Uncut Poetry

"How do you choose a poem to write? she asked. How do you find the pulse of that vein, that something precious which is nowhere?"   Where does a poem come from? Where is its birth place? What is its ancestry?   I have found poetry as a wound finds its scar, or a plucked flower finds an altar. The process is organic like breathing and unstructured as a heart plunging. It often starts as a curiosity...

Hello all you lovers, of poetry, of good things, of love itself. As we start a brand new year, we can only hope to dig out joy out of the debris of despondence and despair. I hope my poetry has been a companion to you, week after week, on all things hopeful, zen-like, heart-breaking but heart-healing too. Every page of my poetry is a survival manual of sorts for me. I hope I have made you come ali...

"Much of the world has dug deep into the quilty warmth of bodies, wishing the winter to  find its way away  and let sleep wrap them in its insidious ways. And the glory of sun lies lost outside, wasted in lighting corner dustbins, and nooks where spiders glisten as anointed lures.   Winter mornings are glorious. If only we get to see them.   Ensconced in our blankets, our bodies held in the warmth...

"We would talk of the day to make the outside world our own, and lay joint claim to our individual memories."   A home is of so many definitions. The place we grow in, the place we get our first intimations of the living world, the place we are desperate to get to at the end of a day - but also the place we are desperate to leave as we grow.   Often a shelter, often a prison, often just a roof, of...

"I'm a multiplier of the breeze and the sunsets which have moved through me, I'm a quiver of hurts I can ruthlessly give. I'm withdrawn without reason, I can be generous without a reason too."   Anyone's identity is rarely singular - it's a bunch of elements, and mostly, a bunch of contradictions. There is never a case of knowing oneself, but only of accepting oneself. But accepting oneself is a p...

"There's always a road waiting for one of the lovers to depart."   The saga of love is a play of light and shadow. There is incident, coincidence, an assemblage of adrenalin, a bellowing of blood, a singling out of songs, a resurgence of senses. Love arranges it's own arrivals, often as a storm, frequently as a story, most often as winter sun. It rearranges parts of our life, it splinters our days...

"I see him standing with the skies, grafted into the clouds, the breeze resting in his hair, a black & white etching to life.   I gently come behind him, put an arm around his shoulders, as his drift leans into me, he looks at me soft, soft."   I have often stood at the window with my dad, as evenings have drifted in. We've not always spoken much, but after all our years, we are just grateful to h...

To receive praise is a need and how to praise is an art.   We tend to be so focused on fulfilling our own desires, that we forget that so many of these fulfillments happen because someone else went on a limb for us. Do we always acknowledge? Or do we just move on, unthinkingly? And the irony is that those who support us silently, who give the wind beneath our wings without being asked, are the one...

"All the goddesses have upped and left, as they are wont to do. They fought a bit, showed a few dead bodies, got us to note the weaponry - the heads they'd severed,  the wild rides they could summon - then dived into inescapable imaginations, depths they could escape only in a year.   Beyond the sweltering of allegories and the heavy lifting of metaphors, in the dismal gloom of departure, will lay...

"I'd think the time for recrimination is long past it's witching hour. Your hand is still a stiff board when I reach out to it, and your body is still your own when I embrace it. You've been an icicle all through summer, but the time for bonfires is in - you have to let your long limbs find their way around me again."   The ebb and flow of love, the turning away and the turning towards its glow, t...

Endings are ruthless. They make you forget every bit of acid existing in relationships in a moment. Regret pours in like the flood of a broken dam. But when the last line has been crossed, when the artery is cut to kill, the path reaches a crevasse - another step is a step into the valley of death.   Deep inside all lovers know when that point has been reached. But hope - that great harbinger of f...

"Somewhere in the air, something whizzed past.  I looked up to see Daar ji's kurta turn into  a gorgeous crimson flower, with a small black pinpoint center."   This poem is about what happens when a young child goes to Jallianwala Bagh with his grandfather on that fateful day in 1919.   The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on 13 April 1919. A large but peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallia...

"Keep looking at me as we die, let your look be in my final sigh, we've been compatriots of beginnings  of which we thought there was no end - maybe, we'll be every love's destiny, a passing on, when there's no real reason why, except tiredness, tiredness, tiredness."   Procreation is atavistic. But what about death wish? Not that point where a soul tethers at the edge of depression, but the one w...

"Peacocks are raucous and find roofs with easy comfort - there is still place in this concrete jungle, even if some hearts go for a walk in search of a soul.   Do we find comfort in the quiet disregard of the unfamiliar?"   Our search for the soul of a city is ever so twisted, as it should be. A city needs to be lived in. On its streets, one needs to be mauled with aromas, with its obsessions, wit...

"Come to my house one afternoon, my bed's unmade for all lovers of mine, we will find ourselves at our wildest & truest  when we reach the third bottle of wine.   You can kiss me roughly, and push me down, and I will tell you once more - though you know thirty per cent of what I am, tonight you can be hundred per cent my man."   I've always wondered what happens when two lonely souls meet. Are the...

  "I am tired of finding you  in places  watermarked with  our senses."   The moment of change is a poem. The tranquil chaos of pain is a poem. The end of love is itself a poem. It's just that a poet can put it all into words.   For a heartbroken lover, the city becomes a map of things found and lost at the same time. The heart becomes an almanac of bruises and scars. Everything precious seems to...

"I inhale the fragrance of lavender from a candle lit at 559, I know you'd call at 6, and I want to feel as if you're here."   By itself, love is a beating heart. Never ceases, never stops. It's just we, who fill it with our own insecurities, our fragility, our loneliness.   We doubt ourselves hence we doubt the other, and view love as a paradigm of insecurity when all it is a temple which awaits...

"There's so much I can give you yet, for I'm a poem you left three-fourths of the way, I promise I still have a syntax in bed, which might surprise the metaphor in you."   What's love if there is no mischief in it? What's love of it doesn't become lazy sometimes and has to be given a jolt!   In the infinite comfort of being the cynosure of one true love, also lies the seeds of it being taken for g...

Excerpt from "It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away"*   "Why do we do anything for the people we love, you asked, isn't everything a poem we write for the other, every day, day in day out? Then why is love demanded as diligence, when you can have it as grace?"   Hear the full poem in the latest episode of Uncut Poetry Podcast   We take so much for granted. The air we breathe, the f...

"I am exhausted with mornings with their false pretenses and promises, and wonder what it would take to stop it from decorating itself with silver and gold and light and lies, and merely let us be the honest suicide candidates, who see every bright start to a day and know the hypocrisy ready to unravel as a brilliant bright day."   Every morning we wake up with an array of feelings racing inside u...

Ryan Tomlin, based out of Leeds in UK,  became an author at the age of 17. He loved the experience so much he decided that being a successful and best selling author was his ultimate goal. He sent his book to publishers all over. Alas, the only one who agreed to publish asked for 2500 pounds in payment.   After that he wrote four more books- all of them rejected by publishers. Till, on his 20th bi...

"I was a survivor of religious texts which left morsels at my doorstep as they made their way to their lofty definitions."   Big revolutions often have beginnings in nooks and crannies - a kitchen or a closet, a garage or a heart. To confront the world, a general could be less than five feet high, to have a voice which resonates through the world, one could be a tiny teenager speaking in the softe...

"Love is such an unreasonable yearner - full-hearted but empty-handed: it can give a treasure out of nothing, but can never ask to be gifted one."   We are all, at various times, givers or takers. Giving is easy when we care, though not when we don't. But when conjoined with commitment, we can continue giving, through our anger, disillusionment or grief.   But asking, in the best of times, can be...

Passion as lust is so underrated.   It is bequeathed to youth, dismissed as elemental, in passing, as age progresses it is assumed dead on arrival. It's somehow taken as recreational, it is taken as something which is done - and done with. It is taken as an aberration if it floods you, you are a mendicant if you can control it, a vamp if you let it possess you, an offender if it affects every part...

Welcome to the Salon edition of Uncut Poetry.   In the Salon edition, we will feature interviews of cutting-edge poets, readings of my favorite poetry, reviews of poetry books which I have fallen in love with, and pretty much everything related to poetry. Every month, once a week!   In the inaugural episode, we feature the African-American poet Katerina Canyon.   Katerina Canyon is an Award Winnin...