Uncut Poetry

As new year eves crack our worlds open into two - a past and a future - albeit as tenuous in concept as they come, deep inside we know the celebrations - like those we do for birthdays - is just messaging of mortality for all things we hold dear.   And embedded within that reality is our realization that the experiences and relationships we live and seek and want to linger in are what sustains and gives meaning to our breath, the limited number that we have.   The songs we hear together, the storms we take shelter from, the books we cry together to, the traumas we live together through. Life's fullness manifests itself in our life through our shared experiences. Moments ripen into full fruits when we experience them as summer, letting its warmth flood us into sweet submission.   Our lives our only half of their possibility if we consider the indulgences which enrich our lives as ordinary. Or things in passing. The kisses we steal, the hands we hold in the dark, the crook of our arms we give for rest, are more precious to remembrance when we look back than any tinsel star or success in passing. Public adulation is the worst. It engulfs us without redemption, leaving us hungrier for being there, and empty when it passes away.   I'm quite sure god lives his life through what we do. And I think the sensory is what he would remember, the unexpected adventure, the advent of serenity because we chose to do nothing one winter morning but sit with our ageing father to look out onto the changing skies.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty of things pass -  When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train One Summer Rediscovering Heaven Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Liberty Quest by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/liberty-quest Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We are privileged enough to linger in beauty without thinking of livelihood. We spend time with the skies, linger over petunias, chrysanthemums, dahlias and marigolds as they burst in exuberance, watch a frog jump onto a lotus leaf, spend a day in Givenchy, go rapturous over a Zaha Hadid design, go pensive over a Selma poem, linger over a drying leaf in the walking path, bite slowly into the sumptuous juiciness of an Alfonso, spend a day reading a Ludlum, just sit in the winter sun.   I am blessed to have a mother who read poetry to me in childhood, and still points out passages which linger. My legacy to my boy, and to those who spend time with me, has always been to point out, read with, talk about the riches strewn all over our universe, things which make life worth living. Going high on a swing, playing cricket in the burnished neighbourhood field, hang on the balustrade of a verandah as we see the summer sun throw a million colours into the lakes beside our house.   When we travel, we do so in beauty. Van Goghs we love, local Banksys, rapturous sunrises we travel miles to see, music concerts we see from the fan pit, ruins whose stories we listen with rapt attention, theatre we see, discuss and then discuss again. And the poetry and the books, which are sewn into the fabric of our breath.   And the people, our people we love and refuse to take for granted, the people who we don't know but who are all universes in themselves. All who can be portals, gurus, path seekers or companions. These are the ones who make all the difference in our search for what is most precious to the sublime thing called life.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on beauty we find in our worlds -  Rediscovering Heaven When We Were One With The Stars Kintsugi Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - You & Me Forever by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/you-&-me-forever Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Darling, make no mistake.   There's so much of you I crave and care for. My morning gratitude wishes are of you, whatever nightmare you might have put me through a sweaty night.   I've learnt the hard way that married life is less a game of naughts and crosses, and more of remembrances and erasures. Because the burden of memory in a marriage is Krishna's Butterball rock in Mahabalipura, balancing on a point.   But, gosh, how much you can cry. Tears are your inbuilt bazookas. And your hysteria is no match to the desperation in my rising voice. And we find reason jettisoned, and notion & conjecture reigning. We become our speculation of each other. We make each other the worst versions of ourselves.   You want primacy - to both have the headlights shine on you - and be the headlamp. And I acknowledge it - the moment you see the softness in my eyes and I slip my hand in yours, it's me feeling gushy inside. You have my heart, my fealty, my side, my air, my breath. And then you start off on what's wrong. The fantasy of what's wrong. The perception, the illusion. And I am gobsmacked. What is the genesis of it all? Here we were, happy, sentimental, beautiful together. And then - bam! - the genefluction.   What is the genesis of this reverse alchemy? Golden evenings descend into ironic discussions on you not being acknowledged enough; stellar afternoons drift into brassy discussions of how I fall short on your parameters: you clearly remember everything I've done wrong, not the effort I've put in to be the imperfect but hardworking lover.   And then I ask - why are we together? What are we doing with each other if we can't be wild roses in our most intimate moments, when I have to hold back afraid of what you'd think, when our conversation is of need and not comfort. When you don't believe me, and I can't ever know why you don't.   When all that we are and all that we need, alas, are different things, where, pray tell me, where is our meeting point? Where do we go, my love, where do we go from here?   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the frustrations of love -  I Should Have Loved More Wisely (they say) Love's Night of the Long Knives Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke liye) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Bells of the Burguoise by Tim Kulig Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/bells-of-the-burguoise Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summer makes me light and present. The monsoon pulls me into its flood of feelings. Autumn turns me inward—part stranger, part seeker.   But winter is where I truly awaken. In its drifting mists and sudden shafts of light, old emotions unseal themselves; warmth rises gently from the cold. My mind clears, my questions deepen, and I feel myself walking through unseen passages within.   I’m reminded that we are rarely as flawed as we imagine, our circumstances rarely as dire as our stories insist. The world is as complex or as ordinary as we choose to make it. Life’s puzzles soften when we stay still enough to let them simply pass through.   Perhaps that is why winter feels philosophical: it offers haze and clarity, cold and warmth, the riddle and its meaning. It asks for no quick truths—yet reveals them when I step back into the open.   Winter is what you make of it: always misty, always beautiful, always ready to lift its veils for you   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the the way seasons change -  Those Days of a Lost Summer The Passing of Autumn The Slant of the Winter Sun Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Village Ambience by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/village-ambience Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We are such fools, we are, knowing all about inevitabilities, but never (ever) prepared for them. We will lose loved ones, they will die, some in their prime, some before they would have discovered their worth, some even as they burned themselves on both ends.   Such is the life of denial we live. Refusing to acknowledge what we know as truth in the deepest fibre of our beings. And when the end does come, as of course it will, we are emotionally, spiritually, illogically, found wanting, found unprepared, found broken.   We refuse to acknowledge the known, and the known's blow lands on us like a bludgeon. And we are broken into smithereens.   When, if we had faced unto the reality of situations, we would have moulded our time, our priorities in elegant and deep engagements, which would have brought in a final grace in the ones we love to bits.   Because often, only too often, we have to let go - of those we love, of those we hold on too tightly to - because in that release, we are also freeing ourselves from the burden of living on, of being the one alive, of the guilt of destiny, of the luck of having some more breaths left.   The action of letting go is often the very action which gives us permission to live on.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ways death finds us -  What Do I Leave Behind? An Epitaph of Light & Air  Chemo: As I Battle Myself Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Clean Soul by Kevin Macleod Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/clean-soul Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license