Uncut Poetry

When do you know things have collapsed? When has a relationship entered that level of mess where it is irretrievable? How do you recognize that it is no longer easing towards the pyre but has already turned to ashes?
 
I have always held that there is nothing more dynamic, changeable and retrievable as relationships, and that might well be true. But what can't be denied is that many relationships exist in the twilight of a cemetery.
 
The tragedy is in the collapse, when nothing of what is said or done is construed to be right; that it is often good well-meaning people who are caught in this irretrievable quagmire. And they don't have a clue as to how they should dig themselves out of the hole.
 
Of course, there are relationship counsellors for exactly this, and divorces when nothing seems to be working. But I've spoken to several people, who are trying to revive a flailing relationship, and they talk despairingly about 'having failed' - the one they loved, the families, indeed, themselves.
 
Deep inside the extreme discomfort of something whose collapse they are not able to stop, is the anguish of letting go of someone who is a part of their being. But they also understand the cure for cancer, a malignant tumour, a disease, where abscission is the only way forward.
 
Survival reigns. And hope lingers in the margins.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love, when the end is nigh - 

That Gorgeous Evening When You Left

We Looked Out Into The Fading Day

Distances

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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

Some relationships, however long they might be, are not meant to be. Some people have never ever been able to understand each other.
 
Maybe they have tried, but have got wrought in the illogic of emotion and justification. Even an even keel, a permanent white flag as it were, a ceasefire for a larger good, is often difficult to sustain. What results are days stretching into months, than years of grating soul-crushing acceptance for a so-called larger good.
 
It's easy to rationalise this as poor chemistry, but at a subliminal level, it is probably about vulnerabilities not being addressed.
 
No relationship - except the cynically wrought ones - ever start with disdain. But there is always a bare minimum level of expectations. Often of imprisonment not being defined as closeness; often subjugation not being justified as a societal more; vulnerabilities not being cupped like a flame in a storm.
 
Once the die is cast - and no amount of conversation brings about an understanding or a realization - relationships slip into a permanent mode of emotional rigor mortis.
It's a tragedy when someone supposedly our closest mate in the world, a potential soulmate, a natural friend - is not. It's an irredeemable loss, something which is not only personal, but a loss for the universe. Because a life running on an emotional half-mast is not capable of living its potential.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the strains relationships face - 

An Alumni of Broken Hearts

There is no love in a marriage (only power play)

This is Not Home

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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 -

Sad Cinematic Background by Musiclfiles
From My Heart With Love by Musiclfiles

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sad-cinematic_background
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/from-my-heart-with-love
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The universe keeps throwing contrasts to our lives, and expects us to walk with them, unfazed, taking them in our stride. And frankly, there is little choice.
 
We are making love, and in the next room a parent we love is taking her last breath. The spring outside our window is filling the world with its colour and aroma, and we lie ill, confined to a room. Someone we love dies, and the funeral passes a marriage procession. That's as cheesy as it can get, but so is the truth of life's contrasting metaphors.
 
The primary contradiction is often an unhappy outside life contrasting with a serene inner life. Or the attempt to lead a straightforward life in a toxic ecosystem.
However much we might wish for a peaceful life, the outer world keeps impinging with its urgencies, desires and insistencies. Even if we shut ourselves to all external influences - media, people, messages - we are bound to face the terror of ordinary things.
 
A very important component of this is always that we allow things to affect us. We are humans, after all.
 
But then, after being continuously battered, there is an inflection point, when we stop caring. And start learning to hear only one voice - the one inside us, unencumbered by the hard consonants (of the continuous commentary) of a forever-aggrieved world.
That's when we find the serenity inside of ourselves, completely inured to the slings and arrows, the aggressions and aggrieved nature of everyone and everything around.
 
Finally we understand that the world will always complaint, find reasons to protest, disrupt, throw grief at us when least expected.
 
That is the world's prerogative.
 
We need to find our peace, in our own way - in our lives, our passions, our inner worlds.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on what home can mean to us - 

Finding Home in Places We've Left Behind

Going Home

A Home Which is You

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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 -

Betelgeuse by Sascha Ende

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

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.
 
To awaken every morning is to reward oneself.
 
The day is desperate for us to discover it, to unravel its mysteries and find its surprises.
We do not have to fly or be special. We merely need to be excited.
 
Then we can see birds with new eyes, and feel the air on our skin. We can sit quietly, sip a cup, gaze out of the window, and know this is what it is to be alive.
 
An ordinary life.
 
Many things could happen, maybe nothing. We might go to office, a normal walk in the park, or spend time with a friend. Or maybe fall in love. It could all happen just now.
All this in one mere life.
 
To see the universe in the very fact of our own day. To know that things pass even as they happen. 
 
To know we can be anybody, anywhere, anytime, and find ourselves to be sundrop and stardust and moonglow.
 
All in one solitary life of breaths.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how life is richer if it is slowed down- 

I Like the Ordinary Life

I Have Been Thinking of Life Again

Stealing Beauty

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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 -

Motivational soft piano meets cello by Horst Hoffman

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/motivational-soft-piano-meets-cello

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

The other day I was reading a poem called "At Night, I Let All the Women Inside me Roam Around the House" by the marvellous poet Kelly Grace Thomas. And it made me realize how interweaved our lives are into a hundred other iterations of our own lives, and how so many unconnected things and occurrences in our world instantly become ours, how the tiniest things which might be happening because it is in their nature to do so, still find incredible resonance in our lives, reaffirming something inside us, making our lives better just by being. Thus a ray lightens us up, laughter emanating from across the room tells us how life can be randomly beautiful.
 
There is a point in our lives, when we grow infinitely comfortable with all the contradictions of all the people we are, and settle into the infinite variety of our complex beings. The indulgent father, the generous boss, the irritating spouse, the impatient son, the charming host, the omniscient friend. The hanuman chalisa chanter, non-indulgent to liberal hypocrisy, embraced of a thousand conspiracy theories, a doom scroller, the occasional hypocrite. An incomplete irritating occasionally loveable man, who is as ordinary as anybody in this world. Trying to keep body and soul together. And trying to live with all possible contradictions and possibilities. And surviving. And finding beauty in every wart.
 
And loving oneself and the world precisely because of it.
 

 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the kind of people we can be - 

What Do You Fear The Most?

Selfish

When We Are Tired of Hiding Our Stories

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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 -

Cinematic Angelical Upbeat Ambient by Musiclfiles

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