inside my broken heart is a pocket for you

about honesty:

for convenience's sake, the truth is malleable.

determined to bloom, these buds.

dialogging | take 2

The maker of saintly questions:

Ayushma, tell me, truly and honestly, what your greatest tragedy is.

Me:

Men seem to fall in love with me all the time. Only I seem to be unable to love them back. Not even one.

The maker of saintly questions:

Yes, I thought as much.

today I feel sadness in my body

dialogging

The maker of saintly questions:

Ayushma, what do you think is your greatest tragedy?

Me:

I always seem to fall in love with men who don't know how to love me back.

The maker of saintly questions:

And what do you think has been your greatest success?

Me:

I also seem to fall in love with everything else that seems to know exactly how.

L Cohen does me a personal favour

Thousands

Out of the thousands

who are known,

or who want to be known

as poets,

maybe one or two

are genuine

and the rest are fakes,

hanging around the sacred precincts

trying to look like the real thing.

Needless to say

I am one of the fakes,

and this is my story.

by L Cohen

Thanks to you, I don't have to write that poem full of fake musings on how I want to be a real poet.

getting ready to sleep

cold newspapers lie on my bed.

news is crashing and burning and killing and looting

negotiating, compromising,

commercializing, politicizing,

hypocritizing, and occasionally superficially celebrating

me.

stealing warmth from under the covers,

cold newspapers are unfit for this december day.

somebody tell them to stop manufacturing news!

untitled

we, too, took a bite out of the forbidden fruit...

...this came of it.

oh kid me not!

when i say a day is

dull,

wet,

gloomy,

blue,

cold,

cruel,

infuriatingly unfair,

am i simply looking away from the sun?

traveling in circles

everyday on this beaten path

life is losing innocence that cannot be regained

life is coming to multiple awarenesses of truth after truth

that define and redefine the ugly, the horrid

often within you

life is living out the daily fear

of knowing that the person you love most

will never understand you entirely

life is growing old in your soul

before it begins to show on your skin and in your bones

life is learning of all that you'd hate in yourself

and not knowing how to hate yourself

it is ultimately learning how to embrace

life is, above all, living through your days

thinking innocence lost can never be regained

and finding it at the doorsteps of death

life is a hurt; a pinch, a pain

we fuss, we crib, we curse, we pine

but innocence lost is always regained

in a way that feels just right.

We are stupid.

And although we see it,

We like to forget.

And in our neglect

it grows.

komawa

yummmm!

the friendship of flowerpots and sunlight and wooden tables and naughty muffins.

yummmm!

the friendship of you and I somewhere amidst theirs, talking, talking, talking.

envy at 4 52 a.m.

I open the book

Not expecting a sword.

Centered around the body

Your poetry intact, whole

I engulf every word.

I close the book

Not before I'm sliced in two.

Stranger, is it not strange

how eventually you spill out of me?

only you

special is that otherworldly category

that everyone is entitled to.

in my head, i'm always making exceptions though.

one for you two

"We walked through the night in couplets."

story of fish

for 35 days

i have been spooning air to a fish

gagging, fish says to me, thank you very much, my dear

but i'm a fish

and it is not my wish

to be fed air

it would be fair

if it were water you put in my dish

agonizing, i think to myself, i'm crashing against my fear

i'm a bird

and it's my thirst

to burst

this fishy bubble

to turn her gills

into something loveable

for 35 days

i have been teaching myself to swim

flapping, soaked wings

please no one

no, air saves no life

no, water lubricates no soul

all builds up to strife

all disintegrates into foul

Yusuf the cat

Yusuf the cat dashed into my brain

This odd nighttime meow meow of a cat

shaves the edges of my brain

to show to me an aberration of the norm

of things having a beginning and an end

Round and round it goes in circles

without beginning nor end

without meaning nor purpose

existing, still

Brown eyes churn out an emotional mill

This delightful daytime mia mia of a girl

Sends my hair into quiet giggles

A little window opens

In flows a girl

Out flows a cat

Yusuf the cat

Sends me into shots of enlightenment

The high lows

and the low tides

Makes me say things I couldn't have dreamt of thinking

Takes me into worlds that disappear under the eyelids

Wakes me up to life

Wakes me up to life

I dreamt up thinking

Of a mia mia girl

With giggles for hair

Blue eyes stare out the ocean

Baby blue eyes

Brown ones cry

Bold brown ones

Cry looking for love

looking in

and finding out

Leave the window open

Watch it grow

As what flows out

Brings in more.

love is not the fulfillment of your expectations.