Art is born!- Poem

I breathe emptily
into a blank paper
by the side of
the flickering fire

Dust recedes in my head
Snowflakes melt
into crystal clear water
Clouds collide
Ideas rain in

The night prevails
yet wisdom dawns

The thunder roars
quelling the writer’s block
The lightning frolics
A victory lap on my behalf

The sky is a gleeful witness
to this noisy circus
Gods of the heaven wake
blessings cascade down

The ocean of words
hit me like a
torrential storm

Nib caresses the parchment
Art is born!

This is dedicated to every artist who is conscious of the art all around us, and who diligently adds to it. Your service doesn’t go unnoticed.

Green flag or Red flag?

Red.

Danger. Violence. Sirens and stop signs. Enough already!

Green.

Nurture. Growth. Fertility and freshness. Invite me in!

I meet you for the first time.

You weave stories with dilated pupils and diamond-studded smiles. The narrative arch you’ve painted spills a stream of earnest passion. Green flag.

You drone on, long after you’ve lost me, like a determined ship sailing fiercely to the harbour, with or without passengers. Red flag.

I throw a wholly unusual opinion frisbee at you. Instead of feeling attacked or fleeing, you catch my drift and wheel it back at me in your own unique way. Green flag.

I mention an achievement, a baby step I took. Not to be outdone, you flap the laundry list of your successes. Like a swift counter to a chess move, you retaliate, unmindful of my empty side of the board. There’s more to life than the black-and-white of the game, but you choose not to look up. Red flag.

You guffaw heartily in place of a guarded smile, clap loudly and dance with abandon. You have lost the measuring cups of pretention, spooned by socialisation. After all, composure is overrated and you’d rather savour all the flavours of the spectrum of feelings. Green flag.

You change who you are, based on what I say, outdoing the voltage flickering at my house and the stock market fluctuations, discussed at my workplace. Flexible? No, I’d call it fickle and feeble. Red flag.

I pour into you alien discourses and foreign passions that make me, me. You drink it in as though I quenched your thirst on a particularly parched day. You introduce me to the epiphanies and emotional tours, that make you, you. I take a ticket and ride on the bus of your adventures as we mesh lives. Green flag.

Green suits me best.

I choose green.

 

 

 

 

Pulchritudinous- Poem

An Acrostic is a poem where the first letter, syllable or word of each line spells out a word, a phrase or a sentence.  

Pulchritudinous simply means breathtakingly beautiful. Here’s my concoction for pulchritude. 

Penchant for altruism, without pedantry  – be a

Unicorn, unified, unapologetic

Lavish in praise, ravish all

Cajole with a comely smile

Heal with zeal and heed

Rear a robust mind

Inch ahead of your time

Trail a blaze of awe – be

Undaunted, unstoppable, if underrated

Dare to hold a banner for truth

Instigate intellects, incense old ideologies,

Name every man a success and cheer loudly for him

Oust the cruel cuts of prejudiced blades –

Unearth the pulchritudinous you,

Savoured by songs and storms alike.

 

Should I say ‘should’?

Should. A single striking syllable stressed on, from birth to death.

Should. Should. Should.

They should have ! You should be!

If Should were an object, it would be a fisherman’s net, a rat trap, a hunter’s rifle.

Should reminds me of prison and punishment. Rules and repercussions. I want to run away.

You tell children ” You should do this,” and they question why. You say “Because I say so,” mostly because you don’t know the answer. Maybe you don’t remember why. Maybe you never asked.

As a teenager, you pronounce “This is how I should be” spilling a list of qualities on paper and expecting your mirror to reflect the package. You fall victim to the Should society’s noise, unaware that most of its preachers, who tell you, you should be healthy and happy, rehearse their smiles and never move a muscle.

As a young adult, you discover that life is unkind at times and whine “This should have happened for me.” You pick up the wrapper that is ‘should’ and lick away, lapping up the excuse, and finding no semblance of the chocolaty truth. As you slowly drown in the quicksand of entitlement, you forget that life owes you nothing and you owe yourself everything.

Finally, you determine that the Should sport is not your scene. You throw the tennikoit at others, randomly tossing it away, free of any onus of your own.

You say

“You should fall at the feet of elders” to the kid in the neighbourhood. Why? You don’t know.

“You should spend money that could feed families to throw a grand party and call it marriage.” Why? You don’t know.

At this age, you should ….  At this stage, you should … You babble on relentlessly.

People succumb under the iron weight of your persistence and flatten from a shirt with flair to a pressed, suppressed cloth.

You spend your last days, mourning the loss of time and missing out on accomplishing all that you should have and so begins the self- whiplashing.

Do yourself a favour and go on a should fast for a week.

Replace the shoulds in your life as an experiment.

Strike “I should be doing that.” Say “I want to be doing that.”

Strike “This should happen to me.” Say “This is one of the possibilities.”

Strike “I should be this person.” Say “I aspire to work on becoming this person.”

Would you like to reconsider saying Should?

Hey, it’s up to you. Who am I to say that you should ?!