have saved innumerable lives.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the desolation in relationships - 
Of Love (& other bouts of sadness)
Miles Apart
Finding Ways to Survive (Each Other)
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 -
Rising Sun by Sascha Ende

Whilst Looking at a Newlywed Couple and Thinking of All Our Years

Relationships are such journeys! Once you get into one, one prepares for the long haul. Railroad crashes, car rides, boring flights. The odd distraction, the unwilling participation, and the rare view of the Kanchenjunga through impenetrable clouds. One wishes for transcendence and encounters reality checks.
 
In our closest relationships we discover our worst selves.
 
But then a few things start to change. A few things seem to find their niche with a satisfying click. You start seeing things together and find consonance in your reactions. Slivers of light seem to come out of the brokenness.
 
Our sharp edges transcend to become rough surfaces. And we start to redefine the definition of 'smooth': the chiding, the irritations, the battles, all become quiddities -  to be paid attention to, but not with emotional equity. And suddenly the uncertain universe starts taking the shape of two.
 
Habits behove relationships.
 
Habits knit into relationships.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which reminisce on the passage of love  - 
I Can Sense Her Loneliness
What is Loss, She Asked Me
Grief Strikes Where Love Struck First
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 -
Satisfaction by Sascha Ende
 

I Have Been Thinking of Life Again

So much of our lives is a choice between the hard rock and a soft landing.
Time and again we struggle, forgetting this is one life, and just a few million breaths. Beyond that, it's retribution.
 
Endings are rarely spectacular. Because, we are all slaves to our insecurities, our fears holding us tightly. And it is in very rare occasions of singular clarity and fearless realisations that we let ourselves go.
 
We blindly let the universe take us into places we would never dream of. And we find our nightmares to be illusions. And the coyotes we get to run with are the only honest beasts we know, who will hunt with us, and will find their one peaceful corner when the time comes, just as they leave us to ours.
 
Our lives are richer for the wildness we keep seeking outside - and inside.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mysteries of life  - 
Bella's Meadow
A Meaning Without Questions
Life For Rent
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 -
Andromeda by Sascha Ende

Home Tonight

I'd written this poem years back. I can't even remember the context or the time. But it brings an overwhelming feeling of loneliness, of evanescence - of people and loves who move on, always too soon it seems.
 
Parting seems like demise, and its irrevocable passage doesn't make it any easier.
Bitter lovers have often talked of such periods as those of wasted opportunity, as if anything which doesn't have a classic consequence or a desired denouement is a phase in futility. The fallacy of endings being more important than the rush of the journey.
But those who know about transience, who know that life is only a zen exercise, an observance of moments, know how life is both accumulation and movement, of experiencing and moving on.
 
All my poet friends keep telling me "Don't wallow in nostalgia! It is treacly. Too much sentimentality is dangerous to health." Maybe. What I do love doing is to think back and smile. Of having reconciled with what travels, what hurts, what sustains, what follows, what stays. And of looking back at it all, as the hurt and gain of irrevocable passage.
 
f you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on departures  - 
Letting Go (because I am alive)
Favourite People (who we love and leave)
Departures
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 -
Golden Journey Under The Sky of Autumn by Musiclfiles

Quietly Yours

Ara (who goes by the name 'petrichara' on Instagram) writes "someone who allows you to rest is the relationship dynamic of all time".
 
And I think - it's not only people but places too.
 
Places we're familiar with, places which allow us to ease into ourselves. Like a home. Where we know everything, where everyone knows us, and all we have to be is what we are in our own skin.
 
And often when we move in our home with awareness, we find the new in the old, messages we hadn't got earlier, congruities we hadn't encountered before. We know our home's oddities to be our own, we find its nooks suffused with hidden histories, and it is our witness and sanctuary. A home is a friend, silently seeing us unwind or unravel with equal sang-froidness.
 
Familiar people, familiar places are a boon to our hearts, solace to our souls, as we step into the unfamiliarities of an unforgiving world. We start our days, unaware what it would bring, our guards up, a thin tensile strain keeping our spine straight. Are we funny, are we competent, have we met the world on its terms without losing ourselves, have we stamped it with our individualities? The modern-day stress we keep hearing about is merely a result of these unmeasurable presences of a normal day.
 
When we step into our homes, leaving our shoes and artifices behind, it's the medicine, the panacea, the equaliser, which brings us back to our sanities.
 
We would be deranged without our homes.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the healing and beauty of homes  - 
Her Breasts as Shelter
A Home as an Open Dream
Changing Your Address (on marrying and moving homes)
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 -
True summer love by Musiclfiles
Tranquil Fields Peaceful by Alexander Nakarada

Recalibrating Dawns

The relentless agency of living, its insistencies to persist - until it no longer could - its proclivity for drama, its calmness to tired souls:
 
that's one way to see life, when you are about to give up on things, when there seems to be no redemption to distress, when life seems to be an unending travail - something which doesn't give up even when you are ready to.
 
And you search for a reason to carry on. Viktor Frankl said "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."  But, alas, you simply can't find a reason - and you can't let go. So you strain to come out every morning. And you see that the ones who are always present are - the sun, the morning, the birds. They find joy without anticipation. They find a sense of being in the very act of repetition. Without expectation, without thinking of the past or future, just letting the nature of what is uncontrollable to do what it does best, and going along with the repetition and the ride.
 
And you step back, and look at this with a new eye. Not as a wound which doesn't heal, not as pain which keeps nagging incessantly. You start to look at it as benediction, a faith that things will unravel the way they have to, that agony is not preordained reality - rather, to be in the incident of life is to be in the full glow of its grace.
 
And everything changes.
 
You look at life with new eyes. Not as anticipation or affliction, not as scar or suture, not as the space between sighs and celebration, but as presence, as stillness, as sanity. The time to create, and find the beyond. Because that is where we always find ourselves.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of healing tired souls  - 
What is Loss, she asked me
Loneliness (oh these rains)
Ruins Have Permanent Flames
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 -
Rising Sun by Sascha Ende
https://filmmusic.io/en/song/86-rising-sun

I Can Sense Her Loneliness

How much we are afraid to say what often simply needs to be said. It's an unavoidable fact - the conversations we avoid are the conversations we require the most.
 
Often we are afraid to face the black-&-white of the spoken truth, often we fear the unpredictability of confrontations.  Maybe, in the past, we've had to face the consequences of a scathing talk, and have now sworn to avoid anything which has the potential to break or hurt, welt or injure.
 
But subtly, irrevocably, what lies unspoken also changes us as persons, as it does our relationships.
 
On the surface, a calm descends. The need to avoid conflict overwhelms the need for stark truths. And the elephant sits fat and solid in the room, munching away time, growing fat on what's unspoken.
 
And by including avoidance in the definition of love, we chip away at truths. We become politer but less honest, we want to confront monsters by pretending they don't exist.
In the song of life, we try hard to avoid the discordant note, and thus lose the soul required to give love not only its longevity but its singular breath.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loneliness  - 
Old Poems for Old Lovers
The Art of the Lonely Good Deed
Loneliness (oh these rains)
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 -
Loneliness by Sayan Mukherjee