Solitude

I wish I could return

To sweet oblivion,

To those sweet,

Quiet moments

In which everything

Mattered yet nothing

Quite did,

Where reality treated

You better than

Your recurrent dreams,

And the world

Stood still

Only for you;

Something tells me

I am already there,

Stuck in another

Version of unvarying time,

For no two moments

Of surreal solitude

Can ever be alike.

©Aaysid

“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.”

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Rescued

your thoughts keep opening

subconscious portals

that pull you away

from the world

you consciously share

with others like you,

but you are afraid

that one of these days

you might wander

a little too far

and get lost in there;

even though there are

no maps, no keys

to the doors

you close behind you

when you leave,

you shall still

be rescued by people

like you,

who like you enough

to not let go.

©Aaysid

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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Empty

Empty.

The kind where it

Does not matter

What kind

Of empty you are;

Not sad empty,

Nothing to be

Glad about it

Either,

It just is.

Maybe

This is how

It is supposed

To feel

Every time

There is nothing

There

To feel.

©Aaysid

“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
Mark Haddon

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A Bonfire

I threw a bonfire one night

just for myself,

but they came anyway

and brought their own fuels

for the raging fire—

I saw a lyric in ashes,

a dour sonnet suspended

in the forbidding smoke,

and when a rhyme went up

in the tiniest of flames,

it left charred sadness behind,

together we had looked up

at the soot-covered sky,

and it felt as if our fires

and fates were entwined!

©Aaysid

“Isn’t everyone a part of everyone else?”
Budd Schulberg

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Unfair

The world outside

Their windows

Weeps for everything

It had lost but they

Got to keep;

They count

Their blessings

Every night,

But they cannot sleep!

©Aaysid

“You could’ve tried to be fair. But you didn’t. You don’t even have the right to be sorry.”
Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

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Love Letters

not making the postscript,

not even the side note,

and almost never

the subject matter,

in spite of that

she spends her life

yearning for days

she would be written

conspicuously into letters,

in which no one else

besides herself

would seem to matter;

she might soon realise

that it is not unwise

if she is the one

who writes herself

those letters!

©Aaysid

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.”

Bell Hooks

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Aflood

Our world

Has always been

Aflood, both literally

And figuratively,

And we drown

In indifference

Every day,

And everyone dies

Because of it

And in spite of it

Either literally

Or figuratively

But I cannot recall

The last tiime

It took this long

For us to see

What we were trying

Not to see,

Were we this dead,

Not literally

But figuratively?

ⒸAaysid

“It’s a shame there has to be a tragedy before the best in people will finally shine.“

E.A. Bucchianeri

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Soliloquy

it never goes away,

the strange feeling

of being anywhere

but where you are

at the moment,

your body separated

from your thoughts–

you can hear

the sound of blood

as it rushes

to your feet,

but they stay rooted

to the spot

you had mentally left

a long time ago;

where do you go

from here,

but more importantly,

how do you come back?

ⒸAaysid

“The best way out is always through.”

Robert Frost

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Out of Sorts

There’s always someone

Sitting on the floor

Looking skyward

Not keeping score,

And it feels weird

To bring an empty cart

Out of a shopping mart,

And have nothing

On your list checked off,

And to drive around

All night on a weekend

With a stomach

Running on nothing

But pure wanderlust;

When life puts you

Out of sorts

You have to do

Whatever you can

To gather your thoughts!

©Aaysid

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Oscar Wilde

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The Sky People

we have our eyes

on the sky,

at the clear blue of it,

at the sunset, twilight,

and the night of it;

our hearts forever

one rainbow away

from bursting into colours.

©Aaysid

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
Tom Bodett

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Jagged

do you still lose

even if you win?

an earthworm

worms its way

out of an anthill,

bringing it down

in the process,

the ants may

devour its corpse

one day,

but would that

absolve the worm

of its sin?

©Aaysid

“Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.”

Tim Fargo

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Isn’t That Write?

Three micropoems:

I.

Tonight I shall write

Like never before,

With my left hand,

And my right brain,

To make even less sense

Than I did before!

II.

How can you hope

To be written into

Someone else’s story

When you are

Unwittngly writing

Yourself out of

Your own little tale?

III.

We used to read

Because we

Could not write;

We would then read,

Because we

Wanted to write;

We read now,

Because we

Write too much!

©Aaysid

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
Jack Kerouac

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Leaving

it may leave

a little scar, but

we should leave

before the leaves

can leave

the fragile branches

that leave

them feeling a little

frail as well;

we should leave

it at that

before it leaves

us feeling left out

from whatever’s

left of the world

we once thought

would never

leave us alone.

©Aaysid

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

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No Winners Here

Why do spider-like,

Dark apparitions

Run away scared

Only when you

Decide not to

Run away first?

When both begin

To lose at

A game for two,

It gets layered-

A layer over layer

Of profound inanity,

Until one of you

Breaks down

And loudly declares

That it is foolish

To chase after

Your own nightmares,

That it is foolish

To be chased by

Your own nightmares.

©Aaysid

“Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.”
Ransom Riggs, Hollow City

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The Afternoon Sun

I know that I

Was not supposed

To wake you up,

But it has been days

Since you last took in

The afternoon sun,

And I have heard

It can make a difference-

Sometimes the things

Which happen between

The first signs of light

And absolute darkness

Are worth waking up for

From a deliberate,

Drawn out slumber!

©Aaysid

“There are always loose ends in real life.”
Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

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Exposed

the clouds burst

at forlorn places

already soaking wet

because of many

a rivers cried before

the ruthless storms

had even arrived;

how can the eyes turned

skyward remain dry

when the cold,

pelting rain reminds

them of subdued feelings

which can be

buried again only if

cried out along

with the crying sky?

©Aaysid

“I woke to the sound of rain.”

Sylvia Plath

Workplace Woes

It is funny

How little sense

It all makes

When you are bored

Out of your mind,

And you find

Yourself leaving your

Mortal thoughts behind

To embrace the beauty

Of ill-defined,

But it is nothing

Unusual for it happens

All the time…

It seems that we

Hold meetings

Only to waste

Each other’s time.

©Aaysid

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
Jerome K. Jerome

Image by annmariephotography from Pixabay

Speechless

I am afraid that some day

I’d run out of things

to say out loud,

but every time

I begin to speak

I feel like as if

all the words

have been said before,

but I utter them anyway,

and feel bad

afterwards for speaking

against my better judgement;

maybe running out of

words to say out loud

wouldn’t be that

bad after all!

©Aaysid

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.”
Haruki Murakami

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Monsoon

Sometimes the nature takes it upon itself to remind people like us that there is a world outside the four walls we have willfully trapped ourselves in.

The monsoon season is in full swing, with all its beauty and horror.

A few photographs from today.

©Aaysid

Quiet? Not quite.

there is no respite even when

the voices begin to fade,

for unsettling whispers

then replace the brutally

honest conversations,

and the incessant noise

in the head woefully remains,

oh, what a shame!

©Aaysid

“Don’t gobblefunk around with words.”
Roald Dahl, The BFG

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Disbelief

We blink

The maroon

Hours away,

Wallowing in

Shared disbelief,

Slowly running

Out of

Storage space

By adding

Untruths to

Old memories

Which were

Made when

Things were

Not this blue.

©Aaysid

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
Ray Bradbury

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Captivity

there is nothing worse than

a crisp realisation,

that too, a little too late,

which makes it

a little too unfortunate,

that all of this time

you have been more of

a prison than a prisoner!

©Aaysid

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”

Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

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The Rain People

not all clouds

are born to rain,

but the ones that do

are quite fortunate

for they know what

they are supposed to do;

some people are

like such clouds,

they, too, are born

to rain away—

they know what

they are supposed to do.

©Aaysid

Featured photograph was captured by me.

Perseverance

I.

I wonder when exactly

Everything became

An act of:

Packing your bags

And leaving,

Leaving your bags

And leaving,

Leaving?

II.

A smoke machine

Suddenly malfunctions

And black glitter

Shoots out instead;

Another pretty accident

That no one cares about.

III.

I do not want to

End up like

A lone lipstick

In my purse;

Persevering

In the face

Of utter inutility!

©Aaysid

“There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.”

Lemony Snicket

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Kind

Why do I find myself

Only a single tear away

From fleeing a conversation

I find myself trapped in?

Why cannot I spare for myself

The same amount of kindness

That I seem to have aplenty

For anyone who is not even

On a verge of tears?

©Aaysid

“You always say such lovely things to me, Red. Do you say them to yourself?”
Talia Hibbert

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