Uncut Poetry

Animals hunt to fill their stomachs. Humans do so for power and greed. And when they possess weapons of destruction, they think themselves to be invincible.   It's easy to say it's primordial, part of the ancient blood running in our veins, but it's also civilizational. Of having - or not having - a spiritual foundation, a religion which teaches inclusion and diversity, and not harp on a supreme monotheism.   The urge to convert, failing which to conquer, is the legacy of our flawed religious leaders, who were products of their time, and constructed manuals chocobloc with their fears, flaws and aneurysms of the times.   And they forced humanity to see divine in the monstrous.   And the moral underpinnings of every endeavour thus became vitiated and compromised.   And when men gave into their basest inclinations to acquire and rule, to preen and show, all hell broke loose. Under the guise of righteousness, they found justification to bring destruction, mayhem, deaths.   Alas, that is the legacy we will leave behind on this earth, which some day or the other we are bound to destroy - the proverbial cutting the branch on which we sit. Because with hubris comes the suicidal instinct, of so-called glory above all else, justification above logic, of allowing ourselves to be destroyed as collateral damage just to prove a point of our invincibility.   A simple fact. There's never going to be peace on this earth. Men, religion and hubris will justify every vile crime done against humankind on this earth. Till we are all wiped off.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the miseries and damage of war -  Sounds of the Living and the Dead For Anyone Who Bleeds Will We Ever Trust the Skies Again Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Evacuation by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/evacuation Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Words are all what we have, to conjoin or to distance each other, what can make the difference between making a bridge to cross differences, or to find dissonance to deepen chasms. Who are we if not the stray remark which hurt or the heartfelt apology which redeemed. Love finds its bedrock in the glad word: beyond the body pheromones is the reality of the feeling, the thought enunciated in ways which lays bare the truths of a person.   We are known (and too often judged) by what we say, because that is what mirrors our innermost beings, because that is what gets people to recognize what we feel, what we think, what the truths of our being are.   What else is there? How else can we tell someone we agree with them, that what we think is what is, that we can think the way we can think, that the depths in our beings is greater than what is ostensibly visible. That we like someone, that we sense a chemistry, that, yes, we may be in love.   But love, ah. That can have its own language.   Because so much of our relationship is not only what is said, but also how it is said. The innocuous remark with a particular tone, an expressionless declaration, a stray sentence, a throwaway statement, a simple reply laden with feeling.   Yes. The language of expression and silence and adoration which comes out of a person's very being - in the eyes, in touch, in the presence and in the absence. How, only too often, in love, words fail, but even then the message gets conveyed. Because, sometimes - only sometimes - wordlessness is the most powerful language possible. Being in love does put paradoxes into perspective, and well.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the slow charm of love -  Let Me Sit Beside You, Quietly When We Know Love as Found It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - About Moments by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Relationships take time. Even 'love at first sight' is a construct only, finding immediate challenge in the crucible of real life. I know couples who have gone around for years, but find they scarcely know each other within the first week of married life.   The interesting dynamic is the setup provided by love. It could work in two dynamically different directions. It could make you accept what really comes your way with generosity and a desire to work through the unexpected discoveries in a person. The other extreme would be the crashing of expectations, and understating that what-you-thought-&-what-you-got were such such incredibly different things - to be jettisoned immediately.   Such does life give - and we choose to give away.   We need to understand that ties are always brittle to begin with. There's trust to be built, there's vulnerability to be shown, there are defeats to be accepted along with victories which need to be celebrated. In our attempt to be what we've shown ourselves to be, we should not forget that impressions cut both ways - and truths are often more charming than cultivated lies. We WANT our partners to be mere mortals living and breathing heartbreak, distress, irrationality, madness, quirkiness, and everything else which makes us human.   If within those realities, we are not accepted, maybe there is something else in store, someone else to grow with out there, who would enrich our lives in immeasurable ways.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how loves gives comfort -  I Think I Can be an Adventure WIth You When We Know Love As Found Just be Air Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Epic Intro 2017 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/epic-intro-2017 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The charm and beguile of life is that it throws the unexpected with such unerring regularity.   We start something with an intent. But the universe has other ideas. We strive for bliss in flight and fall in love with the grizzly earth.  So much of what enriches our lives is the unexpected turn we took, the yes we said reluctantly, the adventure which emerges when we step out in the middle of a dull day.   We merely want to seduce someone and we unexpectedly fall in love. We want to escape tedium and we find meaning. We enter with curiosity and leave with a cornucopia of riches. We are kind and make lifelong bonds. We wake up early with deep reluctance and find the most glorious sunrise of the year.   So much of our life is the misadventure, the wrong turn, the searing confession, the moment of vulnerability. And the whole world opens up. All that is required is chutzpah, intent, the ability to look life in the eyes with brazen honesty and say "this is me, flawed yet beautiful, selfish but kind, always open, always learning, always ready."   And the universe just whisks us away, into its limitless mysteries.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how love evolves in beautiful ways -  Aaschi Bringing THe Storm Home I Never Wanted Parts of You Which Were Easy Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - When Life is Beautiful by Kalak Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/when-life-is-beautiful Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it,   Sometimes you just know.   As someone once said "I knew you were the one, as soon you walked into the room. There was light coming out of your ass!" Frankly, more often then not, love has less drama associated to its arrival, because it is really a feeling which grows and found incrementally, one conversation at a time, one walk at a time, one infraction at a time. You know there's something happening inside you when there's an unexplainable feeling of excitement and queasiness and anticipation which starts to brew inside.   Why queasy, I have often wondered. And the only answer I get is that you start feeling that you are losing control. And it makes you nervous, helpless. But it's a feeling you enjoy, giving into it is akin to some other power taking control of how you feel and act. The more irrational the act you see yourself do, the more you see yourself say things which you didn't know you were capable of saying, the more you realize you are in the power of something transcendental. Something which will now never leave you unscathed or unchanged.   Love has made an entry.   Life as you know it ceases to exist. Sometimes infinitesimally, sometimes significantly, you find yourself change. Even when the high fades, and love becomes a normal part of what you live with, there's a glow which never leaves you. Even as obsession tapers into normalcy, you know your life is forever touched with magic.   The most significant change comes as you stop thinking in singular terms. Is it freedom curtailed, or life enchanted for its inclusion? If there's excitement inside thinking of experiences together, then you are on the way to a twosome. Plurality is only acceptable with its promise of shared experience if one does not consider sharing an encroachment or a loss of freedom.   Because love is, in so many ways, an acceptance and an accumulation. It's the difference between being breathless and gasping for breath. In that thin line of differentiation, lies the richness of our choices and the changeability of everything we stand for in life.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the progression of love -  I Come With Mud I Said I Love You First Quietly Yours Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Angels by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Angels Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I reach the summit.   Not inch by inch—no, I arrive in a flood. Talent spills out of me. Love follows, tidal and unquestioning. Directors orbit me like obedient moons; they cannot imagine a world without my sound. I do not merely compose music—I alter its grammar. I am told I am a miracle. I begin to agree.   This is where it breaks.   Because admiration, once mistaken for destiny, hardens into entitlement. I begin to believe the applause is owed, not earned. That the place I clawed my way to is permanent, immune to time, taste, or doubt. I convince myself I can offer anything—anything at all—and the world must bow and call it genius. If it doesn’t, the fault lies with the world. They don’t understand music. They don’t understand me.   Power arrives quietly. I let it.   I summon directors and leave them waiting in the dark, hours stretching thin, just to feel my own gravity. I choose sacred backdrops for first meetings, mistaking symbolism for sanctity. I give indifferent music to a good film and dismiss its failure as “divisive,” because nothing I touch is allowed to be mediocre—only misunderstood.   Lines I never meant to draw begin to appear everywhere.   Faith, identity, difference—these become instruments too, played without care. When someone enters my home carrying another god, another grammar of devotion, the air tightens. Symbols are stripped, not violently, but casually. As if it is obvious, as if it is necessary. As if genius grants permission.   My arrogance is no longer an accident. It is deliberate. Curated. Non-negotiable.   I do not spare those who built me. The directors who trusted me when I was still a question mark. The collaborators who believed music was a conversation, not a sermon. One by one, they drift away—not in protest, but in fatigue. Projects thin out. Invitations dry up.   And the music—ah, the music.   It stumbles. It repeats itself. It loses hunger. But how would I know? I am sealed inside a fog of my own praise, a mausoleum of old triumphs. Self-awareness was buried years ago, quietly, without ceremony.   So when the world starts turning elsewhere—towards younger, leaner, less reverential talent—I am stunned. Betrayed. How dare they move on from me?   Then comes the mirror I choose because it flatters my wounds. The foreign interviewer. The sympathetic gaze. The easy narrative. I explain my fading relevance with a single, convenient sentence: it isn’t decline, it’s persecution. Not exhaustion, but exclusion. The industry, I say, is communal. I am being punished for who I am.   I believe this because it costs me nothing. It asks nothing of my craft, my humility, my failures.   And even when someone who has known me—who has admired me—looks at me and says, almost gently, almost in disbelief, “My god, I never even realised you were Muslim,” the truth still does not land. Because by then I am too deep inside my grievance to hear anything else.   I mistake isolation for martyrdom.   I retreat into the smallest room imaginable: the ghetto of my own frustration. Religion, the last refuge of the unimaginative and the cornered, becomes my alibi.   What I do not see—what I may never see—is the scale of the loss.   The hearts that once beat in time with my music and now feel nothing. The silence in concert halls where tickets were bought with devotion and abandoned with disappointment. The audience that did not turn hostile—they simply stopped coming.   That is the true heartbreak.   Not that I fell. But that I never understood why.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on failures & hypocrisies of people  -  Mr Hoskote, have you visited Kashmir recently? Of Failing & Falling Will We Ever Trust the Skies Again Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Relaxing Piano Improvisation by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/relaxing-piano-improvisation Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We have to step out of our lives to see what is in the great beyond. Often just outside our gated communities are worlds we know nothing of, lives being lived in ways which we cannot conceive of. Rich, varied, textured, tumultuous. Often beautiful because they are unfiltered and often bleed; frightening because they are so raw.   When we encounter these lives, these stories,  we are aghast at their truths and trajectories. They are so rich in their lived-in textures that our own lives seem bland and empty.   That's why I love talking to strangers. For their tales and their lives. Each person is a universe, a cornucopia of dreams and desires, often of unrelenting courage, often of failure, anguish and hope.   We are woven together through our common place on earth. However much we might think ourselves as special, we are purveyors of the same resources, prisoners to the same gravities, trying to make our lives out of what we have been bequeathed, trying to make more out of what we've got.   And when we do this interaction, we are twice blessed - one, when we give the grace of understanding the other, and when we lay ourselves open and vulnerable with own stories.   We all want to do well. We all want to do better. But when someone shares tales and hope with us, we are part of the same family of humankind.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how a life is made of so many beautiful things -  Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day Just Be Air Stealing Beauty Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Winterland by Frank Schroeter Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/winterland Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Why don't we have honest conversations with the ones we love the most? Why don't we listen - really listen - without comments, without reply, without retort - when they attempt to tell us what hurts, where it hurts, and how the hurt devastates them.   So much of the pain we cause, and we feel, is avoidable. Not because we don't tell enough - but because we don't listen enough. The smallest of things becomes intractable, our understanding of what things mean have no relationship to what it actually meant. We don't clarify, we conclude, and are damned for it.   Bridges which connect love become chasms, and we stand at both ends and wonder - what happened, how did two beautiful people find their worst selves in the relationship which mattered the most.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the dissonance in relationships  -  A Love Letter from a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated wife A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt Lovers Who Synchronise (& those who don't) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'  Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Sehnsucht by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sehnsucht Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Poems have a way of showing truths and making us recognize what we are often blind to - that the best we have is adequate and the worst we think we are can also be beautiful. There is so much we lose out to life because of our fears - of what we think we are, of what others might think we are, of what the world thinks when we fail.   The sad truth is - nobody cares. Everybody is immersed in their own stories, and beyond a flurry of gossip, have scarcely any mind space for anybody else.   Only the ones who care for us, are the ones who feel for us, in ways which are genuine and true and beautiful.   And when they hold us close, in spite (and often because) of what we are, we become the beauty they see in us, we are rendered marvellous, we see the infinite in ourselves because that is the core of us - the boundless possibility, the opening of a flower inside us, the feeling of being with the divine, of being blessed.   And all because someone found us worthy of time, of attention. Of a sliver of love. Maybe a poem.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how we blossom into the person we should be -  Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day I Have Watched You Make the Ordinary Holy When We Know Love as Found Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Feelings 2 by Frank Schroeter Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/feelings-2 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

As new year eves crack our worlds open into two - a past and a future - albeit as tenuous in concept as they come, deep inside we know the celebrations - like those we do for birthdays - is just messaging of mortality for all things we hold dear.   And embedded within that reality is our realization that the experiences and relationships we live and seek and want to linger in are what sustains and gives meaning to our breath, the limited number that we have.   The songs we hear together, the storms we take shelter from, the books we cry together to, the traumas we live together through. Life's fullness manifests itself in our life through our shared experiences. Moments ripen into full fruits when we experience them as summer, letting its warmth flood us into sweet submission.   Our lives our only half of their possibility if we consider the indulgences which enrich our lives as ordinary. Or things in passing. The kisses we steal, the hands we hold in the dark, the crook of our arms we give for rest, are more precious to remembrance when we look back than any tinsel star or success in passing. Public adulation is the worst. It engulfs us without redemption, leaving us hungrier for being there, and empty when it passes away.   I'm quite sure god lives his life through what we do. And I think the sensory is what he would remember, the unexpected adventure, the advent of serenity because we chose to do nothing one winter morning but sit with our ageing father to look out onto the changing skies.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty of things pass -  When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train One Summer Rediscovering Heaven Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Liberty Quest by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/liberty-quest Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We are privileged enough to linger in beauty without thinking of livelihood. We spend time with the skies, linger over petunias, chrysanthemums, dahlias and marigolds as they burst in exuberance, watch a frog jump onto a lotus leaf, spend a day in Givenchy, go rapturous over a Zaha Hadid design, go pensive over a Selma poem, linger over a drying leaf in the walking path, bite slowly into the sumptuous juiciness of an Alfonso, spend a day reading a Ludlum, just sit in the winter sun.   I am blessed to have a mother who read poetry to me in childhood, and still points out passages which linger. My legacy to my boy, and to those who spend time with me, has always been to point out, read with, talk about the riches strewn all over our universe, things which make life worth living. Going high on a swing, playing cricket in the burnished neighbourhood field, hang on the balustrade of a verandah as we see the summer sun throw a million colours into the lakes beside our house.   When we travel, we do so in beauty. Van Goghs we love, local Banksys, rapturous sunrises we travel miles to see, music concerts we see from the fan pit, ruins whose stories we listen with rapt attention, theatre we see, discuss and then discuss again. And the poetry and the books, which are sewn into the fabric of our breath.   And the people, our people we love and refuse to take for granted, the people who we don't know but who are all universes in themselves. All who can be portals, gurus, path seekers or companions. These are the ones who make all the difference in our search for what is most precious to the sublime thing called life.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on beauty we find in our worlds -  Rediscovering Heaven When We Were One With The Stars Kintsugi Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - You & Me Forever by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/you-&-me-forever Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Darling, make no mistake.   There's so much of you I crave and care for. My morning gratitude wishes are of you, whatever nightmare you might have put me through a sweaty night.   I've learnt the hard way that married life is less a game of naughts and crosses, and more of remembrances and erasures. Because the burden of memory in a marriage is Krishna's Butterball rock in Mahabalipura, balancing on a point.   But, gosh, how much you can cry. Tears are your inbuilt bazookas. And your hysteria is no match to the desperation in my rising voice. And we find reason jettisoned, and notion & conjecture reigning. We become our speculation of each other. We make each other the worst versions of ourselves.   You want primacy - to both have the headlights shine on you - and be the headlamp. And I acknowledge it - the moment you see the softness in my eyes and I slip my hand in yours, it's me feeling gushy inside. You have my heart, my fealty, my side, my air, my breath. And then you start off on what's wrong. The fantasy of what's wrong. The perception, the illusion. And I am gobsmacked. What is the genesis of it all? Here we were, happy, sentimental, beautiful together. And then - bam! - the genefluction.   What is the genesis of this reverse alchemy? Golden evenings descend into ironic discussions on you not being acknowledged enough; stellar afternoons drift into brassy discussions of how I fall short on your parameters: you clearly remember everything I've done wrong, not the effort I've put in to be the imperfect but hardworking lover.   And then I ask - why are we together? What are we doing with each other if we can't be wild roses in our most intimate moments, when I have to hold back afraid of what you'd think, when our conversation is of need and not comfort. When you don't believe me, and I can't ever know why you don't.   When all that we are and all that we need, alas, are different things, where, pray tell me, where is our meeting point? Where do we go, my love, where do we go from here?   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the frustrations of love -  I Should Have Loved More Wisely (they say) Love's Night of the Long Knives Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke liye) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Bells of the Burguoise by Tim Kulig Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/bells-of-the-burguoise Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summer makes me light and present. The monsoon pulls me into its flood of feelings. Autumn turns me inward—part stranger, part seeker.   But winter is where I truly awaken. In its drifting mists and sudden shafts of light, old emotions unseal themselves; warmth rises gently from the cold. My mind clears, my questions deepen, and I feel myself walking through unseen passages within.   I’m reminded that we are rarely as flawed as we imagine, our circumstances rarely as dire as our stories insist. The world is as complex or as ordinary as we choose to make it. Life’s puzzles soften when we stay still enough to let them simply pass through.   Perhaps that is why winter feels philosophical: it offers haze and clarity, cold and warmth, the riddle and its meaning. It asks for no quick truths—yet reveals them when I step back into the open.   Winter is what you make of it: always misty, always beautiful, always ready to lift its veils for you   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the the way seasons change -  Those Days of a Lost Summer The Passing of Autumn The Slant of the Winter Sun Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Village Ambience by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/village-ambience Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We are such fools, we are, knowing all about inevitabilities, but never (ever) prepared for them. We will lose loved ones, they will die, some in their prime, some before they would have discovered their worth, some even as they burned themselves on both ends.   Such is the life of denial we live. Refusing to acknowledge what we know as truth in the deepest fibre of our beings. And when the end does come, as of course it will, we are emotionally, spiritually, illogically, found wanting, found unprepared, found broken.   We refuse to acknowledge the known, and the known's blow lands on us like a bludgeon. And we are broken into smithereens.   When, if we had faced unto the reality of situations, we would have moulded our time, our priorities in elegant and deep engagements, which would have brought in a final grace in the ones we love to bits.   Because often, only too often, we have to let go - of those we love, of those we hold on too tightly to - because in that release, we are also freeing ourselves from the burden of living on, of being the one alive, of the guilt of destiny, of the luck of having some more breaths left.   The action of letting go is often the very action which gives us permission to live on.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ways death finds us -  What Do I Leave Behind? An Epitaph of Light & Air  Chemo: As I Battle Myself Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Clean Soul by Kevin Macleod Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/clean-soul Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Love is as you define it. Often a search. Often a precipice. Often an infraction. Often an acceptance. More often then not, a home we finally settle in, a comfort, a place to step out from the edginess of search to build stories of reconciliations.   But life has its outtakes and inputs, twists and twirls, bells and whistles, which do not allow love to rest. Because it does not want one basic thing to be forgotten. That love is an effort. Love is a daily ritual. You fall in love again and again with the same person.   Beyond the words, lies the question of why it matters. Because even when undefined or unsaid, love comes in our lives in whisper-soft ways - in thought, in touch, in secret care. Because the universe adores us. And spreads its munificence everywhere. No one can say she is unloved. She needs to only look out of the window and see an evening sky or feel a summer breeze.   Everything beautiful which loves us doesn't always come with announcements.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how whisper-soft is love -  Lovers in the Morning Coffee, You & Me The Importance of Faith in Love Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Parting of the Ways Part 2 by Kevin Macleod Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/parting-of-the-ways-part-2 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Everyone comes in our lives for a reason. The bad ones, the good ones. It is all revealed in time. Sometimes as a slow-burning mystery, sometimes as a spark in a deep night, sometimes in quiet secret ways even we fail to understand, until we get to look back and retrospect.   So many of our relationships tether on the edge, so many drift to seeming nothingness, so many are treacherous like the Annapurna slope, so many solid as resolve.   But the true charm of being with someone is the continuous mystery of what emerges, of discoveries and rediscoveries.   What sparkles could well burn out, what is secret might not stand the burden of revelation, what seems solid could be merely hollow shell.   That's the way bonds go, that's the direction love takes. It revels, it celebrates, it lets time and life determine the direction. Sometimes it leaves us mid-highway, sometimes it helps us navigate through cul de sacs, often it is our companion in long-distance runs, sometimes it goes for a sprint with us, and quickly falls by the wayside.   We keep searching for a shore in our relationships, forgetting that we should also be one for those who love us. To be a traveller is beautiful, but to finally rest is also not only a need but a necessity - for ourselves and for those who have covered a distance with us.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the gentleness of love's ways -  I Love You I Can Be Your Poem A City Made of Our Sighs Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Elysium by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/elysium Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

So much of what we are is the amalgam of hurts we carry deep inside. As past life regression reveals, sometimes the hurt runs deep, bringing forward traces of what's left unresolved from the ages before.   However accomplished or complete we might think ourselves to be, we roam the world raw, susceptible to the random snide, reacting to the perceived insult, ultra-sensitive to derision.   And we react.   And commence an unending cycle of soul terrorism - attack, inflame, die. On the agency of words and bruised egos, we are ready to destroy and be destroyed.   We grow cynical, we grow tired. We encounter, and soon become, our worst selves.   We encounter the largesse of the universe, walk daily into its wonders, find its gorgeousness laid out for us in the most generous of ways - and walk away, impressed but untouched.   But come the snide, the insult, derision, and our very soul finds its lees. We scrape the bottom of what we are. We forget words are seasonal mists. They come and pass. It's often only a local pressure point which creates them, and they dissipate as geographies, seasons or clocks change.   The old adage of being still and letting the eddies of life flow over and around us, is soon forgotten. We become the current, the tide, the flood. And destroy beauty - around us, and within.   All we had to do was to let hurt come, do its deed and go. And for us to remain serene. Because things pass, feelings pass. If we remain centered, committed to our core, we remain what we are.   And paradoxically, the world around us, instead of collapsing, finds its best self, grows, and we grow with it.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the hurts and pain we feel ever so often -  Hope is Merely Fear With a Poor Choice of Lipstick Heartbreak On Breaking Up (Without Breaking) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - You Can't Stay Here by Michael Mojzykiewicz Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/you-can't-stay-here Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

It is sobering to realize how insignificant we are in this universe, how much of a speck. And how much the grandeur of nature - a spectacular lunar eclipse, the sun shining on a quiet sea, a moonlit desert - shows us both the incredible world we live in - as also bring us back to the joy of minutiae, if only we have the eyes and time for it.   And it brings us back to the gorgeous littleness of our lives. How the highest joys are often reserved for the smallest of things. To have someone in our lives, who knows where the hidden mole in our bodies is. Someone who absorbs the worst of what we are and is ready to let us sink in their arms, irrespective. To sit in serene comfort with each other without a single regret in our hearts. Someone for whose well being we pray with the innermost core of our hearts.   Life finds its circle completed in strange mysterious ways. They are no large strokes, there are no Big Bang revelations, it is just the comfort our body and spirit know. A place where we are us and we call it our own.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the journeys we love - or not -  Departures Distances: Kaifi Azmi Ke Liye It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Walking Towards the Light by MusicFiles Majestic Autumn by MusicFiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/walking-towards-the-light Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/majestic-autumn Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I am so often in awe.   Of another being’s endurance or grace — perhaps a lover, a river, the sea, or even time itself.   I want to learn how they do it -from borrowing calm, to letting life flow through, to finally resting in stillness and reverence.   To see life as a moving tapestry of happenstances, tragedies or ecstasy; living through them, but not allowing any of these to change the essential core of what they are, why they are.   They seem to allow both beauty and pain to go through them - such that they are touched and changed, but not rendered cynical or bitter or stormy or intractable. To be that indestructible rock which is soft to touch; to be that bleeding evening which heals; to be that person who is stubbornly calm and unchanging amidst every provocation we might throw at him.   I want to be that person who recognizes the essential fragrance of the unseen flower or is hurt but does not drive into a town like a storm.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the grace we encounter in our lives -  Her Grace Without Notice Rediscovering Heaven Sipping Tea in a Rumi Morning  Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

We give up on those we profess to love too soon.   There is something primordial, something gossamer, to do with the body, to do with first inchoate impressions, which attracts us to one another in the first place. Because relationships often begin in shallow waters.   As things start to become serious, the couple traverses depths. It's not easy. And unexpected. Murky, weed-laden, algae-full. The clear eyes and the pellucid surfaces of early days is suddenly overladen with things about each other we don't even recognize. It is difficult to swim through the muck. For it seeps into our pores, into the day-&-night of our lives, into our senses, and suddenly everything which was golden turns murky, overladen with offal. What attracted now repulses.   This is when things start collapsing. We completely forget what brought us to each other in the first place.   In the old days, when coupledom, marriages, were unending, and meant for forever, this was a phase which was meant to be borne, till it passed - and one learnt to live with it. Often, things remained as they were, however deep the relationship went. Toxicity was the norm. Individually we were supposed to grow, as a couple we were supposed to fly. Instead there was claustrophobia and a sense of doom.   But the tragedy often was elsewhere. The tragedy was when we never gave a chance to time and change.   Because as one swam through the muck, something magical often started to emerge. Pellucid waters. Depths which captured light like mussels catch pearls. Where the muck was the rough exterior but grace and beauty were permanent residents - albeit hidden. For the couple, there was a sense of transcendence.   And since it was reached with patience, forbearance, commitment, there was a sense of gratefulness and wonder which filled us.   So, beyond anything and everything, relationships need the patience of space. Time's hard knocks are a phase to build resilience, to understand the other, and more importantly, for us to uncover layers in ourselves we didn't know existed.   Discovery and understanding are both the magnet and the glue which holds a couple together.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the passages of relationships -  Lovers Who Synchronise (and those who don't) Return to You I Said I Love You First Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Satisfaction by Sascha Ende Reaching the sky by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Satisfaction Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Reaching-the-sky Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license