Resolution

 Reclaim

Rekindle

Rebirth 

A beautiful prompt for the new year 2023 by Poet's and storyteller's  united 

Resolution

Rising from water

I rinse my soul

Of uncleanly remnants

Belonging to a rabid past.

 

I emerge calmer than

the wind which breathed

Life to my nose

Regaling gales which knocked

my wind before

will just leave my soul sour

I pledge to do that no more.

 

Fresh start

From ashes apart

Will bear fruit

Only if you stop being everyone’s favorite fool

Be ugly, Be astute.

 

 

 

 

A new hope

 

Collective bad dreams

Spit us out of our

Stupified sleeps.

 

Denuded desires,

Chasing the ghosts of

Gone glories.

 

Midnight oil burned,

Moody mindscapes

Caught frozen in

picturesque landscapes.

 

I didn’t know what to do,

But she stood with me

With a lamp in her hand

And somehow that was enough.

Written for the Sunday muse and PU's Sunday pantry. Based it out of the struggle my team is going through this season. 

Ludo Queen

So in lieu of my recent continued obsession with the game ‘Ludo King’, I have come to the conclusion that life is very similar to a game of  Ludo. Most people think it is the oversimplistic Snakes and ladders and a few would like to think that it is a complicated game of chess. The fact is that while in Snakes and Ladders we have ZERO control of the game and we are essentially leaving it to chance , in chess we are the masters of our own destiny. Neither situation really reflects life as it is.

 

Life like I said is a game of Ludo. It is the culmination of a seemingly predictable algorithm coupled with pure roll of the dice and strategic movement of your tokens. There are 2 ways to play it – either aggressively look to take out your opponent’s tokens to move forward or play the safe game and focus on the moves which will lead you to not be killed. It is fight or flee all over again. But again it is a question of responding to what the situation demands of you. Sometimes if you chicken out of taking the token which is right in front of you , others might start attacking you thinking you are a weakling . Or sometimes, while all your tokens are in the safe zone guarded by luck you might get cocky and try to grab what is not yours and end up back in square one.

 

So don’t be a cock or a chicken. Be your own wonderful self! Trust your instinct always. The gut always seems to process past defeats in a better fashion than your logical brain .

Earn your coins , enjoy the journey however tumultuous it gets. If all your tokens are back in the hut , don’t give up automatically. Atleast in the algorithm based universe perseverance has a price. Remember, giving up never has no upside! Also remember that this is just some elaborate game and it makes no sense to take it so seriously. Death might just be the end of a simulation for all we know. Okay. I am going to stop typing now :P

 

(365 words)

Helen Killer

Golden Brown

All the gloss , glitter and glue

Cannot photoshop the sheer phobia

Lurking right beneath her skin

Forming a palpable layer,

They attack her

Only when no one is watching.

She seems so bold

But is actually quite brittle

Her quiet melancholy

Muddled by her extensive cacophony.

She is indeed a prisoner of her own device

Trapped in bravado

She just wants to cry.

Yet when her man is watching

She cannot let him see

If the truth is really exposed

Won’t he just flee?

Better to break it off

And be the bitch

Than take it off

And be his bitch.

Of course it is all very problematic

But who are we to judge?

We all mask our frail insecurities

 marinate them with worry &

deep fry it till it becomes golden brown.

Carpe the frikking diem

Seize the day

Every second , every minute

Do not let the drowsiness drown you ,

Let that moment ebb away

Before long you will be viewing it from

Mount Nostalgia

Where powerful telescopic lenses

Painfully scrutinise every moment you wasted

Till you had no more

With the ones you love.

Things you took for granted

Will be pulled away without ceremony

You will be lying on the carpet

Rubbing your head

Wondering about gravity

The day your sun burns no more

Sounds like an improbability

Beyond your levels of comprehension

But it was always right around the corner my friend

You’re just driving for the first time

Listen to this burned freak and just

Seize the day.

Alphabet Song

Image from the internet

We’re all at the Anonymous Café

Basking in each other’s misery

Cotton over our bleeding hearts

Defying Death and all her friends

Ever ready to give it another go

Fossiled memories motivating rather than defeating

Grape sized heart can carry

Such humongous weight

Ignominious defeats

Justifying its strength

Kudos to us all for still trying hard.

Lavish meals and meringue pies

Can only take you so far

Novice Romantics chuckle at us silently

Our orchestra of sadness drown them quiet easily.

Be proud of all the battle scars

Queer we are not for choosing this

Rocky path

Songs getting written by of us at this very moment

Taste of victory after testing times is the best after all.

Right? 

So the Toads had an interesting prompt where you take a letter-word and run with it. I ran with the letters from A-T then ignored UVWXYZ because I already made my point. 

Rockstar

I Rebel

Don’t compromise

Non conform

Break Glass Ceilings

Only for it to shatter all over me

Cuts deeper than wound

I persist

Keep flying towards the star

My scars sing to the world

That I am a rockstar

And now I wave down at them

Because I dared to climb up. 

Divided we fall

Hi there. So it has taken me longer than usual to get the blog rolling this year. Starting the year with an old unpublished poem which fits the theme of unity :) Would absolutely love all feedback! So comment away.

A conjoined twin trying to escape another

Grunting in exertion and effort

As his flesh binds him to another

But not his spirit

A group of people deciding

What is best for themselves

And propagandising it as

What is best for those who they represent

And changing the contours of history

And geographical boundaries

By coercion and threat.

A group of disadvantaged people

Who are sick of the current system

And want to create their own system

To grow sick of.

The prince who abandoned his title

Subjects , wife and children

In the name of enlightenment.

Are all seceding. 

Physically

Politically and

Morally

But is anyone really succeeding? 

Written for Poet united's midweek motif  'unity'. 

Fakebook?

In this world so connected with technology,we have actually lost our real connections.Technology has actually surpassed human-interactions. Real time Conversations became texting and Feelings became status updates.What you feel? Share your views on it. 

So this is my first post for indispire , I hope to participate more often. #indispire149 has the above mentioned topic and I have decided to play Devil's advocate. ( the best type of advocate)

Disclaimer : All views are solely my opinion and all images are taken from google , I claim no rights over them.

So it boils down to this

Cliched intro and some irony 

In every century , every decade man (woman too?) has proven that he hates new change or technology. For , every innovation there is equal and strong opposition ( see how i mimicked newton there xD ) and a general sense of disdain over all things new. And that is precisely what is happening here when slightly older generations ironically go on social media and blogging platforms to state how we don't have 'real' connections anymore. 

Technology is good * blasphemy *

No change is so simplistic or negative , unless it is brought by Hitler maybe. Truth be told technology has helped us connect more than ever before. I am thousands of miles away from my family and connect with them at a moment's notice through skype. Isn't that wonderful? Yes , it is. But to admit that would mean that *gasp* technology is a GOOD thing. 

Beholder 

We all know that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and the use or abuse of technology solely lies on the hands of the operator. Blaming oneself instead of the medium requires a lot of introspection and courage and most of us lack that. 

Exaggerations

Also known as crying over nothing

At any given point of time , a person is genuinely close to give or take 20 people? When it is face to face we avoid these other 100's of people or don't have a chance to connect with them and really doesn't impact us. However , when all of these people are on our virtual screen we get a sense that they are our 'friends' and feel disappointed when they don't respond. 

External validation

The problem is that when we post 'status' updates we want people to react , we need some sort of validation and knowledge that we are not shouting ourselves hoarse to an empty stadium. Social media and technology to a certain extent shows us how tiny we are in this world. And that doesn't feel like progress to many. 

Use to build up and not create 

But it's how we take it. If we are using Facebook solely to make new friends when we don't have any 'real' friends , it is not going to really help. There is no substitute for real human connection and organic personal experience as opposed to artificial , manufactured attempts to foster friendship. If we use sites like Facebook to build on a date or catch up with friends we already know , rest assured that it is 'real'.

Fakeness

Most of the 'fakeness' can be attributed to the forced sups? and nms uttered when one wants to be left alone and the other clearly doesn't get it. If you have your core group of friends and you regularly share updates on your life , you aren't fake you are just sharing it to wider circle who aren't used to the idea of instant sharing and sensory overload. 

Life goes on

An important point to be noted is that it is our real life relationships that impact our virtual ones. If our 'real' life is in order , I don't think we will even be complaining about our virtual ones. So people moaning about social media ruining your lives , take a deep look at the mirror and face the music. 

I also wanted to let you guys know that sometimes ( not always) you tend to lovely relationships with technology and social media too. I know a lot of bloggers and friends this way and Fakebook is not all that fake if you make an effort and you are yourself. In fact relative anonymity helps your true personality come out. The problem is the nature of the personality sometimes. So let's not blame the technology and learn to use it productively?

Thank you

Samyuktha Semi Jayaprakash

Walking the Walk

I stand before 2 roads

Hoping it will lead me to my yellow brick road

Eventually leaving me at my dream destination

Only that I don’t have a dream or a destination

Let alone a way to reach the way to reach it.

Maybe life isn’t about reaching a happy place

It is about being happy whilst while we reach it.

The only way to know for sure is by walking the path and 

not forgetting to

enjoy the breath taking view.

Look straight~like the eyes of god. 

( The object of this challenge is to write a poem in no more than 10 lines. Frame of reference is 'The Cross-roads' quoted from Kwesi Brew's poem, The Mesh. For Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads)

Hoping

Hope springs eternal they say

Only for those who bloom with sunshine

It didn’t

Give me a rope already

To hang ‘out’ with.

How can

Snaps and flashes of happy

Really compensate for this life

Which is so crappy?

Tell me really

I am trying so hard

To things not to get under my skin

Maybe a dark soul I am

For nefarious I feel

A true villain I am.

Insatiated with my genesis and growth &

Too proud to acknowledge my misery

I still give it company

I don’t want to give into this darkness

Where I seem to navigate seamlessly

When I see a happy person

I wanna dent their teeth and

Wipe that elusive smile off it

Thinking that I grit mine

And flash a fake smile and move

So what is the end you may ask?

To fit in by killing my self or

To stand out by killing myself?

Maybe it is to simply wait for a tomorrow

And hope that hope springs from within 

Instant

Believe it or not , I cooked this up in an instant.


Instant Coffee
    Instant Noodles
        Instant Gratification
             Always seems alluring.
                  But
        when push comes to shove ,
    Honey! it tastes like crap.
   

I want to go back to that time , 

    you know the time , 

    when we had the time 

                                          

                                                                        

                                                                     To have slow dripped coffee

                                                                      handmade noodles -

                                                                      okay , never had time for those - 

                                                                    

                                                                     and slow cook our romance 

                                                                     on simmer forever

written for sunday scribbling 2  . The prompt was 'instant'. 

pic taken from google. 

The Predator & The Prey

So the midweek motif in Poets United was ' predator and the prey' and I couldn't ask for a more perfect opportunity to write about this .It is more prosey than poemy but i just wrote what came to my mind. Leave your honest feedback below or I will go mad that nobody cared. Putting myself out there.

credits - Times of india

I always never liked him

The guy who rode me in his auto to school.

He acted like he was my boss

Bullying and puncturing my soul.

Made me sit in the worst positions

In his overcrowded rickshaw,

On the handrest, above his seat,

Even had to share his front seat.

My parents never believed me

As I had a penchant for fabricating honestly amazing lies.

He used to hurl abuses at me,

Unnecessarily delay taking me home,

He even drank on duty.

No one ever believed me.

Then one day he started asking me for ten bucks

And pestered me incessantly

Till I gave him some.

This became a habit.

I gave up complaining to my parents altogether.

He used to make fun of me in front of others

But I wasn’t a silent victim

I learnt bad words to combat his verbal diarrhoea

I acted like I didn’t care

Got used to his bad treatment to an extent that he got bored.

He wasn’t all evil either.

He told me about his son in law who had cancer.

I saw him giving free lifts to the poor

( delaying me furthermore)

Buying tea and biscuits to the old and needy

With whatever he had.

He told me about his affair ,

About his wife.

About his life.

He treated me like an adult ,

Alarm bells should have rung then.

He started speaking to me about sex ,

I was 13 then ,

It intrigued me

But I tried blocking it out.

I always pretended to read a book.

Then one fine day ,

The predator decided to hunt its prey.

But the prey was agile like a deer

And cried out like a hyena ,

The predator was old , tired and certainly drunk

And got scared by the fragile looking one causing so much

Noise.

So it decided to act like it was all a mistake.

The prey told her parents and her parents

Finally listened this time.  

Apparently many preys don’t speak out

And become silent victims.

Parents were proud of their prey

And the prey decided to not be one

And decided to act brave.

It worked.

People believed I was strong

I believed I was

I eventually felt strong

And became so.

But those memories still hit me when I’m weak.

If only they had listened quickly.
If only I had told them earlier 
If only