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”

moon

Meet me
under the strawberry moon.
I'll be the one
dressed like the sea.
~ Ron Wills

Shy girl

For the shy girl
with windows in her eyes,
a kiss hidden in a poem
about walking in gardens
where there are no gardens, 
but tangled paths balanced
between our yesterdays
and our tomorrows.
You're beautiful.
I won't ever touch your hand,
not until I become the wind.

~Ron Wills

I will write you letters this winter

I will write you letters this winter

I will write you letters this winter
When the snow falls and the fire crackles
I will race over those alphabets
Lingering on ones I felt
When I stood under the warm sluicing water
and you were mist across the shower of rain
I caught a glimpse of you in the golden sunlight
outside the deep green curtains.
I will hold you in coherent coincidences
And I will refuse to turn the page
I will sit with mulled words and live in exuberant summers
When the ascending spirals of smoke groan wet
Ebbing away the sensation that leaped up the chimney
I will know you were hanging on to the soot.
You were holding on and clinging to my roof.
I will look at you as tenderly as the moon
Looks at the frozen icicles that remain on the branches
When every living room will be swarming with unions and laughter
This Christmas
I will write you letters under the mistletoe
I will not proliferate or pluck my history from yours
I will let my now and then merge in yours
I will not let the distance long or throb
I will let us squeeze and snuggle into a poem
When passion will river on my soft swollen syllables
I will unfasten the violet from my ink
and spill all over you,on and again

I will write you letters till the winter ends.

~ by Poulome Mitra Shaw

My Failing Eye                                                                                                   
Debsruti Basu

There is a manner 
in which things shape up, 
inside my head. 
Like well-paved roads, 
leading to fallen houses. 

I know all the stories.
I remember them with the precision 
of how they began — 
how each eyelash dropped a lie, 
or a truth, combining the two. 

And I have my endings, 
like curtains that were once lace —
holding up the window, 
like a body of its own. 

My hands lie folded, 
on my sterile chest. 
With no children to feed, 
neither to own,          

I sleep like an old nostalgia shop. 

But you, you remember to leave this city —
leave these walls, 
this village, nameless. 
For when the shutter finally falls down, 
don’t see your face, 
for sale —
crumbling within. 

Finish - Charles Bukowski

We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting

Alone with Everybody - Charles Bukowski

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than flesh.
there's no chance
at all.
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
noboday ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.

What’s the best thing in the world?

What’s the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Love, when, so, you’re loved again.
What’s the best thing in the world?
–Something out of it, I think.

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

There are different wells within your heart...

Some Fill With Each Good Rain
There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,
That "love" is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far, far too deep
For that.

--Hafiz

THE LAUGHING HEART

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
@Charles Bukowski

THE CALL

I have heard it all my life,
A voice calling a name I recognized as my own.
Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper.
Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency.
But always it says: Wake up my love. You are walking asleep.
There's no safety in that!
Remember what you are and let this knowing
take you home to the Beloved with every breath.
Hold tenderly who you are and let a deeper knowing
colour the shape of your humanness.
There is no where to go. What you are looking for is right here.
Open the fist clenched in wanting and see what you already hold in your hand.
There is no waiting for something to happen,
no point in the future to get to.
All you have ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.
You are wearing yourself out with all this searching.
Come home and rest.
How much longer can you live like this?
Your hungry spirit is gaunt, your heart stumbles. All this trying.
Give it up!
Let yourself be one of the God-mad,
faithful only to the Beauty you are.
Let the Lover pull you to your feet and hold you close,
dancing even when fear urges you to sit this one out.
Remember- there is one word you are here to say with your whole being.
When it finds you, give your life to it. Don't be tight-lipped and stingy.
Spend yourself completely on the saying.
Be one word in this great love poem we are writing together.
~Oriah Mountain

GITANJALI

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.
I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have
heard his gentle footsteps on the road before my house.
The livelong day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor; but the lamp
has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.
I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.
~Rabindranath Tagore

BREAKFAST

He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He poured the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He added the sugar
To the coffee and milk
He stirred it
With a teaspoon
He drank the coffee
And put back the cup
Without speaking to me
He lit a cigarette
He blew some rings
With the smoke
He flicked the ashes
Into the ashtray
Without speaking to me
Without looking at me
He got up
He put his hat
On his head
He put on
His raincoat
Because it was raining
He went out
Into the rain
Without a word
Without looking at me
And I
I took my head
In my hands
And I wept
~Jacques Prevert

THE BEE BOX

In this small box, my love,
you'll not find a ring,
but instead, a brave, little bee.
He'll be dead by morn, having given his life
defending his flowers against me.
I felt his sting
while picking the small, purple pansies
growing wild along the roadside,
in hopes of an afternoon bouquet for you.
And I grieved the sting,
more for him than me,
knowing full well the price he paid
for my small pain.
And I allowed him his victory,
leaving his flowers as a memory,
and brought you instead
this brave, little bee,
who proves there is love
even in the smallest
of things.

~Lowell Parker