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Waiting
People drift. Love leaves home. Life becomes a refugee. We become migrants in our own cities. What brought two people together often becomes the reason which tears them apart. Poetry is often a glue, often it it only a record-keeper. Often it is a bystander, checking out its own pulse. And the two who loved how poetry defined them, find the suburbs of love - where they finally have to settle - to be boring brick-laden homestays. So much of love - as of life - are the boring intermezzos. When definitions of everything get recreated inside endless vistas of nothingness. What survives is cacti, or becomes prickly like it. Our best selves dry out. And we become our worst versions. We are very rarely sensitive enough to know how we have regressed, how we have devolved. We see our sunburnt smiling faces in the mirror, and then go cursing into the arena of life, desperate for distraction, despairing to know where we'd gone wrong. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on relationships which are adrift - Finding Myself Beyond You Living Inside a Wound Perpetrators & Victims of Love 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 - Sayan 21112020 by Sayan Mukherji
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So Tonight That I Might See You
Relationships often run their course. But we don't. And I'm both heartbroken and frustrated at the phenomenon. As I try to decipher the possibility of a rich life, now existing as an afterlife. It's not a question of toxicity setting in, but of a river in full spate disappearing into an arid empty bed. And I ask - why do we hold onto relationships which subtract us as human beings? Because what doesn't lift us, diminishes us; what doesn't inspire us, enslaves us; what doesn't make us see the best of what we are, curdles us. But. We hold onto these because we are prisoners of affection, of a history which often consists of laying bare our soul, of being conjoined at the hip in adventures which defined us, of seeing the world through each other's eyes. And then we see this world of two collapse. There could be too many reasons for any one even deserving a stating. Human nature - both in its proactive compulsions and reactive idiocy - is the same in its self-destructive propulsion. We lose our direction because someone is unfaithful; we lose our head because someone has decided to determine our future; we disengage because someone doesn't think our advice deserves attention. Now, facing the world with dread because of an acidic relationship, makes us smaller versions of ourselves, making us give little of what we are capable of. Because we are affected by what is infinitesimal in infinity's scheme of things. And we go into a state of statis. In purgatory, araf, bhuvar-lok. Forever in limbo. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems of when love is forever grey - Finding Myself Beyond You Here We Are in the Years Living Inside a Wound 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 - The Children of MH17 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/the-children-of-mh17 Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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The Morning After
What did my palms come to know what did my skin feel what did my eyes own as I transversed universes as I clasped light conscious we are captive of time and age held together in ways undefinable on the wings of unsaid hope, possibilities held as a moment's gift who are we if not fools holding love as a talisman a bushel of kisses as proof that when all fails there's a touch which knew as we other our other worlds as we hold love-bites as we withhold wounds as we travel our bodies knowing there is life knocking incessantly on the door and there is time time only for one last kiss one last look If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on ways of lovemaking - Of Rain-Engulfed Rooms and Lovers in Spate Her Breasts as Shelter Your Body is a Truth 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 - True Summer Love by musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/true-summer-love Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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Finding Myself Beyond You
Someone said something very telling the other day. In a court of law, the criminal knows he's the one, the accuser knows the criminal is the one. So in the scheme of things, it's actually only the judge who is being judged. I was reminded of this when I realized that our relationships are intrinsically not of the other, but about us - the person in front of us is a mirror in which we can see ourselves. A friend, spouse, lover, stranger, colleague - they will always be who they are. We can come to them as wrecking balls or have the sensitivity to see them as messengers who help us know ourselves, just by being who they are. It's then very simple to realize that our impatience for people to change is merely our message to ourselves to reexamine who we are. The paradox is that once we change, people around us do too. They need to have the confidence of our intent, that what they see as the realized us is an inside-out phenomenon, and not cosmetic change. Of course, there are the outlier cases, of the obstinate or the evil, of the irreparably hurt or the irredeemably wounded. Often these are the relationships we need to step away (run away?) from. When you can't change the world, change worlds. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on forked ways of loving - Here We Are In The Years Living Inside a Wound I Come With Mud 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 - Andromeda by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Andromeda Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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I Heard The Other Day
So much of our time is spent in yearning. A slow despair of knowing life is slipping by, and of somehow not being able to wrap our arms around its fullness. Of, time and again, sinking our fingers into something we see as compressible but finding mere nothingness. Of having touched love, but having lost it before experiencing its infinite lushness or its prickly pleasures. Because through love, we know how we are given this limited-edition life but often just lose the opportunity of making something worthwhile of it. It's worse when we see the copiousness we have lost being embraced instinctively by those who we've jettisoned in our myriad journies. Even as we live our sad life in a minuscule corner of the universe, with our bag of barrenness. What is this depth of relationship, which is often close in definition to depth of life? It could take on so many forms. But each has to do with immersion. What probably lasts in us at the cellular level is being fully with the person we love, when we are with them. In conversations, in silences, in disagreements, whilst grieving, when in joy. As close as possible physically, as much in soul when not. The importance is the intermeshing. Of being so close that we are able to experience each other's breath. Because relationships show us the way to life. The way to immersion. Because in that lies the way to our sense of immortality. Which might not be what we want - but which gives us the satisfaction that we've lived life to its very lees. And in love, as in life, this often means turning back to what we've left, or letting go of what merely shines, or of just sinking deeper into the present because that is all that we have. This could lead to infinite joy, or depthless grief. But, ultimately, it would be giving our infinite to the only thing we possess - the moment in which we breathe. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on yearning in love - Here We Are in The Years Return To You Tenderly 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 - Childhood by Sascha Ende Lonely Bird Instrumental by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Childhood Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/lonely-bird-instrumental Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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