Poetry

To be excessively creative, you’ve got to deal with the mess.

A long time ago there were 2 friends, a writer, and a painter. Both were equipped with exquisite taste, talent, and were well-known connoisseurs of their art. One painted a world of luminant imagination and the other gave flavored words to the world. One day they made a bet. The painter said,
“I would love to know what influences the world more- my vivid colors or your moving words?” to which his writer friend willfully agreed.

The painter painted the most extraordinary piece of fine art, something even he was really proud of. The writer friend wove the most beautiful words for the painting describing each visual like a strand of gold.
They both put an exhibition and asked people to share their thoughts. Some liked the painting more and some dotted over the words chosen to describe the painting. At the end of the day, it turned out both of them got equal votes for their craft. The friends agreed that both painting and the writing had the power to move the world but still there were some blanks in their hearts they couldn’t fill even after the exhibition.

They were almost on the verge of calling the day off and the writer friend was wrapping everything up that he saw the last person who came to their exhibition. The writer saw from afar, an old man hugging the painting and shedding tears of joy.

The painter friend came back running to his friend when the writer said,
“I know you won. That guy bought your painting, isn’t it?”
To which the painter replied,
“Yes, he certainly did. The old man hugged the painting because he was so moved by those words which made him remember his golden childhood days. He was blind, he couldn’t see my colors but when I read the scroll out loud he broke into tears. It were your words that painted the image in his heart to which he cried for.”
“I asked him purposely if he wanted the painting. The old man said the soul resides in the words how he could separate it from the colorful portrayal of it. Then, I asked if he only wanted the written scrolls? He said those words would lose meaning if weren’t aligned with the masterpiece that comes alive under the sky of expression, so he bought both; my colors and your words.

So you see, neither I nor you won. And, if you ask me who won. It’s ‘The Art’.

Our Art and everyone else’s that struck us like comets of enlightenment, of safe-haven, unending epilogues, like a gush of windy imagination, a language of love, the pilgrimage of emotions. It passes us or sometimes stays in our lives and we simply can’t turn away from their beauty for it takes us to another world that seems unearthly while our feet touching the ground.
So my friend here’s to being a part of building different and unique perceptions of this universe.”
And they both cheered.

It rained today
and I went a little tipsy.
Sloshed under the influence
of my liquor-coated old diary
when those words had me smiling.

I sat under a little parasol
where the rays of sun faded
just like my senses.
Tiny droplets roared at me
for my teacup-sobriety,
half-dreamt,
non-frightening,
easily-achievable goals.

Splashes of rain scattered all over
hitting me hard with whisky-fied realities
“If your dream ain’t scaring you
it ain’t a ‘dream’ enough”
Written in bold letters
in my boozed up diary.

Where’s the sense for
being in senses at all times.
Your imperfect pipe-dream craziness,
uncontrollable thread of imagination,
a conscience full of ideas,
a craving to build something
is what makes you, you.

It’s better to be drunken
enough in your blazing dreams
than to sail sober in the same waters
sprouting drudgery work
and routine-y results.

Rains drew in the curtains
leaving the reasonable world out
to reach my half-sewed,
legless dreams
wanting to reach
to its zenith.

You might say
that I’m broken
but even my splinters
dipped in poetries,
can inject the
life back into you.

To the one who’s afraid of taking risks/ or changes happening around. I know you must have felt overwhelming by all those people who seem to have understood life like the back of their hand and you are still figuring out what music you want to listen to right now — Finding undefined comfort in your non-escapism.
You want to try new songs but end up listening to the same one because of the familiarity it provides. I know we get so attached to our safe places, our refuge that changing even the sleeping-bed troubles us. At the same time you admire people who are always willing to take risks, the boldness to accept or rather bring the change.
What if I told you, you already are on the brink of glass full of risks all the time. The first time you walked you risked yourself getting hurt. The first time you held a cutter/knife you risked yourself getting a cut. When you went outside you risked yourself getting into an accident. See, you always had it in you, an indescribable courage of overcoming the fear. You got so accustomed of the previous activities that you didn’t realise the soreness of the thoughts you used to had before. Because now it isn’t new. It’s familiar even though risky. You are much more than you think. Take one step further each time and see how wonderfully you’ll be surprising yourself.

September arrived like
two patrolling cars to comfirm
if I am still a criminal.
And my salty eyes gave away.
Yes, I am fugitive who still runs away from the feeling of lonesome,
from the unacceptability that it’s belongingness has been uprooted.
Like a twig whose Tree has been lost
like a tongue who lost its taste buds,
like a guitar whose strings stopped producing melodies
like an invisible faded light of a tea-candle
in a sky full of trembling fireworks.

September inspects the universe I created
of self-fulfillment, of gratification
and catching me red-handed with
a black hole of anxiety that kept forming
in a middle of my saviour cosmos
gradually engulfing my nerves to glory
bringing me back to a virtual reality
like someone who lost his lover to amnesia.
The one that existed and didn’t
at the same time.

Does getting older makes you
more honest
or better at hiding?

• 

I am that little explorer who loves exploring everything. Like the corners of the house abandoned for years, like the vases left untouched forming a dust-shadow at the bottom just to see if there is anything new I’d found in it which once held beautiful flowers, like examining the old toys or board games to astonish myself and how could one come up with this idea. I want to explore the childhood of my grandparents to know were they born  wise & old unlike me who somewhat begrudgingly, blame the self for failing to accept the societal norms.
When on a trip, I like exploring those thick woods or scarcely lit paths which are strictly forbidden but everyone wants to sit at one place because they are tired. For me, I get tired of monotony, tonelessness and fear of not exploring anything new. What do I say, danger allures me like a bait to a fish. Ready to die but not ready to extinguish my thirst to know more, to know why has it kept at bay. I keep staring at birds, sometimes from afar, if only I could understand them my world would have been different or perhaps it still can be if they would accept me as their own because I’m a nomad too with invisible wings who can’t settle at one place, who wants to travel far and new places everyday the moment the dawn breaks on you. I keep mixing some odd colors with a locked hope of creating a brand new one – the shades, the hues that are already invented are now settled in their life so there’s got to be more. The tinge and the undertones that wants to be found, to be understood.

You see all these stuff makes me stand out. Sometimes a loner, sometimes an ignorant, sometimes a rebellion, sometimes a weirdo but I call it knowing the roots of life. So when a storm hits, those trees can re-grew itself because they know their roots.

Have you ever met someone who was murdered in cold blood, veins popped out, death clock dancing on their head yet revived without any prayers? You meet it everyday. Your ever so beating, ever so throbbing, blazing heart.

A simple token of appreciation might not compensate the numbness, the sufferings, the cold nights it went through over the years. The chaos of silent thoughts, the endless worries in slumber-less nights have a peculiar way to putting the heart at the precipice of life where it shrinks in fear, gets paranoid over sedated emotions, stifling the insomniac doubts that it feels like bursting out and jumping off the cliff of voidness yet you find it beating hard the very next morning.

A facade to fool that you are intact with brokenness as a distant relative.

The world is a strange place. It poisons us with lies rubbing against our own lips, tricking us into the shenanigans of always(s) and forever(s) and when we start to believe this butter-coated little prisons we realise we are already trapped in now. And what cripples us, is the condition that we could fly away from all this only if our wings weren’t clipped.

Those wings are present, always there with us. But we are tormented to believe that our wings were ravaged while fighting the war and had been snatched away from us.

In those conflicts, standing at the crossroads our hearts has some humongous bravery in choosing a path called ‘moving on’ and closing the gates (a straight doorway of relapsing) of ‘closer’ whether we got it or not.

The heartbreaks, the first time you left your childhood home, moving to a school where you are lot less loved or paid attention to, witnessing the first death in the family, the first time realising you aren’t born gifted and your parents silently adore other children, betrayals from friends, family or lovers, someone else’s anger when directed to you, toxic and demotivating people around, abandonment issues, acceptability issues and a lot lot more this heart goes through.

The pain you needed to grow,
The pain you never needed to stay traumatized for years to come- the heart takes all.

It heals. It keeps on healing and sometimes they’re wounds or pain it never recovers from yet it finds a way of dealing with it everyday. Through daily chores, through menial work, through day-to-day businesses, in consistent patterns, until it finally finds a day where it rests. Gives itself a break, a vacay until the next cycle of uncertainties begins.

So, these words are dedicated to a healing heart for being so strong and brave. Pat yourself for being courageous and valiant sustaining all that you are going through. 

Let’s just say, I’m proud of the way you’re holding up lately.

Maturity is making peace with the fact that even your closest friends depart from your life. And it sucks no less than any breakup.

I see you
sipping coffee
adjusting to the world
pockets perfectly covering the pain
as if lyrics of an old song aren’t commited to memory.

It takes me every ounce of my strength to gulp down the discomfort and write what I had been hiding under the blanket of gutless defeats.

There had been plenty of eclipses I have been covering under the silhouette of my smile when I found being over-shadowed by my brimming fear for not raising a voice against a bully.

I hung myself like a canvas on a ruined easel and let them sketch rough, furrowed lines, painting me a filthy face. A clear reflection of theirs and I spent years accepting bullets from my mad thoughts who never stopped watching  me, like pain was what I was supposed to feel at all times.

Jealousy was like getting entangled in a string leading to a massive knot in an un-preserved, unhealthy bonds when I thought I was weaving honeyed chits and sweet letters for my friends. Their enviousness over my skin color was far more dominant than my attempts of chasing cotton clouds with them.

I, a sad coward who couldn’t cut ties for the fear of being lonely and re-living the memories of self-made prisons; from where I watched those friends painting happy towns with others yet I waited for their feet to march back to me as a last resort. The apologies that I never gave to my ignored self snowballed over time taking away my own warmth.

My fading self that was angry, sad whose simple desires were mocked, summer dreams crushed in validation,
still challenges me with the same mouth and silently judges me for my wimpiness.

Sometimes, when I am well adjusting to this world, kissing away the fine wine, running on the shores with a blended sunshine with brave, proud feet- it takes a moment to throw me back to those years when those feet tip-toed flinchingly at the thought of being abandoned.
And it says
I see you