The oldest religion

 You can have it all!

Drink perfume &

smell like milk

Dance your witch dance

everybody screams

at the greats always.

Don’t dance

to the music of mere men.

Drink deep.

kiss a few kraken

join the oldest religion

Not in Florence

nor in the machine

But love.

The soothing magic of it all

Makes you finally belong

So Poets and Storyteller's United had a very interesting prompt - next week, we’ll invite you to take inspiration from the title of songs in Florence and the Machine’s new album, Everybody Scream. Examples: “Sympathy Magic”, “Perfume and Milk”, “Buckle”, “Kraken”, “And Love”. I decide why not have it all and incorporated almost all the titles in one go :P

As the crow flies

Clandestine creeping in

Of relevant restlessness

Growing apathy

Winged venom

Acidic antidotes

Sure seeping in

Of a crow’s courage

Just a tremulous throw away.

So bark away

I’m not an orphaned stray

I will stamp my say

For all those who stay

On a half moon day.

All that angst

 

The Scream by Edvard Munch

Mood - I don't wanna be by Gavin DeGraw

I studied the Geography of the room I lived in,

Every crevice and corner

Couldn’t comfort me enough.

I kept wanting more

How much is really enough?

How big do you want your cage to be?

Animal size?

Room size?

Street Size?

Earth Size?

WE will always feel imprisoned,

if that is what we truly want to be.

We will always wish to be a bird

Only to be greeted with its turd.  

We are bound by certain chains

Which makes us human,

Why not wear it as the jewel

It possibly is

Rather than choke ourselves

With all that angst?

By 

Samyuktha Semi Jayaprakash

Wanderlust

Once upon a time

Being a wanderlust

Was seen as a mental disorder

By flat earthers

(irony duly noted)

 

Then we had the likes of Columbus

Find his ‘India’

And kill a lot many Indians

In the inane name of ‘colonialisation’

And killed many a civilisation

In the name of observation.

(irony again noted)

 

Then came the modern ages

Where every instagrammer

Pronounced themselves a wanderlust

And travelled the roads always taken

As long as they got a selfie

And a pic for their tinder bio.

 

Out of the corner of the eye

In a lorry packed with explosives

Came in crazy corona.

Travel was now confined to

The end of our streets

And inside our eye

Where the mind meets

And give us little treats

From the camera of the past

To vacations visited last

And memories gone by fast.

 

Home which was once a retreat

Has now become a place of deceit

Where we now work and relax not

Suddenly our third eye and an old map

Is all we got!  

 

Written for Sunday muse and Writer's Pantry

Karpagam gardens

So , I went on a walk today.

Roads which  once bustled with robust activity

The Covid addled streets were empty.

I was in search of a pharmacy

Which sells Coca Cola.

Yes , I am well aware of the irony.

 

As I was walking in the main road

I saw an ambulance racing past me.

I always worry a bit about my oldest relatives

After I see that despicable life saving vehicle.

Gave a mental prayer.

Alas! A van with an empty ice box followed it.

 

Mood properly ruined,

I whispered curses to myself and

Switched to a tiny lane,

Hoping for calmness rather calamity

In smaller streets.

 

That’s when I heard a loud male voice

Shouting with all his lungs in hindi,

On how she had tortured him for the past 2 months

On very damn thing!

And it reverberated through the streets

Even when I was fast walking away..

 

Now thoroughly pissed with myself

For not just staying home and

Running out of stamina

I reached the end of the street.

There I saw a couple play badminton

Like we are in the middle of some summer holidays

And thought maybe corona IS

A vacation for the rich.

 

My cynical view was somewhat defeated

When I was nearing the pharmacy

And saw this cute cat

Stretching itself in the middle of the road.

Maybe all will be fine if I just chilled a bit

And stop constantly worrying so much?

 

Maybe peace is something to search inwards for

In the turbulent waves of my heart

Rather than in the rosy exteriors of my neigborhood?

Happy with my midstreet epiphany

I bought some aerated slow poison and

delicious diabetic inducing treats

and made my way back home.

 

 

 

 

Helen Killer

Inner Goddess

(Of peace )

Others

Living on the mandate of others

Is basically Life imprisonment

Yet we all bear through it

All Smiles through a gritted teeth.

A rite of passage of course

To come unscathed through the other side

Full of sudden wisdom and cryptic cynicism

Silently afraid to cut these choking umbilical chords

Nourishment and community and all

Convincing ourselves this is what it is

To Be Human,

Taking the place of the Others

Who won and lost

Losing our wonder

And wondering what we lost-

The essence of being ourselves

The hyenas feed on our soul

Only when it is exposed

Keep it intact tightly within you

Guard it like a watchdog

Fundamental rights and all.

Worship it like a temple and

Pray you don’t lose yourself

For the call of others

Whatever may be the cost.

You Too

I too didn’t

 wanna  get raped

Stalked hunted preyed on

And

Live in a social structure

Where I could do no wrong.

I too wanted to report him

And make him pay

For all the layers

He stripped off me

And made me a sexual object

Only worthy of being attained

I too want to come out clean

After I burn down this building

Of patriarchy and misogyny

Where his silence is valued more than my voice

And my silence is enough to prove his male noise.

I too

I really do

But will you pay my bills

And help me when I’m on pills?

Why will I ask you for justice

When you shame me for asking too late

Truth is

You don’t want me to voice out

And change this system

Where it works just fine for you

How is my accusation worse than his actions?

Because now you have to do something about it now?

So I’m sorry

If it is going to affect your privileged little life

But I am going to climb to the roof of your building

Take my biggest fricking megaphone

And shout YOU TOO*

*you silent enabler of patriarchy

I hope you can hear now*

Pia Pia

Writing to the tunes of a tamil kuthu song! 

Unleash the pyaar 

When the chest is too tight 

and future not too bright 

why so morose 

when you can write a killer prose

Get in the groove lady 

and do a bam chika bam bam 

dreams can be lost and won 

firstly you need to run 

Smile at the sun

we don't need another nun 

actually we do 

Amen! 

But first go 

nanananana

yah yoo

yipee 

whooo 

MEEE

Found a judgement I was searching for all day , so decided to unleash some silliness :P  

Me the living

Me – the living

Writing for myself

Of rivers and sunset

Don’t have to worry about my skill set

Or how the lines don’t mesh

with what people expect.

No likes , no comments , no shares

No feedback to feed my ego back

No more second hand living

It might actually be thrilling

To discover why I really write

All over again

Writing for an audience since tenth grade

Reader is my default

Writing not.

Somewhere along the way

Eyeballs glazed my edge

Was always a cat on the fence

Now filled with trepidation to jump in any direction

I offer platitudes and bromides

In shiny gleaming proses

Posing as something else

Content should always trump form

But then reality always bites on the backside

I can close my eyes and write a poem now

No challenge anymore

I need to push myself outside these boundaries

Do something different

Or something simple

Don’t care about the fancy words I use

Or the number of lines which might bore or please you

I NEED to write for myself and for that

This is the First Step.

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.

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. 

Happy sunday!

So Sundays are the best  since it gives us the much needed time to be our lazy potato-selves. And on what other day can I throw my random-est thoughts at you guys without shaping them professionally?

What I am going to do is casually throw some ideas at y’all and if it is worthy of discussion we can make a full fledged post.

1)     

    Surveillance is BAD. Then why track our Swiggy* guys?  All of us hate it when our school installed surveillance cameras in the corridors or when they were introduced them in our workplaces. It is not a good feeling to have the Big Brother watching you , even if it is just a fat security guard bhaiya** who is never going to look at you. I’m sure you will have the same reaction if your employer attaches a GPS tracker on you.  While it certainly gives a sense of comfort to know where your food parcel is every minute of the day , isn’t it invading the delivery guy’s workplace privacy to track him every second? If they give a timeframe of 30 minutes and deliver it within that span , does it matter if he stopped for Chai^ in between? In fact , swiggy doesn’t give time based guarantee because we can see when their delivery guys are stuck in traffic. Isn’t it better to not know and demand free food? Food for thought. See what I did there?

*Indian based food app delivery service **brother ^Tea <3

2)    

  Isn’t alarming and annoying that advertisements load quicker than any video? It means they are giving us crappy service when they can do better. Always hate that when that happens. The guy who makes food in our hostel mess used to make awesome Sunday lunches and be crappy rest of the week. The reason he gave was “ You will appreciate my good work when you taste bad food , if I give you good food throughout the week , you will not appreciate my food so much” Underwhelm to Overwhelm is a very important mantra folks. In fact Conversations with God , the much acclaimed book basically keeps repeating this throughout by saying how you know God only when you know Evil. Glad to know that the world runs on such lofty ideals.

3)   

Do online debates ever solve anything? Every one is just trying to look smart , witty and sling mud at each other. Instead of having constructive discussions people correct each other’s grammar and call each other bhakts and presstitutes and feminazis and libtards. No one ever comes around to another’s point of view nor to they even concede a single error when it is blatantly obvious they are wrong. This is why there needs to be rule and orders to discussions. And Arnab Goswami. Just Kidding. But we do need mediators.

4)      Love trumps hate?

5)      Does anyone else google their dreams? Today I had a giant ant bite in my dream , I hope it is something not life altering. If you do interpret your dreams online try non Freudian ones. Else save yourself a search – it is definitely something sexual or traumatic from your childhood.

On that creepy note , I decide to leave you all.

Actually , google your dreams. It’s pretty fun.

Happy Sunday!