Uncut Poetry

Years go by in relationships, and sometimes we feel that this is the nook where we fit in perfectly, and then suddenly we are left bereft of  an anchor to latch onto or a bank to rest our boat against. Why is there never unalloyed comfort even in a relationship of many years? Maybe that is the way the universe ensures we don't take anything for granted. Maybe that is the way we get to know that lo...

"Heaven is above and I know where I am, At the corner of the interstate, I couldn't let you go, I could not let go yet."   I have just collaborated with Alma Roxx in their new single "Interstate (when we were one with the stars)". My poem is embedded into this song.   Alma Roxx is the brainchild of Oregon based producer/songwriter Renny Currin. Often times a genre bending sound, Roxx delivers infe...

People who don't know me are surprised that I don't sleep with a blanket of moonlight and a pillow full of stars. But I have a day-life and it's in an office. And it's a place which has consumed a large part of my life - and, alas, is rarely acknowledged by me in my poetry. Even though it has given me a livelihood and a distinct place in the world. So I decided to make amends.  Today's poem is a l...

One of the abiding tragedies of love is the lack of breathing space between lovers. The freedom they experienced, and which brought them together to begin with, suddenly switches into ownership and expectations which can never ever match with what is ordinarily possible. People, more often than not, don't drift apart, they merely suck the oxygen from around the very person they fell in love with,...

"She knows love, / because love was an answer / sheared of every question / unburdened with doubt, / unremarkable as fact."   As we come to the close of an extraordinary year, and wait for its end, we hope there would finally be a pause to the disruption of lives, families, places, things, routines. But when has the drama of life ever ended?   And as someone I love dearly struggles, I turn again a...

"Once, on Sundays, as I read the papers, I saw a sunbeam make its way to her, and her hair was suddenly aflame like a fuzzy halo, as she lay on the carpet, her face cupped in her palms, lost in the world of wizards - and the sun helplessly putting the spotlight on her, for the universe to gaze at her, and no one else."   In Pema Chadron's  exquisite and heartfull book "When Things Fall Apart" she...

"I sit on the edge of the evening, as I allow you to find your way: the sea is low and I want you to know what it is to tread the skies."   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available...

Summer, of all seasons, is the one which brings us human beings into our most elemental  state - frank, often ugly, always true.   We indulge and never regret; we forgive and we mean it.   We know that what happens to us, is what we do onto others. And in that strange steaming symbiosis lies the powerlessness of our appetites - we are what the air makes us -  not good or bad - just stripped of eve...

I am amazed how we pass our lives through the magnificence of seasons, and how we change with them, as if they were our partners on a road to nowhere, somewhere.. .   Summer, winter, autumn, all come and go, as witnesses to our peculiarities, our small concerns, our happinesses which seem as tenous as sundrops , as also our sadnesses which seem to fill the universe...   But we just need to be open...

Hope  is a strange beast. It is sometimes the only false note in our lives, and paradoxically - or because of that - is also the slender thread which keeps us alive to possibilities of life.   Little things take on meaning - little actions, little thoughts - nothing seems untoward or wasted.   Those who are too hopeful, are called foolish, sometimes foolish  optimists. But when something is a life...

There are two facts. One. Life is full of the unexpected. Two. It is long. These two facts are often forgotten when a couple mulls its differences.   One of the abiding tragedies of relationships is when couples don't give each other's differences the space and time they deserve.   But sharp edges find their corners smoothened with time; habits which were irritating become funny in nostalgia; wars...

"Why do we cheat? And why do happy people cheat? And when we say "infidelity," what exactly do we mean? Is it a hookup, a love story, paid sex, a chat room, a massage with a happy ending? Why do we think that men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy, but women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy? And is an affair always the end of a relationship?    "But as perpetrators have often...

Coupledom is a nation by itself, with its own laws, thermodynamics and compulsions of chemistry. At every moment of a couple's existence, the dynamics with each other swing and change - and if each of them are sensitive and aware, they give into the necessity to be the one who leads at one point and be the one who follows in the other. And if one of them knows the address of scars and the other kn...

Louise Gluck, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner, wrote a poem called 'The Encounter' -   You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me-I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that’s how I knew I loved you. Because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end...   My poem today follows the end which Louise Gluck talked about.

When we are loved and cared for, we should be ready to fight, being fought for or being fought with.    Often, our definition of what is right and wrong has to be put away, and we have to battle for what's ours and what's right.    And if we are injured, as the one for whom the battle took place, or because we were on the other side, we must then know that some battles which are fought with us are...

Happiness is found in extraordinary places. The two who don't seem to ever match with each other, become the matchless couple. And The ones who tick every box, are the ones who find different paths and partners. The alchemy of relationships is only a small-part nature and a large-part mystery. But what is irrefutable to what lasts long - is the trouble each partner takes to figure out what hurts a...

Relationships always have departures. Temporary, permanent, simple, or heart-breaking. Inherent in such partings is the inevitability of our heart's decisions. Sometimes it hurts - but there is a good which lies just beyond the realm of hurt. And in that realm, a person departs, but love doesn't.  The gorgeous music in this episode is by Sayan Mukerji.   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bha...

Surrender is a strange word. It first and foremost denotes defeat. But couched in its shame are also intimations of survival, a love of life over demise, of abiding hope. But, ironically, in love, surrender is the first prerequisite - it is love's entry point, the only way to live it's tumult, and survive it's caprice.

The changing dynamic of relationship with our parents, in every age, actually defines who we are, & how we are changing.   Often we get to know them as the ones we cannot take for granted, very late in our lives. We learn that the only constant in the changing seasons of our moods and age, is their forbearance, their non-judgmental acceptance.   When the world outside & inside us is collapsing, th...

We have a delightful little conversation with poet Riya Roy. She has just launched a scintillating newsletter "the nook", which is choc-o-bloc with nuggets of wisdom, art, poetry and literary surprises of all kinds. We talk to Riya about her journey - and end with an amazing heartfelt poem by her. "the nook" can be subscribed at " tinyletter.com/thenook ".

Khalil Gibran famously said "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself… You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow…”   So be there in the shadows of the lives of your children, as they find their way. Let them find their own ways to love, and be hurt....as long as they know you are there, a...

So much of what we are, is defined by who we are with. And that truth is germane to what gives us happiness. Society, norms, mores ignore that basic need which makes us complete. They concentrate on gender, forgetting that love neither knows borders nor restricts itself within boundaries. The first liberation, the first freedom starts with that realization, that acceptance.

Relations are discoveries, found after arduous journeys.   Intrinsically, everything about love changes in time - the nature of love, the definition of love, the lovers themselves. Is it for good or bad? That can never be the question. Did you last the upheavals to reach the calm? That is the question. 

"My capricious love of many moons, I wish I could meet you again - there's so much of you I have inside me, but out of so little of you."

Clouds roll into every couple's life. Everything gets hidden - the planets, the shooting stars - nearer home, even fireflies go unseen.   The worst is when love's clear skies get hidden. Love goes blind, it flounders.   The importance is, of course, not in the clouds - because pain will come, scars will happen. The question always is - what overwhelms and what prevails.