TAKE 1
I see you writing
Me into your poems
And I have never felt
This seen before;
Maybe all we need
Is to be welcomed
Into places we wish
To be a part of!
TAKE 2
I see you writing
Me out of your poems
And I have never felt
This heard before;
Maybe all we needed
Was to be taken out
Of places we did not
Want to be a part of!
©Aaysid
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.”
Stephen King
Featured image from Pexels
You wake up
And so does the monster
Under your bed,
And so does the sceptic
Inside your head,
And comes alive the feeling
Of obscure dread.
You fall asleep,
But awake is the monster
Under your bed,
Awake lies the sceptic
Inside your head,
And wide awake is the feeling
Of now penetrable dread.
©Aaysid
“Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.”
Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
I wish I could
Take a break
From myself,
Hit snooze,
Put my thoughts
On mute
For a short while;
Be awake,
But not move an inch,
As if lost
In a dream
Too wild,
Nothing rings
On the other end
When I dial,
My mailbox
Gets no note
From me,
And all the things
That I keep aside
In a pile,
Stay there,
And do not fall over;
I wish I had
An on/off switch
With a tiny, red light
Above it,
So if I ever
Go out like that
Someone out there
Could bring me back.
©Aaysid
“We were all lost and okay with not being found for a while.”
Adam Silvera
I am walking
As if I am
A little too fond
Of gravity,
With my arms
Shaking and going
Numb under
The weight
Of everything
I am supposed
To memorise,
And my shoulders
Aching beneath
The ugly straps
Of a heavy bag,
Housing a
Huge, discontinued
From the market,
Shabby laptop,
Yet not spacious
Enough to hold
The books
In my arms,
So when a tiny
Pencil that I
Use as a bookmark,
Falls out of
One of the books,
And someone
Not too far away
Informs me about it,
My mind completely
Falls apart!
I bend down,
Slowly and with
A great difficulty,
To pick it up,
And begrudgingly
Thank the stranger
Who had ensured
That I would not
Even try to ignore
The soft thud of
A pencil that small—
He reminds me
Of the way
This world works…
We carry our weight,
All on our own,
Holding on to it
Lest we lose
Our way;
Forced to carry
All of it,
And not allowed
A chance to drop
Any of it off,
Not allowed
A chance
To be a little lost.
©Aaysid
“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
Anne Carson
Featured Image from Pexels
a whimsical little feeling
traces a full circle,
makes a full round,
changes blues
into purple halos
that take just a blink
to fragment
into shapeless floaters
that indent
an otherwise smooth
and flawless display,
before disappearing
and melting away
to become another
impermanent thing
that runs in a circle
only to fall off the ring!”
©Aaysid
“Being temporary doesn’t make something matter any less, because the point isn’t for how long, the point is that it happened.”
Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means
Three short poems toying with the idea of being or feeling disconnected:
I.
my heart’s aflutter
as I knock on the door,
and it resonates
like never before;
he might not be there,
but I am not sure,
for a knock this sturdy
should be hard to ignore,
unless you don’t want to
be friends anymore!
II.
I shall have to miss
her yet another call
I am, after all,
lost in the rhythm
of this drawn-out fall.
III.
as I clean out my desk
I can hardly gloat-
most of the people
in my life
have been nothing
but a number
on a post-it note!
©Aaysid
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
I have seen the world
On my television screen,
And I know a thing or two
About what is actually real
And what is only a ruse;
Pretty and ugly pictures
Are one side of the truth,
The rest of it is in outlines
And you don’t get to choose
Neither the palette nor the hues!
©Aaysid
I.
To be out of love
With love itself,
May become
An act of love,
If you can love
What can’t be loved
Just to save
Your love for love,
And to fall back
In love with love.
II.
The ones who smile
With misty eyes
Have so much
Love inside;
It spills out of
What they say,
And what they
Choose to hide.
©Aaysid
Image from Pixabay
“We love the things we love for what they are.”
Robert Frost
You can write about something and still not write about it at all. The proof’s right here:
I
Set against
the glaring white of her head,
like a bloodstain, repulsively red,
I remain undead.
III
The universe is aglow,
ever so mellow,
for in a cafe
down the street,
a fine old fellow
has his head buried
in a book,
outworn and yellow.
III
Always too broken,
never not green.
Out of the picture,
wiped off the screen.
Only girl in the kingdom,
still not the queen…
Wow, how dull her life had been
before caffeine!
©Aaysid
Photo by Scott Webb from Pexels
At least one of us had to be hallucinating that day. I bet it was me…
It was just like any other day except we had finished work earlier and had been allowed to go home if we had wanted to, but the weather was just too nice to leave that place so most of us had stayed. She (of all the people) and I were standing in a crowded corridor and I don’t remember whose idea it was to start talking. The conversation was mostly one-sided and her words seemed to be rocking back and forth in the air that was already saturated with enough inane banter. I somehow end up in drawn-out converstions a lot and before the particular day in question, I had not experienced what it was like to get out of them.
My imagination has been my oldest friend. We hang out often and it has saved me from unforseen troubles on a number of occasions. That day, it took me to the bottom of a great mass of water. I’d like to believe that it was the bottom of a great, blue sea. There was a huge hole there that I was getting into (with a book in my hand) and I had felt like staying there undisturbed for as long as I had wanted to. I imagined that things were not drab because I was not stuck in a tedious heart-to-heart any more, but was reading inside a hole at the bottom of the sea! Reality was reduced to only a minute, insignificant concept in my head. I have been told repeatedly that life does not work that way. I am still working on a way to untell myself that.
Coming back to the place where all was not well- I had crawled out of my imaginary underwater haven and was trying to focus on her face in hopes to see whether or not similar signs of boredom (or something more sinister) were registered there. She was pausing between sentences, mostly to chew on her lower lip and every now and then her gaze kept darting sideways. It was difficult to discern, however, whether she was alright with me not having much to say or she in fact had no idea that I had spaced out a long time ago. Just then, out of nowhere, I had a strong urge to fall asleep. Right there, in the middle of it all! From that point onwards, keeping my eyelids apart had begun taking an enormous amount of effort out of me.
Mustering a chastened smile on my face, I sneaked a look at my wrist watch and found out that I had missed my shot fifteen minutes earlier and if things had kept going the way they were going, I had a slim chance of catching another break like the one I had missed. I blinked rapidly a few times, curbed a yawn at the back of my throat and tried putting up the best expressions that I beieved could insinuate the act of listening.
Fifty five minutes had passed and she had given no indication that she had to use a restroom again, like she had to fifteen minutes ago. Instead of removing myself from that awful situation while she was gone, I had remained rooted to that spot as not to appear impolite when she’d return. Politeness causes more damage than rudeness (why no one ever tells me that is still a mystery to me). Anyhow, I was stuck there, waiting for her to stop talking. I began loathing my mind for acting like such a weakling and making me feel that helpless. I was not finished rebuking it when suddenly, both my arms had registered a violent movement and my auditory neurons had manged to reconnect with my brain, for she had grabbed me by both arms, shaken me and while wearing the most perplexed look on her face shouted, “What do you think I should have done? Why are you looking at me like it was all my fault? What in the world is wrong with you?”
I don’t know whether there were any acceptable retorts to that or there existed ways to effectively manage that situation, because I had simply seen it as one big opportunity to bring an end to the mayhem once and for all. My sleep-craving head, bored-out-of-its-life heart and dwindling-imagination joined hands and out of my eyes unleashed a river that couldn’t be dammed! At least not for a couple of minutes…
It has been quite some time since I have last found myself in a lengthy exchange. Chit-chats are all I find myself involved in now. I am now known as a woman who bursts into tears during unwanted, stretched out, unimaginative conversations.
It is beautiful outside tonight. The it-is-not-fall-yet-but-close breeze is divine. Night sky in this weather is extra special and has a peculiar hue. The air feels lighter than it was in the morning, no longer saturated with unrained water. If I can appreciate and experience all this by sitting beside a window, the people who are actually outside must be having the time of their lives.
I wonder why it is almost never this magical in the mornings? What is the point of it being this breathtaking if you are stuck inside just because it does not make sense for a female here to be out on her own at night? I find contentment by imagining that another-me in an alternate reality is in a place where it is not unusual for a woman to be out alone in the dark, owns a car or a bike and is going bonkers tonight.
One tends to miss anything in the past that didn’t outrightly kill him/her. When I think about my college days, not many enjoyable experiences pop into mind. However, one of those adventures that I had often complained about back then but miss now are the bus rides. On one of those rare occasions when the weather was as enchanting as the aforementioned scenario, bus stops and bus rides had seemed like the most fun things in the world. On other days, not so much.
This reminds me of a book, that I don’t remember the name of, in which one of the characters was not a big fan of almost anything (it was not The Catcher in the Rye, that I am sure of) but all of a sudden he started travelling by buses to not any place in particular and just could not stop. This poem has been inspired from that character in the story:
“Bus stop.
New day,
Early hours,
Chalky sky,
Blue wind,
Small talk.
Fingers crossed.
Long road,
No signals,
Ink stains,
Pursed lips,
Eyes bloodshot.
Got off.
Stiff legs,
Strong coffee,
Street hawkers,
Short stories,
Thrift shops.”
“I see her on the bus stop,
But I am not
Great at making friends,
“You are cute,”
I tell her and
The little one in her arms
As well.
She is not pleased,
And her baby starts bawling
So I rummage
Thorough my mind, looking
For a better synonym
But it is a mess
Up there, and the silence
That hangs in the
Stale, summer air,
Makes things worse.
“Thank you, I guess,”
She says, and I know
In that moment that
“Polite”, is what she is
Or maybe she is more
And I need a Thesaurus
If I want to start
Conversations with shallow compliments.”
I am not a big fan of downpour. Or letters. They get to me. If there is anything worse than being woken up in the morning by a strong smell of rain-washed earth that numbs your olfactory sense for a while, then it is having to go through mail while you sip your morning coffee!
It was one of those mornings and I woke up, feeling groggy, already picturing the day lying ahead of me- a dishevelled me splashing my way to the bus stop, getting sprayed on as cars arrogantly rushed by, oblivious to the plight of pedestrians like me, and frogs having popped out like weeds in my garden by the time I’d reach home! I wanted to break down and not go through the day at all. It is shocking how trivial things like those can almost make you want to quit!
Anyway, resisting the urge to go back to sleep, I got up and drew the curtains. Best to avoid looking at the dripping-sky as long as I could! I made myself a cup of coffee(it smelled like rain and,unfortunately, a little bit like mold as well) and spilled it down the drain. Reading the mail without a (moldy) coffee, had got to feel less distressing! There were three letters sitting on the table in front of me. Three people had decided to make me miserable. I don’t understand why people need to establish contact. Why don’t they just read something and be content? Why do they have this baffling impulse to reach the author? My editor calls it “fan-mail” and she calls me “ungrateful” (and a stuck-up,fat, airhead behind my back) but she doesn’t know how disturbing I find the whole concept! Oh, I am grateful to the people who find my stories “great”, “enjoyable” or “relateable”, and that should end there but it does not, and that is when the trouble starts!
Alright, I admit that most of my stories don’t have a definite ending but that is the way life works, doesn’t it? You cannot end something permanently, even if you are the author of that tale, because you cannot keep on unfolding things. How could you ever reach an end that way? Your protagonist might save the world and come back home a happy person, and as he lies down he might think about his estranged father and grab the phone to call him. Would he call him or decide against it? Would his father be happy to hear from him or would he be enraged? What’s the point of putting those details in a story? They can’t do much to the plot as it has already been taken care of! When my “fans” inquire about silly things like that, I just lose it! Create your own endings people, if you don’t like mine! Make the protagonist go on and on, dealing with one mundane day after another until you take him to his grave(for all I care) but just don’t pester with your questions! I never reply to any letters, I just read them and spend the rest of the day basking in irritability and anger.
Lets go back to that awfully wet morning. One of those three letters that day, had left me a little puzzled for it was a bit unusual . It was from a school girl, who, after gushing over my recently published story that had left her in tears,in paragraph after a paragraph(and how big a fan she was), had written something strange in the post script:
“P.S. I think you probably don’t know that I take the same bus as you. We sometimes even cross the same road to reach the bus stop! So on one of the rainy mornings, I hope to share my umberella with you! It is really bright and all the colours stand out more on a dark,rainy day. I wonder if I’d get a moment like that because you have every right to pay no heed to my silly offer. However, I just want you to know that my story, can quite possibly begin if you decide to accept my offer, but it definitely wouldn’t end on it!”
I drew back the curtains, clutching that funny, little letter in my hand, and looked at the leaking sky. I had decided to go with the day after all, keeping an eye out for a girl with a vibrant umberella. Did I share her umberella? I am way too terrible a writer to let you know that.
(Inspired by a friend’s captured image@Photography Hobbyist-Wishal Aemal)
Outrageously Erratic 