I wish you’d leave
I’d like to be alone
In a time and space
Freed of the need
To be guarded
Right now
I don’t want to care
For what you will think or feel
I just want to
Touch base with myself
But then in my solitude
I find myself searching
For that permanence
That’s supposed to be me
…A me without you.
What an ache there is
To find no such thing
Just a hope that one day
When the curtains come down
On the drama of our lives
Each experience
Is like a short film
A fixed-duration sound and light show.
My life is an illusory line
Composed of short-lived segments
Everything with a beginning is fated for an end.
All that I know
At some point fades into the darkness of what I don’t
Every day ends in a dark night.
In and through short-lived experiences
The experience of experiencing has persisted
With all that changed, this alone has remained.
What is a poem
If not a reflection
Of the mystery of my being
How can I claim authorship
Or even meaningful intent
When my own existence is
Like a drawing in still waters.
I suspect that
There’s no other time
Apart from NOW.
Your memories and
Your dreams
Live only in the NOW.
You can’t be better than
Or more prepared than
You already are…NOW.
How you will be tomorrow
Is how you are
Today…in this moment…NOW.
The most important people
Exist in your life
Right here, right NOW.
To wait in hope
Is to hold your breath
Inhale and exhale…NOW.
To grow is not a future plan
It is to fill up
The space of NOW.
So, if a measured unit of time has gone by
What has happened to immeasurable space?
Space cannot go by
Or be over…
Spaces are where we live
Where we think and feel…
Gain and lose
Give and take
Seek out and find…
Space is shared
Space is for all
Space is co-existence.
Time may slip through
But there’s no reason why space should too.
Space is not a dimension of becoming
It’s a dimension of being
Let’s make the choice
To be more than just little.
To choose silence over argument
To see that grace and disgrace
Co-exist and collude, fool and then enlighten…
So that you may see the folly in seeking external favour
And then to understand that if you didn’t insist
On living within the walls you built
There’d be no consequential desire to leave
And nothing you’d want to walk away from.
Nothing that we meet
Is alien to us
We’ve already known
All that we encounter
My fears and my doubts
My anger, my sadness or my joy…
Are all familiar
The circumstances didn’t create them.
My thoughts did.
There’s an aesthetic pleasure
Awaiting us in every circumstance
In every human condition
In emptiness, in ambiguity
In the naive and the silly
In the silent and the unsaid
Even the repulsive
Is pervaded by a grace
Over and above its own character
Perception depends on the perceiver
Wisdom says
The seer and the seen are one
Truth by virtue, can belong only to the truthful
And beauty too, can belong
Only to the truly beautiful.
The aesthete is not simply
A cultivated man
He is a realized man
A man at first
With good sense
And therefore, with good taste.
He is beautiful
Because he is unconcerned
About how beauty ought to look.
A seeker of the true
He is attentive to every detail
But disinterested in crafting effects.
The aesthete can sense
Much before an average man can
The gifts that remain imperceptible to common taste.
All work is about facilitating…
Making easy…
Making possible…
Making a difference…
I look at myself…
Small…limited…
And confined
Within myself.
I wonder…
How do I make easy,
Make possible
My own freedom?
By what means will I make a difference to me?
I’ve read about people
Who have swum
The expanse of oceans
And experienced its dark
Murky depths
And emerged victorious
And grateful for being alive.
I muse about the aptness
Of its metaphor
For the experiences I’ve had…
I’ve plumbed my own depths
Straddled in a nowhere space
Neither here nor there
Neither up nor down
Chiming to an external rhythm
Of day and night
But swimming in a dark expanse within.
I still haven’t emerged victorious.
I wonder what I should do
With my aliveness.
How strange
That love must have rituals
That elaborately and
With excessive pomp and show
Declare on a fixed date
Year after year
The design of our love.
Of course, this works beautifully
When one has to live up to the lie
Of words and sentiments
That were, in the first place,
Exaggerations of plain feelings
That would otherwise go unnoticed
And unheard
In the loud and garish spectacle
Of a theatrical world.
Love is essence, not feeling
It’s not a hope, or an ideal
Neither is it a needy prayer
It’s there in our midst
When we speak through silence
Needing nothing
To decorate our being
Or to celebrate our love
(It’s not an accomplishment)
We’re no longer together
We’re one.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 