Loving Life

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
―
Ellen Bass

The Sleepless Ones by Lawrence Timaue

The Sleepless Ones:

What if all the people who could not sleep
at two or three or four in the morning
left their houses and went to the parks

what if hundreds, thousands,
millions went in their solitude
like a stream and each told their story

what if there were old women
fearful if they slept they would die
and young women unable to conceive
and husbands having affairs
and children fearful of failing
and fathers worried about paying bills
and men having business troubles
and women unlucky in love
and those that were in physical pain
and those who were guilty

what if they all left their houses
like a stream and the moon
illuminated their way and
they came, each one
to tell their stories

would these be the more troubled
of humanity or would these be
the more passionate of this world

or those who need to create to live
or would these be the lonely ones

and I ask you

if they all came to the parks
at night and told their stories
would the sun on rising
be more radiant

and again I ask you
would they embrace

~ Lawrence Tirnaue

Strangers by Sunil Bhandari

Strangers
(there will be time)
----------------------------------------------

Some place,
only high winds know,
a battlefield emerges
and a feisty stranger.

Soft colors go up like mist
from the flutter of a butterfly's wings
murmurs as soft as summer
travel miles as bespoke words -
I look in awe, changed
how resolutions are unique, as in resolve.

It's only life, she types out a message,
my stories are more than of scrambles,
I'm touched by the wonder of wonder,
spring is still a friend of my autumn.

And I look at her face - that cut, those eyes,
and I know there's light she's collected
from her births and her years,
to be emitted when times are dark.
We will meet one day, she says,
there's so much lucence to share,
so much darkness to dispel.

- words of Sunil Bhandari

A morning to grow old in ~ by Sunil Bhandari

A morning to grow old in ~

Will we be two quiet souls
Suddenly lost to the world
Growing old in ways
The world forgets to remember?

Will our lives be tiny flourishes
Under the fame of children
Too blase to acknowledge
We'd loved them once?

What would we be
When we cease to be
A celebration of love
And life's meaning to itself?

Would we be passed over
Much before we pass on,
As we sink in ourselves
In a wrinkled mess of smells?

Could I look at you & seek solace
In ways you did once to me?
Can you be feisty with my timidness
The way you were with life itself?

I want to be a Zorba
Till death will part us be.
Our worth will be larger than our breath
A symbol of all we were, or could be.

~words of Sunil Bhandari

Love After Love

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Reinvention

Reinvention ~

She doesn't tell me things now,
As she looks out of the window, I wonder
what she thinks of.
It's the mystery of women, they say,
the uncovering is slow - the pace theirs.

But this was not how it was.

How is it that our closest relationships are the ones
whose stories dry up first?
We look at each other, and we see the same refrains
playing in our minds.
I say - she's silent, thats her nature - and turn away.
And the chum of a whole universe inside of her
finds its way in rashes in our togetherness.

What prevents us from new narratives?

Maybe I will share more,
maybe it will be a difference if I share first,
maybe I will disengage our comfortable grooves of knowingness.
Maybe I will reinvent ourselves.
We could then be the poetry I pen every night,
the pain shared in words, rather than silence.

Then, when we hook our arms and walk with familiar paths,
we could be far richer than the sunset we walk into.

~ words of Sunil Bhandari

If Love hurts...

Leave if your love hurts you.

Leave if it is always more pain than it is joy.

Contrary to what they’ll tell you,

Love does not make the world spin around.

You can want someone, baby.

You can want them until you’re raw.

That kind of longing can turn you into water after a live wire has been thrown into it.

It can turn you into the hand holding that wire,

But that doesn’t mean it’s right.

It doesn’t mean you should stay.

Don’t hang round just because you’re scared that you’ll never feel that kind of electricity again.

It’s not true, it never was.

The thing is, you were made to be touched by hands,

Attached to a body that finds itself at rest when it’s with you.

That finds itself quietly trembling when you’re together.

Those hands need to come with gentle words and an honest mouth.

A mouth that says your name in a way that sounds like the very definition of “falling.”

So don’t take less than that.

Don’t take half of that.

Above all, if it hurts, go.

You’ll fall in love so many times that you’ll lose count and it’ll shake you.

Tiny vibrations like tectonic plates with every stranger who you looked into the eyes and made your body feel new.

Find a love that makes you feel new, and better.

Always like you’re moving and staying still at the exact same time.

Grow, expand, and if it hurts, leave.”

– Azra. T. “Lessons #2”