Uncut Poetry

For an agnostic, I'm pretty vigorous in my temple-hopping. I don't let go  even a single opportunity to visit a religious place. Earlier it was a visitation only if the temple was scenic (!) then I transitioned to "if it's accessible, I'm in".
 
Along the years I realized I could treat the Almighty as an ally -  often for resolution (success rate 50%), sometimes with a request for a miracle (largely ignored), more often than not just to unburden my heart, with whatever is haunting me at the time.
 
So now I seek chats with the Almighty. To sit down in front of him (or her) and go into soliloquies - the few conversations I can have without being disturbed! Or, as I found in Harmandir Sahib, to just sit and let the quietude and munificence of the lord's presence (there, the non-believer has said it) wash over me.
 
My mum says she can feel the same grace, when she is with her guru. She can talk, be listened to, not judged, and leave comforted.
 
Because in the best presences, we learn that meaning lies inside us. A benevolent lord or a good guru only helps us wipe the patina off and makes us see ourselves as the solution, as the wonderful beings we already are.
 
And that for me is miracle enough. Anyone - an almighty, guru, alien, coach, mentor, friend -  who helps me centre myself, and find the goodness and kindness I'm capable of, is a god for me.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on all things God - 

In Search of a God

I Have Often Thought About God

Closer to Death.Nearer to God.

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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 -

Betonwaldromantik by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/betonwaldromantik
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Too many love stories are about a single self-love. One person's agenda determines the relationship. And a couple subsumes into a singularity without a merger. There are those who survive, through will, by finding a life outside the relationship, considering it fate, or by just adjusting expectations.
 
And the couple misses a significant beat.
 
Two people together have the opportunity to discover two universes, and make both their own. To discover the inner world of someone who you care for or who is your life partner is to discover their core, to become a special denizen in their world, to discover what thrills them, what terrifies them.
 
It's the privilege of a steady relationship.
 
Nothing in our lives happens automatically. Everything has to be earned. Relationships primarily and upfront are about sensitivity and awareness. It is work until it becomes second nature, a subsummation rather than a subjugation. And the couple changes forever. Because to know someone's guilty pleasures, to know what gladdens, gives tranquility, brings solace, is to recognize the best and worst of them. To dislike them once in a while but to never fall out of love with them.
 
The alternate is isolation, to be in front of riches and roam about in emotional penury; of having your flag bearer, your cheer-leader, your 3 am call, your staunch supporter, your potentially-forever fan, right beside you but transversing your life searching for him/her.
 
If that's not a tragedy, then what is?
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how we can be alone even when we are together - 

Love's Night of the Long Knives

On Breaking up (without breaking)

Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke Liye)

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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 Way to Kataka by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/the-way-to-kataka
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Would things have been better if I had used different words? If I hadn't said what I did? If I hadn't done that, which in retrospect, seems short-term, short-sighted, short-everything. We realize mistakes, often whilst we are making them, often much after the deed is done and dusted, often only when we face the consequences. Anf sometimes not at all.
 
We are human. We are a cauldron of weaknesses and mistakes. And we learn to live with ourselves, sometimes with ease, often reluctantly. Because we don't know how to change. The strong-willed bear the pain, learn the lesson, maybe seek redemption, irrespective, move on.
 
But often this is easier said than done. And in relationships, it never is. There is never a clinical break. Memory ensures threads remain, thin, seemingly fragile, but embedded deep inside us, lingering, refusing to leave.
 
Which makes me realize the bigger point - we are never free of the wrong we do. Never. We are haunted in ways which we might never connect with the wrong done, but which come into our lives as echoes without a sound.
 
Our lack of self-awareness makes us seek strange solutions, when the real solution lies in change. Change in the way we think, the way we conduct our lives, our behaviour, our attitude, our requirement for kindness, of accepting our fallibility, of realizing our arrogance.
 
And because it rarely happens, we have to stew in the heat of our misdeeds.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loss and remembrance - 

Memories of Peppermint Mocha

Let Me Sit Beside You Quietly

On Death (if it happens to stop by)

Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

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 -

About Moments by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments

Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Human beings. Our blessed lives, this gracious breath, this universe. And then the small infractions blown out of proportion, the disputes, the ego play. Human beings doing what they do best - destroy what's good. 
 
And then men & women with their particularities starting to chip away at the very foundation on which their worth and purpose and joy is built on - the people they love.
Simplicity is never the preferred choice. Power, ego, insistences. Relationships become a web. To capture, enrapture, to keep, to not let freedom find its course.
 
A word, a tone, a brusque denial. Sometimes the smallest infractions make the deepest holes. And then a refusal to acknowledge, reluctance to seek understanding, an alacrity to come to conclusions - to not forget, to hold onto hurts. The refusal to heal as memory teases ego.
 
Men are boorish, physically, in nature - often just as a masculine cover for uncertainty. Women too are boorish - as they instinctively understand the chinks in their males and find ways to control - stooping cleverly, as it were, to conquer.
 
Nobody makes a mess like human beings - indeed, they conjure new ways to hurt, blame, destabilise, destroy. They wallow in self-pity, hit out viciously when encountering emotional cul-de-sacs, not realizing that when they maim, they hurt themselves too and become equal victims.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on marriage and its complexities - 

The Games of Thrones We Play With Ourselves

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

A Love Letter From a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated Wife

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Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com

Darkness slips into every life. But it is upto us to allow it to slip into us. Except for lives marred with extreme deprivation and choicelessness, each one of us has the power to give direction to our destinies.
 
Mystery enters our lives after determinations.
 
But if we die every day, there is only so much of a safety net life can provide us. Death wishes are not looked upon kindly by the universe. Be pessimistic but not fatalistic. Dire predictions are subliminal messages which find their truths in unexpected ways. Hence the adage "Don't talk about it, if you don't want it to come true."
 
Relationships are a strange configuration of entanglement provided by nature. They have to be anchored and shored and propped and protected on a daily basis. 'Giving up' is a germ which multiplies prodigiously. Just as every thought is not a truth, neither is every feeling a finality.
 
The problem with us is that we take our own internal conversations too seriously. We are wrong, very often wrong. But consider our feelings to be repositories of final truths. We scarcely realize it but the biggest bane of our lives is is the lazy and prescriptive nature of our hearts and minds.
 
The very moment we realize that every morning is new, and in a thousand ways, new as a new beginning for relationships, for life, for decisions, we would have repurposed our lives into something which comes alive with the crack of dawn, and repurposed into something precious.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life's vicissitudes adn life's trajectories - 

Where We Start & Where We End

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

Naked, My Love

Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

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 -

This World Instrumental by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/this-world-instrumental
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license