Category: Poems

It’s easy to excuse myself,
To cut myself some needed slack,
To blame it on a wicked world,
To cry about my knifed-up back.

It’s not so easy, however,
To own that I was wrong and weak,
To take responsibility,
To make up for my lying streak.

It’s easy though, once I accept,
To course-correct and find my way,
To stand up straight and pull my weight,
To bring some order to my day.

It’s not so easy, nonetheless,
To seek beyond expedience,
To ballast dreams with discipline,
To grow up with experience.

And that’s the goose-step ballet act –
The easy and the not so much –
That tells me what I really have –
Two grounded feet, or creaking crutch.

Today my snoring brings you sleep.
Tomorrow it will strangle you.
The things we find endearing now
Will soon become enraging too.

The goofy will seem juvenile,
The cuteness, immaturity.
The chilling, irresponsible,
The I-love-yous, a travesty.

We’ll squabble over space and time.
We’ll disagree on what we said.
We’ll sleep in different rooms, unsure
Who’ll make the bed, who’ll make the bread.

In all of this, the only thing,
Together, we can keep the same:
No matter what the outcomes are,
It’s you and I who’ll play the game.

I cannot go to sleep tonight,
I haven’t got a rhyme.
I had an easy day today,
I squandered all my time.

First, choose if it’s your game at all.
Accept its rules, if you choose it is.
Irrational, arbitrary, all of it.
Then, play it till the very end.
However hard it gets for you.

Complain not. Cry not. Quit not.
Advancement needs adversity.
New obstacles become new ways.

Make atomic progresses.
One percent better every day.
Velocity! Velocity!
Every day, velocity!

Maps were changed with lesser toil.
Order brought where Chaos reigned.
Undressed, a man undressed Empire.
Nightly ink lit daily fires.
Thousands marched for million rights.
And say your impact’s not as wide,
If all you get’s a better you,
No longer scared of being you,
Should you not call it success too?

Amidst discounted lures of “more”,
Provide me hope and health of “some”.
Remind me I am someone still,
Who someday, somewhere, somehow will
Do something somewhat awesome, blessed,
Awakened to my wholesomeness.

She followed ants with fountain pens,
Bombarding them in ink deluge.
“I do not like them red like that” –
She took, in black, her own refuge.

They told her, “Only forty days,”
As if in forty days her veil
Could permanently blur away
The blood under her fingernail.

Won’t kill you if you talk to her.
Perhaps she knows a thing you don’t.
Perhaps she’ll tell you something real.

Despite her reels of Instagram,
Despite her kitchen whirrs and trills,
Despite her calls on speaker phone,
Perhaps she hears a thing you don’t.
Won’t kill you if you hear her out.

Perhaps you’re wrong. It happens, dude.
Won’t kill you to admit as much.
Perhaps she’ll tell you what is right.
She may not know it, but she might.
Won’t kill you if you take a chance.

Perhaps she’ll help you loosen up.
Won’t kill you to relax a bit.

Despite your poetry-tinted specs,
Despite your thousand books of facts,
Despite your love for your own words,
Perhaps you’ll never write like her.
Won’t kill you if you read her out.

Won’t kill you if you love her back.

Yo, didn’t we process all my pain?
So, why am I afraid again?
Of hugging after pandemic?
Of laughing after silent grief?
Of talking after arguments?
Of looking after documents?
Of running after ghosting goals?
Of asking after troubled souls?
And, why am I afraid of love?
Of life and every part thereof?
And, why am I still paying you?
Is anything you’re saying true?
You think I cannot heal alone?
I cannot do this on my own?
Well, what is it you say again?
I know me best? You’re fired, then.

I say, “I had a lovely dream.”
“Which colour?” is all you ever ask.
“Red,” I say. “A lovely red.”
Like fireworks lit with incense sticks.
Like phoenix cremating into birth.
Like bleeding tree barks for bleeding days.
Like potash fingers on gardening jeans.
Like breezy grass on Orangutan skin.
Like boxers spitting into the ring.
Like fried garlic peeled with bitten thumbs.
“A lovely dream indeed,” you say.

He ripened fruits with just a look.
The apple browned within the hour.
The orange challenged him a bit,
But in return, he’d take a gun,
Arrest the orange tree at noon,
And warn it with police-like shouts,
Until it dropped its fruit grenade.
He’d move in with the stealth of cats,
Inspect the bomb with army shoes,
Ensure the pin was in its place,
And pick it slowly in his hand
To turn it till he found the dent
In which the fruit had peed itself.
Securing pistol underarm,
He’d tear the rind around the bruise
And look at it with focused eyes.
The orange browned within the hour.