Poetry

Growth is subjective, isn’t it? Probably, like everything else in the world if we go by all the opinions. There is a tremendous pressure on growing up all the time and is usually measured on how much of a successful adult you become and yes success, most of the time, in this world refers to the size of your house (not the heart), a better car (not peace of mind), a stable job (because less money- a big no), married and kids (else you are just wasting life and are a bullheaded to have been focused on career).

This gave me all the more reason to dive into growth subsets. Growing up clearly means –

mature decisions (becoming magically decisive after crossing a certain age),
magnificent social skills (when all you did in yesteryears was to curl up in your bed with a book or favorite TV series),
an impeccable resilience (gone are the days when you used to hide your face in your mom’s bosom and miraculously problems disappeared),
extreme resourcefulness (how come you are not adding any advantage to your country or family, or relatives, job, neighbors, planet, aliens, multi-verses AT THIS AGE? How is it possible that you are not being resourceful – C’mon You are a grown-up),
an undying creativity (well, how else would you show to others you can earn and also keep a great passionate hobby in your side-pockets? How else would your younger siblings/cousins consider you a role model? That’s important too you now, to build a reputation, to see yourself from other’s eyes. Who cares what you thing about yourself?),
steely confidence (this must be a given one. You have got education; you have given presentations. The basic thing you would have learned is being confident. You can’t waver, you should be clear about your path, and you have to be ready to face your challenges on your own).

Growing up means an imbalance division of expectations. You have to have lesser than the bare minimum while the other side keeps getting heavier with every turn in life and talking about that heaviness is what is mocked off here and hence no one openly talks about.

Like, you wanted to remind your friend of the movie night you planned long ago when he/she changed the plans at the last moment adding a bitter suffix of ‘Grow-up’, making you feel smaller than ever.

“It’s natural to have change in plans. The least you can do as a friend is try an understand me and if you cannot then Grow-up!”

And what would you ever say to refute this statement? That I do not have many friends and sort of depend on you to have peaceful fun night without much drama. That it takes every ounce of my energy to prepare myself hanging out with someone who doesn’t consider me a burden. That I wish I could talk to at least one person of how weight is pulling me down and all I needed was a one good listener. Probably afterwards, I would been okay. But what you manage to say,

“I am sorry. Carry on. We will plan some other time.”

I don’t know. Is saying ‘sorry’ at the right time called growing up? And who knows what ‘the right time’ is, when it’s again subjective.

I love how we humans glorify the endings,
with a stale narrative of how those can be beautiful.

How fragile the limbs are when they freeze
in knee-covered snow upon realising that
the creepers of farewells are getting
heavier and almost touching the ground.

How plagiarized is ‘sunsets are beautiful’
because the endings are ugly and quiet
and heavy and usually dark before the dawn.

It ends.
Everything ends
or we end up leaving.
Fireflies don’t stay for long,
blessings wear off,
intimacy fades away,
hopes are swallowed by anxieties,
horizons get covered by nervous spilled-paints.
It climaxes, so it can begun again.

But we writers or artists are so loudly
consumed by our emotions that the only
way out we fabricate is to keep falling in
the circles of life till the flames of our
planet keep igniting us from its core.

I punctured
his head
with caution
and hauled out
the dripping
red heart
like a bread
freshly out
of the oven.
Strange!!
his heart
held so
much warmth
and yet
so cold.

©kanikachugh

• 

I have survived another summer.
I believe I deserve some perks
of sighting exclusive brittle skies and
extra candies of courage you
keep in your side pockets.

I adore you,
for not only being my month
but for the audacity of making
mortal surroundings around change
and to show their true colors.

Leaves fall and my fingers
camp around the handle
of a tea mug placing my bulky
thoughts on a window sill.
My poetries rhyme with
an amber view of art outside
with an orange blanket to
mourn the dead leaves.

You disclose unsullied hope
like freshly painted graffiti walls.
And I being an ardent art lover
quickly buy your bouquet of transformation.
A spectacular change I try
to stretch in my own work.
I know what a horrible
businesswoman I would make of myself.
Do I want to sell tales
and keep buying the inspiration?

Being the last third in number
you make me anxious.
Like those tragic stories of which
the end I know but watch it to
grieve their doomed sunsets before time.
And I wish not to dim blur before time,
before meeting you.
There is a bridge I cross
from January to September
praying to keep my sunsets
and moonrises sharp till
October arrives.
Probably, the only Goodbye I ever
want to bid is in the times of
thousands pumpkins, ghosts
and romances of October eve(s).

Your brownish daylight makes me
hop on a carrier to feed wanderlust.
A flaming-red dream teases and
starts dancing on the edges of my uneasiness.
Like lemon juice dominating
on the crunchy sides of my tongue
twitching away my sad pages,
and reviving my senses.

You are those Friday Nights
I don’t ever want to die away.
Beginning and ending of gold moments.
Just like you!

A picture-perfect month,
I welcome you, knowing
I survived another summer
and will do so again
because

Dear October,
your crisp beauty makes me believe in Magic.

The lines in my hand are aggressive.
They have this criss-cross fights
against the others.

Some put up well,
Some mark a scar,
Some lie lifelessly.

Stranger’s eyes read them and
predicts the life I’ll live in future.
Sometimes I’ll put up well, sometimes
I’ll have to earn scars and other times
I will just lie there blandly giving
up on the reasons to fight for.

But as I said, these are aggressive
wrinkles I inherited directly from
those whose grip never dwindled
from their swords.

Sometimes I like the noises around,

It makes me feel less lonely.

It breaks my heart when I witness no one nowadays can talk about how loneliness kills you from inside. The moment your truth is released from the clutches of a rib-caged heart and lands on the soft tip of your lips, you are bombarded with thousands of scriptures written anonymously on how to love thyself. And anyone who had truly known self-love would know how authentic loneliness is. Self-love is about acceptance of whatever you had been feeling. It’s the courage you develop over the years of trembling and tumbling that loneliness is as true of an emotions as happiness, and you must be okay to face it.
If day exists how can one deny the existence of night. You need a torch light especially walking on a dark path and without its existence the light would lose its meaning. I have seen so many people feeling it, agreeing along with movie dialogue’s but never admitting to it. The fear, the fear that you feel lonely can make people judge you so harshly, that the easy way is to shut the mouth, shut the soul who feels it, shut the mind that reminds it.
This saddens me to the core how disposable human’s feelings have become. We humans were meant to feel everything and then walking on a path of deciding which one to feed more to keep us going but what do we do, we filter out on the basis of pretending eyes. Eyes which were shrieking of parallel vulnerabilities but wearing blinkers of lies of what they had been feeling all this time.

This is true, loneliness doesn’t mean you don’t have people around, it means you don’t have right set of people around but sometimes even if you have, even if you love yourself it crowns you like a melancholic demon. It’s one of the emotion like others. You are allowed to feel it and all you have to do is not get consumed by this demon.
But how sad it is to not being able to share it with anyone when maximum of the population goes through the same emotion.
If you have one person to whom you can say
‘i am not okay’
‘i am feeling lonely’
and that person just hears you out with no judgements or counseling then you are luckier than you think.

I had started the path of becoming like that person long ago, and I hope I reach there one day.

While you carry the entire
world on your shoulders;
There is a tiny being
preparing herself to be
your support system
even before you get older.

That tiniest version of
your authentic self,
making sure you never
give up on your self-belief(s).

Goodness in her eyes
purity in mind;
Those little feet
gives you the wings to fly.

They so much become like you
yet so much challenge you
and sometimes, even
protect you like you’d do.

A best friend you receive
directly through the heavens.

The next person
who’d be your backbone
after your mother;
is your own daughter.

If ever I got a chance
to pick a magical object
at the pawn shop then it
would be a crescent blade
that can cut off pain
from the happy memories.

I had tried and tried so hard
but had not been able to
re-live the flakes of moments
without dissing myself
and throwing into the pit of
overgrowing melancholy.
I wondered the poetry
I exhaled is a cure
of a damaged heart
but all it did was
gracefully become
an active volcano
exploding to an extent
that numbed my sensory organs
and showed me a naked
truth of poems being
a catalyst in crackling fire in me.

A part of me is holding back tears
as though these have found a
permanent home in me.
My hands clench in a fist so those
tears have a shrinking companion
when my body stands stubborn as hell.
What has gotten into me that every
breath I heave feels like it’s dissipating
from under a large boulder placed
on top of my lungs?

My toes have a funny way of pulling
itself in and out before it places it’s
foundation on a doormat of my heart;
that has been wet for so long and no
one had cared enough to dry it for me,
not even I, myself.
Probably, the tears I hold back has an
empty sense to rhythm with a clear sky
turning it into thunderous monster rain.

Does my sanity keeps touching the ground
to know if I’m still present in this world?
Or is it another episode of deja-vu
where my insanity reminds me of a barren
mind I possess?

Poetry is what we give back after consuming art for years.