Uncut Poetry

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

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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 -

This World Instrumental by Sascha Ende

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

Covid was an incredible time for humankind. Rarely have each one of us confronted, in real time, and with examples pouring in daily, death as an occurrence which could hit any one of us, suddenly, irrevocably, and often in lonely quarantine.
 
Reality, and confronting it daily as a tangible occurrence, became a horror story. We were forced to confront our worst fears - and ironically realize our biggest strengths. Because embedded in the tales of heartbreak and horror were also the ordinary unsung stories of resilience and recognition.
 
Confronting the fragility of life helped repair relations by engendering conversations. As we sat in front of our worst fears, we realized the preciousness of what we already had and how we could lose it all in the blink of an eye.
 
Conversations were had, bitterness poured out, regrets laid out gently on the table: love was kindled, babies were made. For those who survived, it was rejuvenation, often resurrection, of what was secretly moribund inside.
 
Sharing of chores became a symbol of how people came together, for days on end. There were conversations had of deaths, of what will be missed, of what had gone right between people, and what they loved about each other.
 
When you are in an enclosed space for months on end, when life itself is uncertain, what we consider as bad suddenly seems inconsequential, and what floods our hearts are the things we would miss about each other.
 
Passion for work transcended to become love for each other which in turn became a worship of life.
 
And in strange ways we were, for that brief, oh too brief, time, better for having confronted, and seen at close quarters, mortality itself.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on confronting life - 

Let Me Sit Beside You, Quietly

Memories of Peppermint Mocha

When You Lose the Lover, But Not the 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 -

Odyssee by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Odyssee
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-licens

We are just ordinary people, living lives which often don't make sense, seeking our share of meaning, joy and fulfilment in our own ways. Embedded deep within - undefined, unspoken of, often unrecognised as such - are tiny and eternal stories of love. There are no bells and whistles attached to these stories, nothing to define them as special, but in their quiet ways, they light up lives, and make them worthy of it.
 
Rarely does real-life love show up as drama. It evolves as presence, a legacy of commitment, years of dedication, of roughing it out through thick and thin, often finding companionship in spite of incompatibility, of finding genuine affection beneath shy roughness.
 
A world which admires stories of legendary lovers, misses out several which exist in our immediate worlds. Silent, unspoken of, undefined - they exist as mundane routine, lookouts in the evening, sleepless nights in illness, silences one could ease into.
 
In a world full of turmoil and uncertainty, to have steadfastness and commitment, to be able to show vulnerability and find joy in the other's trivialities, is truly the only relationship one could want in one's life - definitions be damned.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the enduring charms of love - 

A Poem as a Gift for a Girl With No Confidence in Herself

Let Me Sit Beside You Quietly

Hale, Fall & Spring (of you & I)

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 -

Lockdown by Sascha Ende

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

Love can be pretty unrelenting. It's turgidity and its persistence can be intimidating to people who see it collapsing under its own weight and can't understand how it is still standing strong. People in love can separate without disengagement but equally they can continue loving with separation.
 
Anything anchored in emotion has moorings which may seem fragile but are often unrelenting. Nobody knows inner stories, of holding on to ties, of despair and of not giving up. Logic falls by the wayside.
 
Trouble starts when reconciliations are compromised without addressing the cause, the core of what eats away at the soul.
 
What draws people to each other is either what resonates or the things they miss in themselves. It's only later that the true differences of nature and thought get revealed. The sunken body of the iceberg can then be seen. And it is not always pleasant, and it often rests against the very grain of what the other stands for.
 
The true challenge of love starts there.
 
Because ignoring what haunts is to let our inner turmoil and resistance and unwilling consent keep eating the foundation like termite, even as the newly-painted facade of coupledom glistens in public glow.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on ways of the resilience of love - 

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

The Long Now of Us

It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort

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 -

Imagefilm15 by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Imagefilm15
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license