It strikes me at an odd moment indeed, With sleep in my eyes, and my bare feet, The cold in the air, the chill and freeze, Poetry comes to me.

I tell myself I need to write.
I tell myself I need to inspite,
Of not having things to write on,
I rattle myself like an empt cage,
Or a mostly empty tank of a bike,
I rattle myself, finding very little within,
And I carry on with my day.
The one night, in silence, something comes to me.
It strikes me at an odd moment indeed,
With sleep in my eyes, and my bare feet,
The cold in the air, the chill and freeze,
Poetry comes to me.
It’s strange to me.
When I tell people I don’t write or can’t,
They refuse to believe me.
People sometimes think that I churn out poetry,
That every word I write or type is born from me or into me, not realizing that the pen can be…. Frustrating.
Believe me when I tell you that I cannot write because I do not write, I curve these silences around me into words sometimes because I cannot stand the silence.
Or sometimes, it just comes to me.
I start speaking my poetry into existence, like a God speaking something into existence.
When I start out, I don’t know what I’ll end up talking about.
The art of the pen is beautiful indeed, but it frustrates you, and every writer can breed, the same problem that plagues me.
I don’t write for days.
Random days or months go by without picking up the pen and writing, and every time the rust is shaken, the expectations of a good piece remains with me because I know what is expected of me.
Expectation is the worst thing you attach to a writer because as the mind wanders into worlds unknown, it becomes known from pieces before that there are expectations from you galore, certain level of art that people adore,
That I have to, or need to, live upto.
I churn myself sometimes, day and night
Just to find someone to write, on or about,
Without a doubt, a certain expectation in mind,
Hoping I can find, something worthwhile to pick up the pen about.
I told myself I wouldn’t write in rhyme,
Because it choked me every time,
In my early years, when I tried to write,
The rhyme was wrong, that’s how it felt.
I look to the stars now, and I write in rhyme,
I break the promise I made myself because now it makes sense to me to write in rhyme,
Because, in time, I realized that it makes sense now.
I see somewhere along the way,
A random rambling of the night, can turn into something that people like,
So I stop forcing myself to write lilies and flowers, to decorate my pieces with
Beauty and flair, I don’t try to flair,
What I write.
This is a random ramble that I’m recording.
But between this, know that I didn’t write for months because what I wrote wasn’t fancy or beautiful enough to share with the group,
And so I didn’t write.
I forced myself not to write until what I wrote was beautiful and every time I shook the old tank, it shed rust on the paper, and rust is not what I could show.
Recently, someone told me to write for myself.
For me to embrace the rust like I embraced the flowers because both were a part of me,
And now, I write. With no expectations,
And nothing expected of me.
I stopped telling myself I had to write.
I stopped shaking that empty tank.
Because, Expectation is the worst thing you attach to a writer,
because as the mind wanders into worlds unknown, it becomes known from pieces before that there are expectations from you galore.
This is the random ramble after midnight.
As I shake off the rust again.


Love Left Me.

Ever since the day love left me,
I’ve left love chasing, content to just stare at
Two people in love from the outside,
While inside, wondering if I would find it’s touch again.
Again, I Dream about love, I dream about the imperfect but cute love we used to share, we care still about each other, at least that’s what we tell each other but honestly, it hurts me a little every time I talk to her and have to stop myself from calling her Baby.
Maybe, love was what I needed then,
When, I finally stopped looking for it, was too exhausted to look for it, I saw it walking into the school gate in grade 8, or maybe it was 9, but looking back at that moment it still ages like fine wine when I look back on it.
I promised myself to not write on love anymore since people in love have written about it galore, and therefore, I would not write about it, because I was out of it.
I’m still out of it.
Sometimes, just sometimes I still think I haven’t recovered from the last time, maybe that is my crime for which I do time by not finding love while looking for it all the time.
I don’t know why I rhyme.
I decided for myself that rhyme, rhymed too much, timed too much and it bound me into something I could never either fully myself comprehend or make others comprehend,
My friend, if you asked me what rhyme was, I couldn’t tell you, and you would wonder why I called myself a poet,
So it, was and is a surprise to me that I rhyme like I rhyme right now,
Somehow, the night breaks all the promises I made to myself,
Making me rhyme for the umpteenth time, and since I write about love,
I wonder if there is a force above, feeding me these lines or if I write them on my own,
Alone, in my bed or on my study table,
Writing for me, but not really,
Daily, trying to write just to stay sane,
So that my brain does not ingrane,
In me that I will always be alone.
I ramble as I talk about love, because I remember what it used to be, but I don’t know what it is.
I remember it used to make me happy while making me dizzy,
It making me smile while keeping me busy,
I break all the rules writing this because
It’s the middle of the night, and I write,
While I rhyme, I think it is that time for me to stop looking for love.
But love never stops coming.
It never stops loving.
It sends you new ways like new friends,
Or the opportunities to reconnect with the old ones,
The old suns, under which you used to laugh.
I keep searching for love, still.
I try to hear what I remember it sounds like,
But years of poetry tells me it sounds and looks different every time I get it.
And every time I get it, I get it for a different purpose, which I do not know or do not understand.
But you, dear reader, should understand that even if you’re being told what it sounds like, you should listen to it and for it, because it might sound like love sometimes.
And if you hear it, move towards it.
Because it is beautiful, as much as inside as it is from afar.
And this, is the promise of a poet, who has touched it before.

Embers

People sometimes ask me how I write poetry.
Is it muscle memory that I alter every time?
Is it a whisper that comes to me?
How do I write?
Somewhere along the way, the gods gave me their poetry, in exchange for my peace.
Being alone is painful now, because every voice in my head speaks without talking.
They all give me lines to write on, and I make order out of chaos.
Nights are non existent to me, because the whispers take them away.
I traded away my sanity for the art of the Pen.
I traded my sleep for the ability to paint pictures with words.
I traded my sleep away,
For those little whispers,
Those whispers of poetry that I now hold.
These poems are little sparks,
That I pick in the dead of the night,
That give me permanance,
Give me passion, give me peace,
Give me poetry.
I ran from it but the thing
I loved came always back to me.
When I was young I used to see,
Sports being the call for me
But the Pen, I couldn’t survive it’s charms,
With it I lasted several storms, blowing away in only a few, and only then reaching out to you.
I traded everything away,
To leave a print on a page,
To make sure that my age is
What I transcend as I write for rememberance.
I write for my peace.
They are embers, to not be contained in rhyme schemes but to be let free and to let burn within this world.
I was a young boy looking for talent,
To feel the words I now carry.
And in the process, I traded it away,
My nights, my peace, my sanity, my sleep,
Just for these embers,
That burn in me.

Pain changes you.

Pain sucks.

It changes the way you talk, the way you walk, the way you think, the way you talk.

Pain Changes you.

If you’re lucky enough to survive, you get to talk about it and people admire you for fighting through it. If you’re not lucky, it changes you.

Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It changes how you look like your eyes start to drop a little deeper into your sockets, or that’s just me.

It hurts sometimes to get out of bed in the mornings, and the bed is all you think about. It changes you mentally as you start to hurt, it teaches you not to trust people, not to let people in. Pain teaches Paranoia. It teaches self – preservation.

Spiritually, you don’t worship anymore. You start to question God, the concepts and the concept of her. Worship becomes false to you. Needless, too. You stop feeling after you experience pain.

You just feel hurt. And Angry. And sad. It breaks you. It is not for romanticism. It crushes your hearts and dreams. It kills you. Slowly.

What I am made of.

People ask me what I am made of. I have no answers but whenever the question arrives I associate words like guilt, regrets, loneliness, brokenness, revolution, surrounded but alone, with my entire existence.
I breathe, but with a pipe, like how people often smoke, but instead of inhaling the addictive smoke I inhale hope, and air because I have nothing else left in me but darkness and I don’t know how long I can breathe hope through a cigarette. Around me, all I see is dark, and I have started to hate the color black even when I love it because I’ve started seeing that color everywhere no matter how hard I try to unsee it. I try to write poems, letters, and sometimes ballads out of my incessant sadness, loneliness and darkness in order to unclog the dark around me, to unclog the air above my head. I try to hard to make ends meet and tape myself up to keep going, and when the tape falls apart, I put more on myself, listen to more music and constantly fear falling apart. The darkness inside me is deep, and thick, and the loneliness gets to me on some days and the nights, they are always the hardest, because at night I can not call out to anyone for help. I don’t know from where it all started. I’m not the one who usually asks for help but the one who gives, and with so much happening at the same time, I’m constantly overwhelmed and even though I talk a lot about my feelings I don’t know how to properly ask for help.
So I keep the smile that I perfected over my time in school and the laughter that I’m close to perfecting, I keep myself “Happy and Jolly”
And hide whatever I actually feel.
I feel nothing most of the time, not happy, not sad, not irritated, not frustrated, just breathing most of the time, not wanting to burst out on anybody.
I’m living, feeling nothing but darkness in so many emotions and sometimes nothing still, and I hate how I’m living without feeling anything at all or not being able to feel the light.
So I’m putting on that smile again,
And it’s back on the grind.

Exist when wanted.

I only know how to exist when I’m wanted.
When I’m seen.
When I’m recognized.
I only know to exist when I exist within a group.
When eyes recognize me,
And greet me, with smiles and laughs,
And waves of hand.
I know only to exist when I am wanted,
When I am needed.
When I am accepted.
When I am take in by the ones who I want to be friends with,
Taken in by those who I long to be friends with.
I know to exist when people call me their friend,
Invite me to parties and to events, to birthdays and to weddings,
I know only to exist when I am needed,
When I feel needed, when I feel accepted.
When I am invited to hang outs and get togethers, when I am invited to sit with them in class and sit with them when class is over,
When I’m invited or accepted when I come to sit with them in the college cafeteria,
Or not flat out ignored, when I stroll on over to listen to their conversations.
It’s the eyes, Chico, they make me feel wanted.
Every day, the world me an offer I can’t refuse,Getting me to trade my self worth,
For the high of a few eyes who acknowledge me as their equal, as their companion, as their friend.
The high of attention. It feels like I sell my soul everyday, as I tell the devil to go ahead and make my day, while taking my soul.
I crave attention. I crave people. I crave a group,
I have craved the high of laughs out of the group ever since I tasted it first, the high of a smile is a different type, a different kind, a different breed.

When I don’t have attention.
When I don’t have those eyes,
When I don’t have those highs,
I spiral.
Into a downward trend,
Into insecurity,
Into madness
Into chaos.
And chaos is what brings me to my brink.
I set myself on fire everyday and be
What they want me to be e everytime I’m not accepted, when I am rejected, when I am Shunned.
I spiral out of control, wallowing in madness and insanity, cutting of parts of myself and adding fake ones just to fit into what the group is like, what they do, what they want me to be
I cut myself open and recreate myself,
Burn myself to ashes and rise anew from the embers like a Phoenix,
But they don’t know what a Phoenix is,
So I don’t know what a Phoenix is,
I’m just another guy with some sleazy,
Innuendo filled jokes,
And even though it goes against Who I am and who I want to be, the high of the eyes is just too much to turn down,
And I re create myself over and over again, loosing myself all the time but gaining the friendships I’ve always craved.
If I don’t get the hit of the eyes, I unravel.
I only know how to exist when I’m wanted.

When I’m seen.When I’m recognized.