Poetry

There is a certain
dexterity my diary holds
of frowning ironies and
gypsy butterflies.
With tragic notes like a
daily reminder from a suffering ‘Sylvia’,
and the harvest of words I reward myself with your spring beauty,
it suffocates and rejoices.

You don’t know even
half of your beauty
that resurrects the dead hearts
and resuscitates my old papers
dying below the weight of
everlasting winter flakes.
And my words don’t even know
half of the vocab to describe you
filling up the boring spaces between us
by holding the moon in a spoon.

My tongue lifts to trace
your essence in some
literal symbols
so tender to touch,
so far away like clouds
that fills up my sky
with their moving smiles
and opaque nature.
Making me wonder
if my words will ever be able
to penetrate you like
an holy attempt of sunshine.

Some days,
my diary holds
gape(s) and gasp(s)
and all sorts of drama
in Gothic style.
The other days
It produces a visual
of you as my new Lord
waiting to be worshipped.

I appear, my veil ugly
the gravity around me, uglier
knowing you love the outcasts.
I gaze at you
with fondness.
You look at me
with pitiful eyes.
But I know, I have words
And words will
take your heart away.

I would have choosen death
over sympathies, anytime
but knowing it’s you
I chose to live
And my mute book,
to scream your
appreciation in 26 letters
to pass on the stories
to our great-grandchildren
of how we met,
Because
There were only words,
words were all we had
to take our hearts away.

Love wins when
you see only love
and not abominations.

Someday somewhere,
sitting on the window side of a plane
my metal dreams would fly high donning a straw-hat and virgin cells
and
I wouldn’t regret my decision.

Somewhere leaving the iron gates of my heart ajar would let a stranger of a new city cross a threshold in a summery dress and I wouldn’t pine over taking off the veils.

Someday standing under an unknown tree with fresh honey and unpolluted wings, I won’t blame my ambitions like an angry Roman mob attempting to vent the frustrations out.

Someday my wild spirit wouldn’t be the murderer of my mere wants
and would show herself swinging up in the garden,
shaking hands with the wind and
exhausting every cell with delight.

Someday somewhere while building sandcastles I wouldn’t forget to include a swing set
so I could slope off the yard or an intangible syllable
wherever it’d get lonely.

Someday I’d stop proving myself to you in my mind and find an exit before a furious clock could hit three.

Someday you’ll choose me.
And so will I.

A name
your name
is such an intimate thing.
One that makes me ambitious
to call you with all my might,
with all my rights.
The passion hidden is fiery
like the chimney in my cottage
with the collected heat
touching every part of my being.
A throne, I’d rule half
and half in the vapor of dreams.
A fantasy drawn,
for I am a writer
who has the right
to get down at the wrong station
and vision the bright cheek
in the land of deserts
and kiss all the way.
A mirage of love
and your name as
a new city…

I am facing you,
yet again!

O Dear Summer!
Remember what we promised.

You’d let me
dance on a grass blade
and I will treat you
with ripe mangoes.
You’d let me bathe
in an orange light
on top of a sycamore tree
and I will arouse the
need of staying within you.
You’d sing to a hummingbird
to come and rest on my hand
and I will remove the synonym of
‘burn’ from your name.
You’d not instigate my
fossil memories like winters
and I will carry your mountains
until the Autumn arrives.
You’d touch my flesh
with a light breeze
and I will plant a bunch of Pansies
after naming you Spring’s sister.
When you shall love me
and I shall add you as my
‘things to do’ in all
the days to come in my life.

Remember we promised,
we’d feel each other
and you might burn my cheeks
with too much tenderness.
Remember we promised,
We’d keep each other company
and you might shine one more day
while counting dying breaths.

O Dear Summer!
Let’s meet over the hills.
Let’s meet in the backyard.
Let’s accept that we had been
in cold for far too long.
For,
it’s time for some blushing warmth.

©kanikachugh

She is nothing.
Nothing but a window
to your relatability,
‘cause you know
she leaves a part of herself,
in your jacket’s pocket
so you could keep your
hands warm a little longer.

She likes living on the edge.
A night with some satin dreams
and a drunken Sunday debauchery
dipped in the ink of suffocation
fueling her desire to drown or stay afloat.
It’s her ask that matters.
Like, the one who truly knows Art
has touched the highest level
of ecstasy or have swam in the deepest
oceans of melancholy believing
no one could save them
except maybe art,
maybe her.

She is a girl that deserves
Keanu Reeves of the world
but gets caught up in her head
after Jane Austen whispers
to get Mr. Darcy tattooed
on her collarbones
and then make her wear
buttoned-up, long checkered shirt
and she closes herself
like the last break-up
no one wants to talk about.

She wishes to travel back
to history so bad and become
an inspiration or a revolution
for Renoir’s ‘Impressionism’
or Gogh’s ‘Fauvism’
where the artist would run his
free strokes and strong colors
painting her aesthetic away.

Everything is a rhythmic
downpour of poetry for her.
Open trees passing by
from a train window,
pretty boxes of delivery,
crunchy pages of diaries,
an infant smiling,
green eyes of strangers,
tiniest grass sprouting
in her cemented balcony,
flowers on the sideways
pouting and demanding her
to be clicked. She listens to all.
She looks a little too
deeper in the eyes of her pet
just to understand a world
hidden beneath silent cries.

She can make friends
in a blink of an eye
but can’t handle the
awkwardness of the first meetings,
neither the discomfort of
visible distance with her old people.
So, she keeps jealousy in her side bag
existent but unnoticeable
and laughs louder just to prove
how their silly jokes
means world to her.
And she holds hand
just a bit tighter
announcing to her body
of the crime she’s about to
commit in keeping the ones closer
who are destined to leave.

In a world pressing to be unique
she becomes relatable
with every passing day.
The more she understands herself
the better she sees the human race.
The unprocessed, patchy race
whose thumbnails tell a different story
than they actually are.
In a world full of intellectuals,
she keeps looking for people
she can be silly with.

She dangles, in between
a timid Kdrama girl and
a badass one
not fitting fully in
either of the category well.
In between,
wanting to get on top
of everything and losing interest
in everything around
sitting in front of a fading fireplace
and singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’
in the faintest voice.

She wishes she could
erase the problems of all
When she can’t do
much for her own.

She is nothing special.
And if you will get to know
you will see either she’s nothing
or too special for the world.

Dreams doesn’t have to reside
up in the clouds.
It could be in smiles or pictures,
in tinkling of wind chimes, or guffawing thresholds
that announces the arrival of someone your eyes awaited this long.

And when the great souls die,
they die of diminishing pride
and a meek voice
after being unheard for years.
They die of missing days of splendor
riding along with the wind on their best horses
and the next moment of grief,
by digging graves of their friend.
They die of frustration,
who once always held the steering wheel
now sit at the backseat
whose opinions do not matter anymore.
They die thinking how sunsets are real
and everything goes down because
it’s a beautiful fantasy only
at the peak of life.
They die of unending winter every night
and spring escaping from their clasp
when the sun doesn’t shine the next day.
The great souls die every day
when their madness is killed or curbed
with a ginger-lemon tea in hands
and “washed-up artist” or
“not good enough” stamp on foreheads.
The world says “You are too much”
but they remember what Nietzsche will say
“There is always some madness in Love
But there is also always
some reason in madness.”

They die, while breathing,
after losing their muse who guided
them how to love and live this life.

The blank pages are my sin.
Bookshelves my cemetery
and poetry, the way I die.

I sit down to carve the most intricate lines my paper had ever felt. I follow and follow the long tunnels of my imagination where I have this artistic light locked in my fist yet I run as if it’s too far from my reach.

Every time I set my eyes on a yellow leaf, cerulean sky, or a half-baked moon, I hoard all aesthetic souvenirs and dump them in my side pocket only to rush back home and draw all I can through my pounding heart.

In a world full of despair, distress, and stone faces, I wish to reach hearts through art. I wish to capture unlimited sky on a tip of my pen that sends everyone home with each word they read. I wish to tell a lonesome canvas how it can attract the attention of million eyes by letting me in. I’d be proud if I could turn a war-leftover stained glass into an essential part of an incomplete sculpture. I wish I could mix colors in the pouring rain and with every droplet touching them, igniting the power of love instead of hatred. I wish to create a fine masterpiece persuading people to live and die only when they are granted a grave. Never before that.

But when I sit down to produce such a knockout craft, I fail. It feels it’s never enough. There is always something missing. A single piece hiding in the corner, smirking at my quarter-poems and smudged outlines. Probably one day when I am older and freer like a child I will cover the world in my canvases.  

“When I am an old woman I shall let my art paint me through their mysterious strokes.”

©kanikachugh