poem

To the poet in me…

Posted on by Kanika

To the poet in me

Let the words find you,
Let the verses amuse you.
Let the metaphors play hide and seek
and when you’re about to give up,
they come running to you like a long lost lover.

Don’t try too hard, Poet.
let the world make love with you
in a desperate attempt to be in your art.
That when you’re gazing at an object
let it stare back so it can show off its beauty.
The desk,
the drawers,
the curtains,
the night lamp
Even in a constricted room
they are seeking your attention,
like an unprepared sculpture
seducing it’s master to be carved in prose.

Let them discover you.

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My Summer Poem

Posted on by Kanika

Warm and sweet like Summer Rain,
Your touch brushes against the tips of an intrinsic soul.
Like the lake that glowed at the ‘Happening.’
Happening of Sun breaking through the thick clouds.
Running along the field full of beautiful daisies.

Occurrences of my dormant, leftover emotions sprouting.
With the rest of the contents of uneasiness in the
bucket sliding down.

Innocence sinking it’s teeth into your charm;
The way one scoops out the largest chunk of a mango
and keeps it on the tongue
relishing the taste of a long lasting snack.

You’re the summer, the meadow, the blossom I forgot to wait for
yet you arrive in time.
You’re like my Summer Poem.

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Happy National Poetry Writing Month 🌷

Posted on by Kanika

Poetry isn’t about beautifying the words;

It’s about stripping off its thick cover and
appreciating the rawness.

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An Ordinary Day

Posted on by Kanika

It was an ordinary day with
people busy in their lives.
A man running to grab a taxi,
a formally dressed lady hopping into her car in haste,
that pretty Aunt we have known our whole life
carefully rotating ‘Open’ sign in her flower shop
with her blossoming smile reading ‘Everyone Deserves Flowers’,
Our society’s famous grandpa out on his walk.
Looking at people the same way I am doing.
perplexed,
where everyone is going in a hurry.

Something my father before and now I witnessed;
an old lady, without fail, for 30 years
coming out to feed the birds, stray dogs, and stray cats all separately.
Those stray animals infamously known to bite strangers
easily calm down beside her.
A language of love? May be

The balloon seller coming and standing at
the same spot he had been for years
in scorching heat,
in heavy rains,
in harshest winters.
But it’s an ordinary day, isn’t it?

A middle-aged guy passing smile to everyone going by.
I thought he didn’t have any job
since he met with an accident years ago
rendering him helpless (my perception)
and restricting him to wheel-chair.
I recently came to know he’s a good painter
and he likes to smile at everyone who passes by.
It’s an ordinary thing, right?

His subtle way of saying don’t take life for granted
You have no idea how blessed you’re with your body intact.

He is waving and smiling at me now.
No, I don’t wish to smile.
I feel tired.
My soul feels tired.
but unknowingly my mouth curves up.

Well, it doesn’t hurt to smile.
It doesn’t feel like a burden as I thought it would be.

It sucks when I am not using some 40 odd muscles to laugh
because after doing so
I don’t feel that bad.
I believe it is an ordinary thing.
Anything would rot if not used for a while.

I walk up to him asking what is he painting today.
He says just ordinary things.
“a lady feeding the animals,
an old man walking alone,
a poor man selling happiness to little kids and
a girl sitting and staring at everyone like it’s the end of the world.
It’s not. It’s just an ordinary day
with people doing extraordinary things every day.”

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My heart in isolation

Posted on by Kanika

A broken heart is usually mended in isolation.
Like Bukowski said.
“You get so alone at times that it just makes sense”
At 3:45 am, I’m
waiting for the morning to come
waiting for the night to end
waiting for my heart to mend.
It all makes sense;
the things I’m drawn to
the people I wanna answer back to
the searches on internet I wanna go through.

I read about writers.
I read what they went through.
I read they all weren’t accepted the way they were supposed to.
Why does it feel familiar?
From where did
Plath, Woolf, Bronte, Bukowski
find words to let them swallow whole
or to swallow us whole?
Where did they hide themselves?
that they outshone everyone.

These are the places I go to
in isolation.
These are the people I re-visit
in isolation.
My heart aches from the hurt
and eagerly wants to find shelter from that pain.
Words make sense sometimes,
and sometimes they don’t.
My fingers itch to write more
but can never catch up with my mind
Or the heart
Not sure where are these words and thoughts coming from?

In isolation, I see my real self
Unprepared, unveiled, angry
because my own heart betrayed the rules and is aching more than it was supposed to.
It exposes a layer of vulnerability
to be cut through and dig out
the trash to be thrown away.

My heart wants to sing melodies of well-being
My heart wants to dance on the tunes of contentment and bliss.
My heart wants to drink and trip over to the seventh heaven.
My heart isn’t sure if it needs any ‘him’ or ‘her’ but
It, so ,freakishly, wants to be mended.
At times, my heart gets so tired of the hurt.
That even the excruciating pain isn’t able to make it suffer anymore.

~~ My heart in isolation

©kanikachugh

2 Comments

Listerners

Posted on by Kanika

The more I wanted to
scream my pain out,
The better listener I became.
Thinking how badly
others would have wanted it too.

~ to pour it all out.

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The Rock

Posted on by Kanika

I am sure
I saw fear in his eyes,
but I was prepared to knock him down.

That first thrash hit him hard
then the second thrash,
the third,
the nth….
he still stood tall and proud.

My throbbing, powerful waves
kept lashing into him.

He was a ‘rock’.
But I believe
had a heart of a marshmallow
for he never
avenged me
for my behavior.
Sadly, he knew how ‘hurt’ works.

I had seen some humans crying for the very same reasons at my shore.

~ Rocks they seem but they do get hurt.

____________________________________________

Strong people aren’t good at showing their pain but are often misread as someone who stays unaffected all the times.

Never push a kind person beyond the limits. Once built, their walls would be impossible to impregnate.

3 Comments

Stillness

Posted on by Kanika

My breath seems like
coming to a stand-still
while it is stitching hatred
to my worn-out lungs.
In some mysterious ways
asking to stop sucking in air,
while I still pursue to live.

My grit decomposing and
breaking-up into tiny pieces of
horrendous curses I want to
cast upon people,
reeking of self-doubt
and deteriorating courage;
determined to cut my own wings
while I sew them back
with a needle of my diminished valor.

The claws of spiteful death
contracting over my burdened shoulders
and trying to separate
my already-extinguished soul
from my dispassionate body
while I try to set poor memories on fire
to stay warm and in this world.

The dust around my hands
reminding me of endless tortures
for stretching too far
for the undeserving ones
that each cell, each tissue,
the fiber, the skin
burnt in agony and finally turning into ashes
while I still touch memoirs of recollecting past
to feel those hands.

With Life turning my divine light
into pitch dark clouds
raining melancholy and doomed fate
while I am still trying to find my shining star
to create rainbows of faith and
thrive alongside Nature.

In the stillness of my calm, continuous efforts
I fought something I never knew
existed.
A monster devouring my senses, crushing the freshness of Life and
royally residing inside my head.

I grew a new seed of belief and hope.
Everyday!
The belief of being bigger than this monster,
The seed filling the vastness of the void
with each blooming leaves and flowers
to water my own growth.

It took me long enough
to light the lamps of confidence
and taking back the reins in my hands
instead of being controlled and
that is how I empowered myself.

3 Comments

Warmth

Posted on by Kanika

For the mornings so cold
Keep the heart that warms.

Like the sun warming up
the hidden
hard to reach
coldest places
through the crevices
carved out
by Nature
for the winters
to not be too harsh.

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Fall…

Posted on by Kanika

I wandered in my
own denial
when those edgy skies
hinted way before.
Those shoulders I underused,
those hands retreated fairly quickly
when I wanted to hold them longer,
those smiles praising the other,
those lips stopped enchanting my name;

I had to let go
like shattered dying leaves.
I took the fall for being the flawed one
sucking the breaths out of me.
I kept descending until I reached
Nature’s lap.

Only to realise
all I ever needed was
to trust the process.
I never knew I’d bloom again
after a terrible fall.

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