adVerse

 

There’s a world between you and me

Stair cases, errands, rat races, daily grinds

A word between you and me

It could have been ‘Us’ - But it lingers in the confined independence of you and me

Like a lion in a sanctuary?

There’s a tether between you and me

Interdependence..it could have been a bond

It could have been beyond…

But it hovers around the promise, like it defines it premise.

There’s a sentence between you and me..

Not a quote, nor a charm - not even a worded punctuated form.

Life sentence perhaps? Like a term that needs to be served.

I try to rise beyond this in between..

But you my mind - cannot be minded. 

So I gauge the depth between you and me..

The one that nothing can fill.

Or ‘No Thing’ can fill.

It’s silly how there’s nothing between you and me

So should’d we merge into one?

Ah there..now there’s a myth between you and me..

A real one - this myth. That’s the irony!

 Photo by Wendelin Jacober from Pexels

reVerse

 Another day melts into the dusk

On an unknown countdown

I look through the curtains of my cozy bedroom 

Through the layers of the goose down comforter 

That I am Tucked under

The room lights up in tender warmth from the lamp on the night stand

The body slipping into the lap of comfort 

But there’s this soul that fidgets

Unable to settle in this scenario 

It peeks into the dark

A dark that only souls can penetrate wearing the correcting lenses of intuition.

The life yearns and how -

Beyond the warmth of this worldly setting,

Beyond 1000 count sheets and satin pajamas

It craves, this silly soul , to venture into the openness 

Over the earth, under the sky

Wrapped in the unevenness of the grass pricking my back

The chill of the summer breeze grazing my body

Numberless stars gently spreading their glimmer

That catches the moisture of skin

Making it shimmer like silk.

It craves perhaps for something that transcends the shallows of the world

Something that speaks to me in fluent caring 

Making me say I am in Love

Like it is a place to be, a pretty peaceful place

Making me swoon in that place- feeling a Bliss that my cozy bedroom eludes.

Verse

 

Do you ever try,

To capture the deeps

The rhythms of the heart, the rhymes of the soul

Armed with the paraphernalia.,.donning the explorer hat.

I have a feeling that this’ll be a treasure hunt.

A camera dangles from the neck, eagerly waiting to arrest that moment

When what you mean seems to present itself a visual

You are a page in this spirit book, wait may be a chapter..

Or perhaps you are the whole entire book case with a sliding ladder..

Tucked into you, my many emotions, in illustrations, 

You seem to expand into the neighborhood, the hometown 

The country, the continent…

Then I see you as a globe, spinning on the axis of my love

Spreading into a luminous light…white! Iridescent..

I sit and jot down an entire word pile

Rested on one single sentiment- the expression of the unspoken 

But the smile I let out when you top it and topple it..

This massive word heap, with your silence, your presence, your essence 

I sprinkle these lines at you, like confetti

Conceding defeat at your feet!

reVerse

 Fabrics can be friends

The ones sewn into flattering forms

Wrapping my flesh in a cuddle, puddles of frills warming my skin

That Tee for example - I swear what I say is true

Conforms to my heart dousing those flutters and jitters in a secure swaddle 

Almost making me feel like a newborn receiving skin to skin from the mother.

The color it bled takes an ombré effect, adding to its coze

Much like a parent’s warm smile.

The weft and warp softened to accommodate my rough edges

Sanding them.

I feel polished  like a pebble in the way of a stream, in the garb of that Tee - like a bestie’s assuring smile, accompanied by a tight hug.

Sometimes the seams of that fabric blur and I see your skin

Where the Tee had been.

And you swaddle, cuddle and secure me in that embrace.

You could be my old, comfy tee - my old comfy tee could be you.

What amalgam of being loved!

Ooem

 

Then I write, when I write

I feel a lack of words like a lack of breath!

Panting, I ponder 

I call a Verse, 'Reverse'.

I call a Poem an Ooem - Lisping my way through names.

When I watch through the looking glass

Of this perspective window

I capture things so minute, miniscule, invisible

That spotting them morphs me into thin air

And I become a ghost of the Ooem - I mean the Poem.

"The Visible is a hoax" - wisdom from the Ghost I had become

Whispers in my ears.

"It is" I tend to agree. 

And bend to see the hoaxes through the perceptive.

I touch the non palpable

It feels like a simulation

Like an emotional masturbation.

There's a fulfillment that flows in my being

Beyond the blood and flesh

And I drown in that bliss.

I experience that which cannot be

Captured by the eye, the taste, the sniff, the ear, the epidermis

Oh that's because I become a Ghost.

I do not know if it is the damned one or Holier than thou.

I don't seem to care to sort it into this or that.

I emote, in the abstract

Vacuum flowing through the keypad.

Next time around I might call it a Syric instead of a Lyric.

Does it matter what I call it?

Or even how I shape it?

It is a void for Heaven's sake - or for the sake of Timbuktu.

It cannot confirm to the container

Or a spelling rule.

It is there but it isn't.

So what's in a name.

An Ooem it is, not a Poem. Spilling through the abyss.

subVerse

 This thing about this thing

Called life and living

How strange its ways

Do we know the count 

Of the left over days?

Blurred in the daily grind

Obscured in the mind rewind

Living a day back or a year ahead

In this trope of a silly head!

This thing about this thing

Called being in the moment

What simple instruct

Lost in the brain construct.

The next stop, the last - who knows?

Perhaps curtain down on the Shows

Of Illusions, delusions

Of elaborate plans ahead of present.

This thing about this thing

Called in between two points

One life, one death

Several plots and joints

What plain little truth

Wrapped in a silly little scam

That our time is unlimited

Waiting to live sometime else

This thing won't wait!

So

Don't let it slip in the mind maze.

Be. Just Be!

Ponder

If you were one of the unfortunate few who had a conversation with me in the last year, you probably remember how the theme of my conversation was my Kindergartner's virtual school. You probably got bored over how I complained about the five apps they had to submit their 'asynchronous' work on while quipping about how they could have called it plain old homework and ranting about the American obsession of sounding profound in its nomenclature. I know, it's a bit of an irony coming from the wordy me - this disdaining of using fancy, frilly words in lieu of easy, simple ones. But the point is, I made it loud and clear that I was waiting for this 'virtual' year to end. 

Till I discovered otherwise. 

It was the last day. And it was finally here. I was doing a "Yippie" inside my head and capturing some memories on my phone while my little tot logged into the final session of her Kindergarten year. Every one of the twenty three tots were ecstatic, screaming in joy about the summer break, about popsicles, visits to cousins and late night movies. Or so I thought. Suddenly I saw little Emma on the screen. Her breaking voice drowned in a bedlam of joy from the other participants. Kind Mrs. K, the class teacher, hushed the rest of them to let Emma speak. "I am going to miss the class, this is the last day and I can never log into this session again" she said, her blue eyes wide open without a blink, trying her best to hide a whimper. Kind Mrs. K said a few words of comfort. They probably helped Emma handle her emotions, they probably didn't. From that point on, I was too soaked up in Emma's emotion to identify my own, So I didn't know. 

There's this quirk about me - all this deep seated ponders emerge from a place or space I do not know exists. On a normal day, I am like an actor playing the role - very well aware of the 'playing' part - in simple words, emotions elude me. I know, most people that know me might laugh when I say this but this is the utter truth. But of course, I am a master of soaking up second hand emotions. Like I soaked up Emma's. Some probably call it empathy.

I call it confusing.

So the confused me welled up along side. I suddenly started feeling low. Like I didn't want this kindergarten class to end. Like doing all the 'asynchronous' work was the best part of my day. I probably grabbed a tissue, dabbed my eyes and blew my nose and walked around morphed into Little Emma - carrying the weight of her emotion on my overweight shoulders. I wish and hope that Emma had gotten over it sooner than I did as the residue of that emotion still lingers around here, close to a week after it occurred. I had a hard time taking down the arts and crafts I pinned to the 'work wall' of my second born, and discarding paper work was a torture on its own. Matters didn't help when the second born wanted to hold on to the last scrap of the papers she scribbled and colored on. "Is this the only way you would remember your KG?" I would ask her again and again, making her let go of a stack of papers into the recycling pile. All of this, while I was in a state of denial myself and did all of this letting go with a reluctance I had never known I had.

Then I thought of the Friend we lost last month - and the grief amplified. I let it flow, without dams to control it. I fit myself into all the shoes I could think of fitting myself into, and let the pain cleanse my insides. I know some call it empathy. 

I call it Amusing.

Now, Only, If my feeling those alien emotions helps the owners of those emotion with some respite. In my silly way, I think it does. We cannot probably take away another's sorrow. But we can feel it, share it, experience it like our own.

I don't know how to feel about all this soaking up. 

I'll let it be.

I call it Loving.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

reVerse

Through the looking glass,

Through the image if an I,

The illusion 

I see more of them, those delusions 

Filtered in sunshine

Feigning more facades.

I kick up my feet, giving them a respite

From treading through thorny pavers

Uncased in flesh strolling in a maze, 

Encased in spirit, trying to unravel the tangles.

Through the crystal ball, I see

Seeking answers to rhetorics.

Does true love exist, beyond allegories 

That adorn the walls…some above and some below

Some woven to represent a heart 

Some framed in the voids of the walls

Urging the illusion I

To seek! 

What does the I see?

What does the I listen in those silent speech bubbles

Violently adamant!

Nothing but the rhetoric echoing

Making the I speechless at its own irony!

A-Z April Z for Zee to A

 

And it's a wrap. This challenge does so many wonderful things to my creative, emotional and overall wellness. When I sit and write every day of the week in April,  I realize how we put off things that are not time sensitive and the procrastination bug bites us.

The problem is that we think we have time.

That we have time and it'll come tomorrow. That we can take that trip, make that call, visit that loved one, catch up with that best friend or write that blog tomorrow. 

The problem is that we think we have time.

This month had been one of the hardest I went through. Meat grinder, roller coaster, free fall - all rolled into one. If this wasn't A-Z, I would have shunned this space indefinitely - trying to cope with the challenges I was put through. If it wasn't for this commitment I took seriously, I wouldn't have found this coping mechanism of writing it out and finding some strange strength to deal with this Class A beast called life.

There is no time. There is no tomorrow. There's no order to life. It is not just short - it is brutally, chaotically short. There is one moment. Here and Now. In the present. And right here in the present, the answers to all our problems magically surface and dissipate them.

The answer to the problem is "Do it now!"

And with that wisdom I mend a pained heart, and the show goes on. 

I hope we all find some Zen in every path we tread - The lovely trail, the busy road or the stroll through our keyboards to find the paradox of life.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

A-Z April Y for You

 

The map leading to the treasure

The fortune sought in good measure

Treading the path leading out

The footsteps march on a mission

Where do you see? What do you seek?

In this wonder of an existence.

Close your eyes - what do you perceive?

What happens to the outer - that's Deceive!

These heaps of things

What desire brings.

What do they add? What do they subtract?

Is there a profit greeting you at the bottom line?

Is the greed of accumulation

To success define?

Where do you wander

Looking for joy

For fulfillment, you seek a decoy.

This delusional path, futile and tough

Shun it, look within

YOU are enough!

A-Z April X for XOXO

 

I was contemplating over my writing journey and I remembered that I had a very weird web address for my blog when I first started. In my defense, It was 17 years ago. When I look back I was very innocent and yet to experience life in its full spectrum. In a very non-egoic way, I startle myself at the purity of thought and action I had back then. As life happened, the topography of my thought changed - so did my perception. While I have to say I grew up in the truest of senses, something in me misses my plain, trusting and untarnished younger version. Life had contaminated me in some ways and refined me in other ways. It was a good ride - an amalgam of bumpy and smooth, tranquil and turbulent. 

On the brighter side, I gave a form to an abstract spiritual side of me. In the past three years or so, I discovered meditation. It is funny how this 'mediation' thingy was something the significant other started on, around the same time as I started on my blog - but somehow, we never seemed to have discussed of this being an 'option' I should try as well. At long last though, it wasn't him that prompted me to do it. He perhaps believed in the fact that I should find it in myself to try it and it shouldn't be something that he should persuade me to do. I do however, started believing in the premeditation of things and our doors open when we are ready to walk through them. Sometimes there in no growth in our comfort zone. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going and we need some silence of the mind to maneuver through that. 

In a very metaphorical way, my blogging journey had corresponded with my life journey. In fact, every thought, every imagination, every inspiration I record in here, had been nothing less of meditation. It had brought me where I stand today. While life threw its blessings and hurdles, my writings got to the table the much needed company, contemplation and clarity to deal with the hauls.

And there was a supplement support system that helped me stream through this type A beast called life. Or should I say, supplements! - the Xs and the Os. Now tell me, which of them is a hug? and which of them is a kiss? I see conflicting opinions. But for me Xs are hugs. When life fails me, meditation helps. when meditation fails, the Xs helps - and I am so blessed that I had gotten so many of them - and in such assortment. For all those who held me when all else failed - XXX.  That includes the ones that wander or deliberate to this place to send me a virtual embrace by the giving me a drop of their precious time and thought.

May the world embrace Love in its purest essence.

Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels