Uncut Poetry

Relationships are so amorphous - and so complex. You can’t hold them in your palms, yet they can crumble in front of your very eyes.
 
I have no idea about the statistics or the studies, but all around me I see dead ties that persist. And I’m glad they do.
 
In a world where we demand perfect relationships and expect them to become shiny almost overnight, there is something worth remembering: relationships take time to find their richness, become their best - or, at their worst, become bearable.
 
I think most couples will agree that once the honeymoon is over, the toughest years are often the early ones. That’s when they discover that sharing space is vastly different from sharing love.
 
She wants a harder bed; he wants the room chilled to 18 degrees at night. She wants an “I love you” before breakfast and twice after dinner. He thinks a thought, a hug or a phone call is quite enough. She loves elaborate gifts because she loves giving them. He couldn’t care less and is happiest writing her a personal poem - which, naturally, leaves her dissatisfied.
 
The trouble begins when these differences stop being differences and become permanent battle lines.
 
Some things have difficult solutions, of course. But when both people keep digging in their heels, they are simply creating a frontline. And then another dynamic kicks in: one starts feeling that they are always the one giving in. Isn’t that unfair?
 
So the heels go deeper. More arms are added to the frontline.
 
And then the inevitable happens. One person begins to feel that they are always giving more. The uncomfortable truth is that, in most relationships, there will be an imbalance of sorts. One person will take more decisions; another will be more involved in the home; one may handle more of the finances. And there will inevitably be moments when one person has to take the majority of the important family decisions. Like it or lump it, that’s often the nature of relationships - working or personal.
 
The unfairness begins when you start keeping score. When the relationship becomes a place to prove who gives more, who sacrifices more, or who is the boss.
 
It rarely ends well.
 
Counsellors would grow hungry if all of this were revealed early enough in a session.
Because when all a person can see are the bad things in a relationship, they become completely blind to what drew them to each other in the first place.
 
And once that happens, the road to perdition is already well laid.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on broken hearts - 

A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt

When You Lose the Lover but Not the Love

I Walk Alone (wishing you were beside me)

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Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -

Adventure by Alexander Nakarada

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

Oh that delicious feeling of never getting out of bed. The battle within. Knowing that routine was king, and would win, because life is weaved around a framework, which urges disciple, and gives rewards, which are really life's gifts.
 
But once in a while, just sometimes, when the windows lay unopened, the curtains remain drawn, and the body pleads for respite, sometimes as a false alarm for rest, sometimes just for indulgence, sometimes as a mere call of indolence, we decide to give in. Without guilt. As a valid choice, as a happy choice without any value judgement.
 
Because life deserves the pause between moments, the lazy minute between two busy ones.
 
As our mind eases and slips into a peaceful penumbra, in that half-light of giving in, we, strangely, find answers to questions we might not have even asked. And we know, this is life too, that this too is important.
 
That between being busy and madness, this comma is the circlip which keeps us connected, springily, alive.
 
So - the world outside calls us into action, but for one brief morning we recognize that languor is just another way of belonging to the world.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mornings of our lives - 

Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks

Lovers in the Morning

A Morning Ramble in How Love is Rediscovered at the Bottom of Rubble

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Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
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

I am forever left bemused with how unprepared we are to the inevitable. And I talk not only of deaths, but consequences. For every action, thought, word of ours pushes the engine of our existence and our world forward.
 
A dear friend always chastises me when I say something dire, even when it is in jest. He then rattles off five examples of things which went wrong because someone spoke of them - maybe even merely thought them!!
 
But the lesson is subtle - and a lesson for life. The very basic tenets of Buddhist and Jain philosophy talk of 'good words, good action, good thought'. It is not said as a cliche or lightly, it is a truth, even if it is oft-spoken, sometimes reflexively. Because a lot of sorrow which we gather in our lives is because of what is said to us, and what we say and immediately regret.
 
Alas, nothing valuable in life, once lost, is ever retrievable. There is an inevitability. And it's our bane in life to carry with us in all the days left.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on noticing and observing - 

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

This Light Like Love

On Death (if it happens to stop by)

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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 -

Imagefilm033 by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Imagefilm033
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We carry so many stories inside us, which keep dying small deaths. Nobody to narrate them, often lying in the dungeons of memory, sometimes forced there, often simply ignored.
 
So much of what we are, and why we are what we are, are these stories. But we are afraid to tell them, often even as they are happening. Because we don't have safe zones in our lives. People who will not start looking at us differently when they discover something contrary to what they see us as.
 
And we live these lives of half truths, or full lies, and navigate our days with beatific smiles which have nothing to do what is going inside us.
 
The caveat is that sometimes we unravel. We either let go physically and find our emotions overflowing or anorexic. Or our minds split due to stress and we are rendered untethered, a psychological shadow searching for its host.
 
But do all our truths deserve the sun? Wouldn't it be chaos if we lay ourselves out bare and naked? Is it better to be true and friendless or halfway there but a part of a culturally acceptable reality.
 
That is where it is critical that we seek and keep safe places, people with whom we can be our worst selves, and we would know they would still love us even when we make it really hard to love us.
 
Because this is so rare, that's why we have people becoming liars or simply collapsing in their internal stress.
 
The only solution is to live a true life, as close to one's proclivities as possible and let the world know about it. What is inside is then outside. Nothing more nothing less.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on stories we tell ourselves - 

The Sublime in the Ordinary

I Don't Think Poetry Will Save Us. And Yet, and Yet...

Seasons as Consultations To Life

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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 -

Sehnsucht by Sascha Ende

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

So many people in good jobs and thriving businesses, find out, some day or the other, that they have lost their way. And frittered away life by focusing incessantly on a living. On the promise of a something-promise, a glittering, a destination, a kind of a fulfilment. Of course it is. It is a pursuit, a dream of so many. And we are blessed for anything which brings us our daily bread.
 
But after that?
 
Every life has an inflection point. A point of giving in, giving up, looking in, or simply pausing. Of realizing. That having only one precious life is about putting everything at stake, if we don't do what needs to be done.
 
But here's the kicker. We know - and still get bound. To the machinery which is sold to us as our saviour, our meaning, our definition.  We are marketed other people's dreams to be our own. But what does one do? We have to live, we have to eat.
 
But there are always escapes. As slivers, as days, as nights, as time stolen so we could be with ourselves. With our baggage, our broken dreams, our imperfections - but always aware that if we are alive, we have a chance to find what seemed - almost seemed - lost.
 

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

This Light Like Love

The Love of an Ordinary Life

A Child Mulling on Life Beside the Sea

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 -

Yesteryear's Decision by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Yesteryear's_decision
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license