Uncut Poetry

When do you know things have collapsed? When has a relationship entered that level of mess where it is irretrievable? How do you recognize that it is no longer easing towards the pyre but has already turned to ashes?   I have always held that there is nothing more dynamic, changeable and retrievable as relationships, and that might well be true. But what can't be denied is that many relationships exist in the twilight of a cemetery.   The tragedy is in the collapse, when nothing of what is said or done is construed to be right; that it is often good well-meaning people who are caught in this irretrievable quagmire. And they don't have a clue as to how they should dig themselves out of the hole.   Of course, there are relationship counsellors for exactly this, and divorces when nothing seems to be working. But I've spoken to several people, who are trying to revive a flailing relationship, and they talk despairingly about 'having failed' - the one they loved, the families, indeed, themselves.   Deep inside the extreme discomfort of something whose collapse they are not able to stop, is the anguish of letting go of someone who is a part of their being. But they also understand the cure for cancer, a malignant tumour, a disease, where abscission is the only way forward.   Survival reigns. And hope lingers in the margins.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love, when the end is nigh -  That Gorgeous Evening When You Left We Looked Out Into The Fading Day Distances Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   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  

Some relationships, however long they might be, are not meant to be. Some people have never ever been able to understand each other.   Maybe they have tried, but have got wrought in the illogic of emotion and justification. Even an even keel, a permanent white flag as it were, a ceasefire for a larger good, is often difficult to sustain. What results are days stretching into months, than years of grating soul-crushing acceptance for a so-called larger good.   It's easy to rationalise this as poor chemistry, but at a subliminal level, it is probably about vulnerabilities not being addressed.   No relationship - except the cynically wrought ones - ever start with disdain. But there is always a bare minimum level of expectations. Often of imprisonment not being defined as closeness; often subjugation not being justified as a societal more; vulnerabilities not being cupped like a flame in a storm.   Once the die is cast - and no amount of conversation brings about an understanding or a realization - relationships slip into a permanent mode of emotional rigor mortis. It's a tragedy when someone supposedly our closest mate in the world, a potential soulmate, a natural friend - is not. It's an irredeemable loss, something which is not only personal, but a loss for the universe. Because a life running on an emotional half-mast is not capable of living its potential.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the strains relationships face -  An Alumni of Broken Hearts There is no love in a marriage (only power play) This is Not Home Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Sad Cinematic Background by Musiclfiles From My Heart With Love by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sad-cinematic_background Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/from-my-heart-with-love Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

The universe keeps throwing contrasts to our lives, and expects us to walk with them, unfazed, taking them in our stride. And frankly, there is little choice.   We are making love, and in the next room a parent we love is taking her last breath. The spring outside our window is filling the world with its colour and aroma, and we lie ill, confined to a room. Someone we love dies, and the funeral passes a marriage procession. That's as cheesy as it can get, but so is the truth of life's contrasting metaphors.   The primary contradiction is often an unhappy outside life contrasting with a serene inner life. Or the attempt to lead a straightforward life in a toxic ecosystem. However much we might wish for a peaceful life, the outer world keeps impinging with its urgencies, desires and insistencies. Even if we shut ourselves to all external influences - media, people, messages - we are bound to face the terror of ordinary things.   A very important component of this is always that we allow things to affect us. We are humans, after all.   But then, after being continuously battered, there is an inflection point, when we stop caring. And start learning to hear only one voice - the one inside us, unencumbered by the hard consonants (of the continuous commentary) of a forever-aggrieved world. That's when we find the serenity inside of ourselves, completely inured to the slings and arrows, the aggressions and aggrieved nature of everyone and everything around.   Finally we understand that the world will always complaint, find reasons to protest, disrupt, throw grief at us when least expected.   That is the world's prerogative.   We need to find our peace, in our own way - in our lives, our passions, our inner worlds.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on what home can mean to us -  Finding Home in Places We've Left Behind Going Home A Home Which is You Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Betelgeuse by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/betelgeuse 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.   To awaken every morning is to reward oneself.   The day is desperate for us to discover it, to unravel its mysteries and find its surprises. We do not have to fly or be special. We merely need to be excited.   Then we can see birds with new eyes, and feel the air on our skin. We can sit quietly, sip a cup, gaze out of the window, and know this is what it is to be alive.   An ordinary life.   Many things could happen, maybe nothing. We might go to office, a normal walk in the park, or spend time with a friend. Or maybe fall in love. It could all happen just now. All this in one mere life.   To see the universe in the very fact of our own day. To know that things pass even as they happen.    To know we can be anybody, anywhere, anytime, and find ourselves to be sundrop and stardust and moonglow.   All in one solitary life of breaths.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how life is richer if it is slowed down-  I Like the Ordinary Life I Have Been Thinking of Life Again Stealing Beauty Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Motivational soft piano meets cello by Horst Hoffman Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/motivational-soft-piano-meets-cello Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The other day I was reading a poem called "At Night, I Let All the Women Inside me Roam Around the House" by the marvellous poet Kelly Grace Thomas. And it made me realize how interweaved our lives are into a hundred other iterations of our own lives, and how so many unconnected things and occurrences in our world instantly become ours, how the tiniest things which might be happening because it is in their nature to do so, still find incredible resonance in our lives, reaffirming something inside us, making our lives better just by being. Thus a ray lightens us up, laughter emanating from across the room tells us how life can be randomly beautiful.   There is a point in our lives, when we grow infinitely comfortable with all the contradictions of all the people we are, and settle into the infinite variety of our complex beings. The indulgent father, the generous boss, the irritating spouse, the impatient son, the charming host, the omniscient friend. The hanuman chalisa chanter, non-indulgent to liberal hypocrisy, embraced of a thousand conspiracy theories, a doom scroller, the occasional hypocrite. An incomplete irritating occasionally loveable man, who is as ordinary as anybody in this world. Trying to keep body and soul together. And trying to live with all possible contradictions and possibilities. And surviving. And finding beauty in every wart.   And loving oneself and the world precisely because of it.     If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the kind of people we can be -  What Do You Fear The Most? Selfish When We Are Tired of Hiding Our Stories Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Cinematic Angelical Upbeat Ambient by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/cinematic_angelical_upbeat_ambient Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license    

Love is, finally, comfort. To talk, to tell the uncomfortable truth, to tell the story of the day, to share a silence, to share a film and disagree on it, to find a thing of beauty and to think of him.   We all need one such person, for us to find a resting place in our Sisyphean lives. Often I think a poet is merely that one person who is all alone in this world, putting her deepest concerns into words, which she has no one to share with.   To find couples so much at ease with each other - in film, fiction or real life - is to find god's finest benediction. Thats why I am convinced a Shiv/Parvati, a Krishna/Radha, a Ram/Sita work, not only because of their  devotion to each other, but the ability to communicate to each other. Ram faced opprobrium, told Sita about what townspeople were saying, and it changed the direction of the mythology. But the important thing which one misses out in this interaction is the ease which they had to talk to each other about uncomfortable topics. Regardless of where it would lead. Because in that deep abyss of consequence, you have to believe that whatever occurs is for the best.   But most importantly, devotion in a couple is a manifestation of life's possibilities, in the worst and best of times. It is to know that 'two' is both the natural and the best state of existence.   When everything fails, there is always someone who will either not judge, or judge and accept. And be there because that is what both are together for.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the slow and long burn of love -  I Can Be Your Poem I Love You A City Made of Our Sighs Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Aerobatics by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/aerobatics Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Relationships are so amorphous - and so complex. You can’t hold them in your palms, yet they can crumble in front of your very eyes.   I have no idea about the statistics or the studies, but all around me I see dead ties that persist. And I’m glad they do.   In a world where we demand perfect relationships and expect them to become shiny almost overnight, there is something worth remembering: relationships take time to find their richness, become their best - or, at their worst, become bearable.   I think most couples will agree that once the honeymoon is over, the toughest years are often the early ones. That’s when they discover that sharing space is vastly different from sharing love.   She wants a harder bed; he wants the room chilled to 18 degrees at night. She wants an “I love you” before breakfast and twice after dinner. He thinks a thought, a hug or a phone call is quite enough. She loves elaborate gifts because she loves giving them. He couldn’t care less and is happiest writing her a personal poem - which, naturally, leaves her dissatisfied.   The trouble begins when these differences stop being differences and become permanent battle lines.   Some things have difficult solutions, of course. But when both people keep digging in their heels, they are simply creating a frontline. And then another dynamic kicks in: one starts feeling that they are always the one giving in. Isn’t that unfair?   So the heels go deeper. More arms are added to the frontline.   And then the inevitable happens. One person begins to feel that they are always giving more. The uncomfortable truth is that, in most relationships, there will be an imbalance of sorts. One person will take more decisions; another will be more involved in the home; one may handle more of the finances. And there will inevitably be moments when one person has to take the majority of the important family decisions. Like it or lump it, that’s often the nature of relationships - working or personal.   The unfairness begins when you start keeping score. When the relationship becomes a place to prove who gives more, who sacrifices more, or who is the boss.   It rarely ends well.   Counsellors would grow hungry if all of this were revealed early enough in a session. Because when all a person can see are the bad things in a relationship, they become completely blind to what drew them to each other in the first place.   And once that happens, the road to perdition is already well laid.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on broken hearts -  A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt When You Lose the Lover but Not the Love I Walk Alone (wishing you were beside me) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Adventure by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/adventure Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Oh that delicious feeling of never getting out of bed. The battle within. Knowing that routine was king, and would win, because life is weaved around a framework, which urges disciple, and gives rewards, which are really life's gifts.   But once in a while, just sometimes, when the windows lay unopened, the curtains remain drawn, and the body pleads for respite, sometimes as a false alarm for rest, sometimes just for indulgence, sometimes as a mere call of indolence, we decide to give in. Without guilt. As a valid choice, as a happy choice without any value judgement.   Because life deserves the pause between moments, the lazy minute between two busy ones.   As our mind eases and slips into a peaceful penumbra, in that half-light of giving in, we, strangely, find answers to questions we might not have even asked. And we know, this is life too, that this too is important.   That between being busy and madness, this comma is the circlip which keeps us connected, springily, alive.   So - the world outside calls us into action, but for one brief morning we recognize that languor is just another way of belonging to the world.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mornings of our lives -  Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks Lovers in the Morning A Morning Ramble in How Love is Rediscovered at the Bottom of Rubble Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   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

I am forever left bemused with how unprepared we are to the inevitable. And I talk not only of deaths, but consequences. For every action, thought, word of ours pushes the engine of our existence and our world forward.   A dear friend always chastises me when I say something dire, even when it is in jest. He then rattles off five examples of things which went wrong because someone spoke of them - maybe even merely thought them!!   But the lesson is subtle - and a lesson for life. The very basic tenets of Buddhist and Jain philosophy talk of 'good words, good action, good thought'. It is not said as a cliche or lightly, it is a truth, even if it is oft-spoken, sometimes reflexively. Because a lot of sorrow which we gather in our lives is because of what is said to us, and what we say and immediately regret.   Alas, nothing valuable in life, once lost, is ever retrievable. There is an inevitability. And it's our bane in life to carry with us in all the days left.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on noticing and observing -  Marriage Made Me a Philosopher This Light Like Love On Death (if it happens to stop by) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Imagefilm033 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Imagefilm033 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We carry so many stories inside us, which keep dying small deaths. Nobody to narrate them, often lying in the dungeons of memory, sometimes forced there, often simply ignored.   So much of what we are, and why we are what we are, are these stories. But we are afraid to tell them, often even as they are happening. Because we don't have safe zones in our lives. People who will not start looking at us differently when they discover something contrary to what they see us as.   And we live these lives of half truths, or full lies, and navigate our days with beatific smiles which have nothing to do what is going inside us.   The caveat is that sometimes we unravel. We either let go physically and find our emotions overflowing or anorexic. Or our minds split due to stress and we are rendered untethered, a psychological shadow searching for its host.   But do all our truths deserve the sun? Wouldn't it be chaos if we lay ourselves out bare and naked? Is it better to be true and friendless or halfway there but a part of a culturally acceptable reality.   That is where it is critical that we seek and keep safe places, people with whom we can be our worst selves, and we would know they would still love us even when we make it really hard to love us.   Because this is so rare, that's why we have people becoming liars or simply collapsing in their internal stress.   The only solution is to live a true life, as close to one's proclivities as possible and let the world know about it. What is inside is then outside. Nothing more nothing less.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on stories we tell ourselves -  The Sublime in the Ordinary I Don't Think Poetry Will Save Us. And Yet, and Yet... Seasons as Consultations To Life Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   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