Falling Apart

I try to shove it aside,

a strong sense

of resignation, but it feels

different outside

in the world today;

everyone walking beside me

is quietly splintering,

and I can tell

as tiny shards

of foreign thoughts

leave scarlet ramifications

inside my weary eyes,

for they sting

a lot more than usual;

I try to blink

the pain away,

but it stays,

and I am afraid

that my bloodshot eyes

will betray me

by giving away

everyone else’s secrets today!

©Aaysid

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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Idealist

I sleep

with the windows open

curtains pulled off

from the rusty rails

the faint glow of the moon

does not get in.

I walk

with the prison gates open

inside the rooms

conjured up from memory

not a soul moves out

not a soul moves in.

I watch

out of a still life painting

the bland reality unfold

and quietly percolate through

places-shaped holes in people

not fitting in.

©Aaysid

“Some things come with their own punishments.”
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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Desolation

the air outside
is scorched,
burnt into existence,
unstirred,
with locusts
sprawled
on sidewalks,
pestilent,
reeking of
bewilderment,
a malady
unseen, uncured,
defiled,
painted in sorrow,
coloured
with grief…

the air inside
disintegrates,
consumed by
the thought of
the air
outside.

©Aaysid

“In my heart there’s a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation.”
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

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Weeds

I feel bad for the weeds

that had to make way

for the roses;

I miss the earthy, folksy

fragrance they’d release

into the morning air,

the occasional

dandelions amidst

a green disarray

with their utter disregard

for the aesthetic,

and their resolve

to take roots

in places where

they shouldn’t have

found themselves

to begin with,

a solemn beauty,

subtle and fierce

at the same time—

just a few things

that the roses,

with their obvious charm,

know nothing about.

©Aaysid

“The beautiful is always bizarre.”
Charles Baudelaire

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Legacy

I bet the mitochondria

inside the cells in my brain

are probably the only things

that make the most sense

in an otherwise imprudent,

awry, and capricious head

since the miniscule,

circular DNA in there

is purely my mother’s,

and I am grateful for that,

but I wish I was more like her-

composed and perceptive,

even though my heart does

break a little

every time I look in the mirror

and the all too familiar

worry lines on a face,

that looks quite like my mother’s,

stare right back at me;

I hope it is a good thing, too.

©Aaysid

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, motherly sisters, motherly fathers, and to anyone who’s like a mother to someone! 😊❤

My previous posts dedicated to mothers can be found here and here.😊

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Blackout Poetry – VI

the ordinary clutter

across pages,

phrases and sentences,

disturbs me.

I must

not know everything!

I stray

away from myself.

©Aaysid

Concealed

I step out

of my head

and trip over

an intrusive thought

that must have

followed me,

but when I get up

and look behind me,

I find out that I was

the only one

who had fallen

flat on her face;

I am the only one

who falls

all the time,

no haunted idea

gets far enough out

to make an utter

fool of itself,

and maybe that is

exactly how it is

supposed to go—

life should mean more

than what I hide

in my head…

I should mean more

than my crippling

absurdity.

©Aaysid

“Live to the point of tears.”
Albert Camus

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Substantial

a few silver strands

stand out amidst

the raven hair

as if they foretell

the spectral events

yet to unfold

in a life well-lived,

or at least lived

with sporadic bursts

of intense curiosity,

despite feeling like the salt

that has been left inside

a tiny shaker

for too long,

but a tender, little

idea did slip away

and kept bouncing off

the walls, floorboards,

and the ceiling—

I have been here

at the same time as you.

©Aaysid

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
Lewis Carroll

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Into the Night

I bet there is a cricket
In my hair
For it is unusually quiet
In my head at the moment
And this unfamiliar buzzing
Is somehow reassuring,
And the off-white glow
Of the moon fails to stir
Any woebeogone emotions
As I walk without a purpose
Into the night
That feels like velvet
Against my skin;
I do not feel strange
When weird things happen,
Because life is too mystical
To make sense all the time.

©Aaysid

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
Robert Frost

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Impersonal

It felt right.
Not to need.
A person.
Our own person.
Both the rescuer
And the rescuee.
One person.
Us.
Same person?
What if?
Both quit?
No person.
It might still
Feel right.

©Aaysid

“It is one thing to lose people you love. It is another to lose yourself. That is a greater loss.”

Donna Goddard

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In the Skies (Retouched)

In the Skies (Retouched)

Growth

We have spent most of our lives

Lying low, secluded,

And holed up in ourselves,

But there were quiet moments

That would engender

A profound sense of attachment

Even though for a little while,

The moments for which,

In spite of ourselves,

We would always keep

The doors open

And earnestly make room for;

We watch the years go by,

But we still find ourselves here,

Consistent in our anguish,

A lot more cloistered than before,

But those exquisite moments

Do not show up anymore—

The world grows around you

Excessively and furiously,

Especially when you don’t!

©Aaysid

“Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”

Haruki Murakami

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Muddled

I keep it hidden

In the folds of sleep,

For I do not know

Where else to keep

A feeling this fraught

That it falls in a heap

If you dare speak

About it when you are deep

In throes of reality—

Most dreams make sense

Only when we are asleep!

©Aaysid

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
Albert Camus

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Downcast

I cannot bring myself

To look up these days;

I am scared that they

Will not meet my gaze,

I am afraid that if

And when they will

Look my way

The glint of detachment

In their faraway eyes

Shall give them away,

For it happens every time

When someone surrenders

And looks up to engage,

Only to find out that they

Were not quite ready

To hold a gaze.

©Aaysid

“We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.”

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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Spring Cleaning (Retouched)

Every year

A few genuine feelings,

Instead of getting swept

Under the rug

As per usual,

Are accidentally spring-cleaned

Out of the house,

They get to leave, at least.

©Aaysid

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

Pablo Neruda

Effervescent

I no longer know where

I am supposed to go,

but the world is still in motion,

and it feels inane to live

with a terrible, crippling feeling

of profound dissociation

that doesn’t subside even when

a strong dose of reality

hits the cubital vein…

I speak my mind

and it makes tiny ripples

in the placid waters

that on the surface remain,

and the heart behaves

like a wildflower-

it wilts in autumn,

acts coy in winter,

and blooms only in the rain;

there has to be a cure

for such madness somewhere

for not a thing here lasts forever,

not even the chronic pain.

©Aaysid

“Forever has no meaning when you’re living in the moment. I wasn’t ready for that moment to end.”
Ellen Hopkins

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Old

At dawn, my right arm wakes up

Before me,

Jolting the hand attached to it

Into action,

Frantically hunting for the source

Of noise–

I have broken one cell phone

Like that.

At noon, my feet tend to experience

Tactile hallucinations;

An army of invisible ants marches down

My toes

Bringing the earliest hints of weariness

To life–

I take them out for a walk

Like that.

At dusk, my heart latches itself

Onto memories

Most of them old, insignificant,

Probably untrue

By playing them out like

A record–

I let it be weird and wild

Like that.

At night, my eyelids have a hard time

Staying shut;

My eyeballs too excited to

Stop spinning,

Playing a slideshow of images that don’t

Require projection–

I can sleep with eyes open 

Like that.

©Aaysid

“I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.”
Margaret Atwood

Featured image by from Pixabay

To be Unglued

For once, I would like

To be a piece of paper

At the mercy

Of the wind,

To stay somewhere

Only for a few seconds,

For I am tired

Of being a tape-person,

Sticking to places

For way too long,

And not leaving

Until I am yellow,

And often not leaving

In spite of that.

©Aaysid

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it.”
Michael A. Singer

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A Mercurial Swing

I watch it blow up

Into smithereens…

The air pregnant

With awkward syllables

From words that exploded

When forced into a rhyme

Without a good reason,

The only justification

For their plight

Being the sudden shift

In the weather outside

That had dressed up a bit

To impress a few hearts

That notice such things,

And maybe the day

Called for it, too,

For only once in a while

You get consumed

By an overwhelming urge

To celebrate those

Who leave lasting imprints

On multitude of souls

With one indelible verse

After another, and only once

In a while (not quite) you end up

Miserably failing at that!

©Aaysid

Happy World Poetry Day! ❤

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Embracing

on an overcast day,

in one clear moment

amid so many ill-defined ones,

something held together

by a makeshift adhesive,

breaks within you for good,

and you cannot see

the world around you

the same way anymore!

afraid of the loneliness

that such an occurrence

begins to whisper into you,

you run screaming into crowds—

finally entitled to your own madness!

©Aaysid

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
Maya Angelou

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No Sleep Tonight

Do not look down

On me if I don’t

Manage to sleep tonight,

Let me toss and turn

In peace tonight,

If the book that I

Have brought to bed

With me does not hit

My face tonight,

Do not assume that I

Am deliberately reading

The night away,

And if in the morning

I show up for you

In spite of what is

Happening to me tonight,

Do not dare comment

On my bloodshot eyes,

For a sleepless night

Should not get to define

A person who sleeps

Like a log otherwise.

©Aaysid

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
John Milton, Paradise Lost

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Resilience

I laugh hysterically

At my own madness,

At the audacity

Of a flimsy thought

That had risen

Like a phoenix

From the ashes

Of my archaic ideas

That had caught fire

Without provocation

Many moons ago,

To throw the outside

World into disarray—

It is utterly ridiculous

To be governed by

Your weakest thought

And to make

More sense than before!

©Aaysid

“Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?”
Sigmund Freud

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Fading

I feel as if

I am not here anymore,

I am but a hole

In the space

That I used to

Occupy before,

And when a part of me

Feels around for

The rest of my being

In the great oblivion,

It finds nothing

To hold on to except

For profound nothingness—

I cannot complain.

©Aaysid

“Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”
Michel Houellebecq

Free image from Pixabay

Brokenness

you called me

to let me know

that you were fragmenting,

and I, being someone

who can fall apart

unprompted,

retrieved the sweeping brush

from the pantry

of horrors-

not even an ounce

of sanity

was salvaged

from the brokenness.

©Aaysid

“We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.”
Mark Lawrence

Featured image from Pixabay

Dull

We had barely glanced

At the glorious menu,

Before deciding on

A meteor shower,

And to wash it down,

We had ordered

Some fluorescent rain,

But after only a few spoonfuls

We had felt quite full,

For it was more than what

Our subdued lives could contain.

©Aaysid

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

G.K. Chesterton

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The Room

the rugged, old desk

in my room

is a proof of a life

lived hunched over it,

and my window

stays jammed

on most days

as if tired of ushering in

the outside life

into this quiet room

that has no choice

but to pretend that

it is a world

of its own,

and my shelves

contain places that I

have broken into,

escpaed from,

and have been

banished from at times,

but they keep

gathering dust

as if this room

is a lot bigger

than all the worlds

they contain within

their glorious pages,

and I am here too,

outgrowing the room,

but just like the desk,

the window, and the books

on the shelves,

I do not leave.

I cannot leave.

©Aaysid

“The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.”
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Featured image from Pixabay

Senescence

from living

in the moment,

and being right

in the middle

of it all

to staring

at dried paint

getting drier,

chipping off,

from making

paper boats

when it rained,

and paper planes

when it did not

to never

setting off,

from wanting

to be someone,

to mean something,

to not being

here at all;

we let a heart

believe it is past

its prime,

we let a heart

die way before

its time.

©Aaysid

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”
T.S. Eliot

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Acceptance

We wait

For small joys

With our backs

To the wall

As we sit out

The Spring season

To recuperate

From the Fall.

©Aaysid

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Featured image from Pixabay

Everything

There is no way to put down

The crushing weight

Of everything I am forced

To remember,

The sharp images,

Searing fragrances,

And crisp sounds

Play in a loop,

And my mind wanders

At times,

But does not dare

Leave the confines of

Dark, imposing memories,

For it knows

That if I’d will myself

To forget everything,

Everything will forget

Me in a blink as well,

And a mind when empty

Might scream louder

Than when it is being

Weighed down by everything

It remembers!

©Aaysid

“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”
Franz Kafka

Featured image from Pixabay

Crumbling

The room around me

Begins to disappear

Ever so slightly,

The warm glow

Of the lamp fuzzes out,

Gets bigger and lighter

And impossible to ignore,

A chair in the corner

Casts a strange shadow

On the floor,

There is a gaping hole

In the wall where

There used to be a door,

And I am not there either,

Outside looking in,

Or inside looking for

What isn’t there anymore—

A mind needs no excuse

To fall apart,

It readily fragments

With the crumbling indoors.

©Aaysid

“That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

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Wherever

You believe that you

Are supposed to travel alone,

For only you know the way,

And a journey makes more sense

If embarked on one’s own,

But what if after all the trouble

You found your fate scribbled

On a moth-eaten parchment,

And your destiny engraved

On a moss-covered stone,

Would you burst out laughing

And come back home?

©Aaysid

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Arthur C. Clarke

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Backgrounded

We invariably choose

To wear a frown,

And never feel the need

To straighten it out,

For it does not hurt

To have this air

Of subtle fury about you

If you are pulling

Out all the stops

To melt into the background.

©Aaysid

آگے آتی تھی حال دل پہ ہنسی”

“اب کسی بات پر نہیں آتی

“Once I was able to laugh at the predicament of my heart
Now I am unable to laugh at anything”

Mirza Ghalib

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Poem It Out

The poems spill out

When everything else

Is being held in

Against our will,

Our words leap

Into action when we

Are too tired to think,

To seek solace in rhyme,

To find freedom in ink.

©Aaysid

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
Robert Frost

I am thankful to Spillwords Press for publishing my poem, A Bonfire. I shall be really grateful if you could spare some time to go check it out there.

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Quiet

I am enamoured of

the eerie silence

that follows

the booming fireworks,

the vacant grounds

after the carnival leaves,

and the phone call

that meekly ends

after a silent pause;

it always comes

as a pleasant surprise

when the loud world

hushes up

for the innately quiet.

©Aaysid

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”

Philip K. Dick

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Scrambled

Three short poems about loving too much, and loving wrongly:

I.

Her collapsed-self rebuilds itself

A little every day

Around the bright smiles

On the faces of the people

She keeps falling apart for

Only to collapse all over again.

II.

She had been putting herself

Into the pies she bakes,

And every time someone

Refuses to take a bite,

A part of her dies.

III.

If you are forced to put

Your heart into things

You do not want to do,

Those things shall get done,

But in the long run

Neither love shall prevail

Nor shall you!

©Aaysid

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
Ernest Hemingway

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Chronically Distracted

I begin but I

Never finish anything

I get distracted,

But it takes courage

To quit which I

Don’t seem to have,

So I write

What I can, what I am,

In order to flee

From myself,

Self-deprecating words

Like a drug I detest

But cannot stop taking,

An obligatory poison

To lose myself,

To sink, to drown,

To be curled up in a ball

Tossed out

To never be found-

I begin again.

©Aaysid

“It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in the thick of thin things.”
Stephen R. Covey

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Quiet

I have written a lot less

Than I did last year,

And I had often woken up

With a crippling fear

That I no longer had

A single rhyme left in me

In spite of being crushed

Under the weight

Of worries and troubles

That could only lose power

If expressed poetically,

But I had persevered

By letting suffocating silence

Be symbolically lyrical

For a while,

By letting blankness

Of the pages in my diary

Be the voice for everything

That I couldn’t write,

And it had been all right.

I have been all right.

©Aaysid

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
Oprah Winfrey

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Trapped Within Itself

My unseasoned heart

Wakes up

With new year’s sun

Only to sip winters

From huge, chipped

Coffee cups,

And to chew green

Jelly beans with uncanny

Flavour of summer,

And to feel alive

In spite of itself

Even when all it knows

Is how to fall

As it waits for

The promised joy

That is taking forever

To spring out.

©Aaysid

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”
T.S. Eliot

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Ancient

As the years

Turn to dust,

The folded scraps

Of yellowing paper

Safely tucked away

In the pockets

Of worn-out coats,

Missing a button or two,

Become fewer

And farther between,

Until no memory

Of discrete moments

Can be retrieved

Without being consumed

By the history

Of almost everything!

©Aaysid

“With each passing moment I’m becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.”

Haruki Murakami

I wrote this poem last year, and it is scary how relevant it still is.

Absurd

I.

I buy myself flowers

Only to end up

Sneezing all over

The place;

How can an act

Of kindness,

Turn that easily

Into an act

Of hate?

II.

Everything deserves a break

So one of these days

I shall take my thoughts

Out for a walk,

And then I’ll make them

Go back without me.

III.

You can send me

An empty box

As a present

For I can love it

For the things

That will be there;

I’ll make paper planes

Out of the gift-wrap

And scrunchies

Out of ribbons,

And use the box

To store them in.

©Aaysid

“I live in my own little world. But it’s ok, they know me here.”
Lauren Myracle

Featured image from Pexels

Enough Said

It seldom worked…

Disagreement.

Felt unreal.

Resentfully shoved aside.

Thoughts held captive…

Indemnified.

Too late.

Nothing was forgiven.

Grim words penned…

Misspelled.

Made sense.

Left at that.

Every you knows…

Someone.

Like me.

A small world.

©Aaysid

“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

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Off Course

I.

Whispers have replaced

All shrieking attempts

At communication,

I wonder when

Silence will be

The only thing we’d use

To communicate

To be actually heard?

II.

I pretend that I

Know where I am

Even when all I do

Is dream about

Sleeping with a fan on

In December nights

Only to wake up

Feeling like I did

Last summer.

III.

I see your outline

And try not to

Fill it up with rainbows

For I am still

Quite bad at colouring

Inside the lines.

©Aaysid

“I’m still in bed writing this, lying on my back like an omelette in a pan.”

Alain Bremond

Featured image from Pexels

Unuttered

Not all words

When they touch

The solid ground

Can bounce back up,

Some of them stay

Huddledtogether,

While only a few

Dare break away

To wait for the ones

Still.

©Aaysid

“The unspoken words trembled in the air.”
Iris Murdoch

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December Eyes

She sees you with December eyes,

The sleep-laden eyelids,

Frosted lenses and an inkling

Of fog all over the corneae,

That way she can only make out

The shape of your face

So if she’d ever have to conjure

Your image up from a memory,

She wouldn’t know where to begin,

But she wouldn’t make any mistake.

©Aaysid

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred Tennyson

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Freezing Over

Somewhere a version of you

Is finally able to fix

A broken violin

As the night outside

Turns emerald green

And the fire grows cold

In the fireplace,

And you wonder

If throwing silent,

Winter nights into disarray

By sending out notes

Of a newly repaired

Time-worn violin

Will be a huge mistake?

For life may be full

Of trivial affairs,

But something colossal

Is always at stake.

©Aaysid

“and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.”
Douglas Adams

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Tinted

The world is more pink

Than grey lately,

But those who never

View it without

Rose-coloured glasses

Can hardly appreciate

The salmon glow

Brought to it by

The sluggish demise

Of their very own

Cherry-red consciences!

©Aaysid

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Lost

She has lost

Her sense of direction,

Wherever she goes,

She is already there.

©Aaysid

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

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On Edge

Finding yourself rummaging

Through piles and piles

Of discarded memories,

Far removed from present,

Not wrapped in fancy boxes,

But oh so casually thrown

Into trash cans stuffed hastily

Into brown paper bags,

Seems like a dangerous

State of mind to be in,

But when they say,

“Isn’t it like one of those

Baffling things that happen

To you for no apparent reason?”

You cannot help but say,

“I have never heard of those.”

©Aaysid

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

Delusional

Sometimes, love is found

In the weakest hellos

And indifferent goodbyes,

For anything that plunges

A heart into the depths

Of that abusrd a denial

Must be akin to affection.

Sometimes, all you need

Is a delusional mind.

©Aaysid

“Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.”

Tony Kushner

Hypothetical

If I were to see myself

In a light that wouldn’t flicker

Would I feel the air

To be unrealistically thicker

Will there be a heart

Aflutter, suddenly beating quicker

Would the nagging world

No longer be a cosmic trigger

Will I finally stay

Despite being a habitual quitter?

©Aaysid

“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
Donald Miller

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