Lose yourself To the winding roads under the foggy skies Where the mountain kisses the sun, The trees flirt with the wind And the pebbles fall in love with the flowers Not to be loved in return;
Lose yourself To the city And it’s overlapping streets, lanes, alleys Houses cuddling together Bricks and cement infused in love Slender skyscrapers trying to be mountains But never stealing a kiss from the sun As the pollution brews smoke in the sky;
Lose yourself To the pages That can take you anywhere Anytime Where you become the lover and the beloved The hero and the villain Where you can live a thousand lives By a magic called language;
Lose yourself To music Where you can feel a thousand emotions And know how the pebble felt when the daisy died in its arms Or how a hero dreams A villain lives A lover cries A human feels;
Lose yourself To me Or I’m afraid I’ll lose myself To you.
On some days, I close my eyes- And it becomes a summer evening. I laugh and smile like only children can afford to, Fresh green grass tickles my tiny bare feet. I sit on the swing, my eyes steadfast on the golden sky Gearing up to reach as high as I can To outdo my brother Who got bored of swinging And is now playing football in the other half of the park. The evening smells like dirt, Sounds like mosquitoes, And feels like a breeze. As the sky turns into ink, Birds begin to hurry like pedestrians in a busy city, Returning to their nests; And the two of us return home To watch some cartoons, Have some snacks, And fight over both.
On some days, I close my eyes- And I’m in a classroom Blue walls, blue desks, grey floor and a blackboard A trail of words leaving the teacher’s lips And going straight out of the window like unruly toddlers crawling too fast; Every head is either dozing off or buzzing with mischief. A girl secretly holds her boyfriend’s hands under the desk And everyone within a three meter radius Throws them a knowing smirk. Five minutes till recess- becomes a reason enough to be stupidly happy Although my friends and I have only been playing games, Cracking jokes, and doodling all over The precious last pages of the notebook. The long-awaited bell rings loud and clear, Followed by an epidemic of smile and relief.
On some days, I close my eyes- And I don’t want to open them again. Everyone seems out of reach Every situation, out of hand. I open my eyes and shut them again To remember the times When the world wasn’t upside down to me When happiness was so real that I could almost touch it When I was enough for myself. Maybe I still am- There’s a breeze outside The birds still return home tweeting goodnight And the bell hasn’t rung yet All I can do is keep scribbling on the last few pages of my notebook And everything will be fine.
I’m burning
The red fire inside the core of my body
Rises with its million tongues
The veil of smoke makes my silhouette a blur
I am burning
And I don’t know how to stop.
Put out the fire!
It’s an unholy disaster
I am an unholy disaster
I can’t stop the fire, Baba,
I tried bathing in the Ganges
Almost drowned in my own tears-
My rotten flesh still charrs.
Why am I burning, Ma?
Was I not a good girl?
Appropriate is my nickname
At least in society, I am
Miss Prim and Proper.
I know I show my teeth to you, Ma
I don’t know who else I can turn to.
I really am sorry.
Is that why I burn?
I have the need to please them all
Be cool
Don’t be that all-hating girl
Finding problems with the world
Especially when you can do nothing about it.
Especially when you believed you could.
Ignorance is bliss
Don’t set your expectations so high
That they almost touch the danger sign of ‘Ideal’.
Ideal isn’t real
The red flags aren’t either, convince yourself.
Bury your head in your rabbit hole
Maybe you’ll extinguish those deadly flames.
Who does those flames want to touch?
Why are they so angry?
There are fresh eyes opening inside my soul
They see too much
I don’t know how to shut them
The rabbit hole is too far away now.
Cynic turned misanthrope?
I refuse to be that one.
There is good, I have seen it.
I have, I must remember that.
I yell and scream at my own burning self
Until the fire calms down.
I’m numb now, the blaze is over.
Looking aimlessly at the city’s skeleton
I distance myself as far as I can.
Survival needs escape.
I don’t know who’s there with me,
But I can still feel
The flicker that lives on
In my eyes.
All that the flicker needs
Is a trigger
And I’ll be ablaze again.
I don’t know how to stop.
Let’s get lost in the city.
We can’t count the stars
Because the smoky clouds have won.
We have lost-
Ourselves
But not our dreams, not yet.
Your eyes have all the stars I need
My dreams are all yours,
Let’s paint our passions together
Into a pretty rainbow
And the smog will be lifted.
The city is sometimes so grey
Straight lines,
Boxes…
Traps?
The skyline is mapped out in sharp angles
The round sunset is such a sight.
Let’s count the people,
How they speed up their lives.
Find leisure in a city dweller’s paradise.
No one seems to remember their dreams,
The dreams that drove them here.
Running for life, they run away,
Round and round in circles.
The watchful city smirks.
Exhausting landscapes and construction sites
Grow, grow, grow
Metropolitan giant,
Grow but don’t eat up our dreams.
I won’t look at the shabby alleys
The slums we pretend don’t exist
I swear I’ll gaze at the palacial malls
And forget the flaws of the city.
I was born here
I know how a city crushes someone’s hopes
While nurturing another’s.
Let’s get lost in this city again
Sacrificing our bodies and souls
To the urban gods
And maybe one day
The city will listen to us,
The city will care,
Embrace,
Love,
And the city will be all ours.
Stop the goddamn music
Just stop it.
No I don’t want to dance
My body rejects your happy beats
The lyrics don’t talk to me
Who are they made for?
My ears have been fed with generic
Western music
Bollywood
Bengali songs
And every time you play a song
My linguistic identities change.
Who the fuck am I?
In what language do I love?
Or exist?
English is too formal
A dress which I once borrowed for a day
And never returned.
Hindi is an ornament I bought for myself
Only worn on special occasions.
Bengali? It was always with me
Restricted reach, taken for granted
Nothing too special.
I’m sorry
It’s not your fault that
My ears are repulsed
By every tongue I know
Since I know not which one is mine.
They say
Learn the language of love
What the fuck is that, pray?
I’m sorry I’m angry
At myself, really
Confusion is choking me
That’s the only sound I hear.
Did you put on another song?
Thanks for holding my hand.
I used to be bored by instrumentals,
I never knew
That’s how music truly speaks.
Perhaps,
I don’t need a language anymore.
I wanted to write another poem and was hesitating if I should write anything but poetry in my blog ( being a newbie blogger I’m nervous anyway) but I decided that a little insight into my prosaic life does not deserve poetry.
So here I am, a second year undergrad student of English Literature from a city named Kolkata in India, trying out blogging despite being cynical about it. Who even reads these days? I honestly wonder. I used to be such an avid reader (although I gorged on thrillers and not true literary pieces) but now I just can’t seem to concentrate on any book, write-up, and so on-nothing captivates me, and I feel that this happens with all of us now.
Our attention spans are shrinking too fast, we are a generation of bored people. Or is it just me? I love it when someone is often excited about a book, or a TV show or a poem or a song- just about anything at all- because I miss feeling that way. It’s very rarely that I get excited about anything like that- and it is the best feeling ever.
I even dread conversations because I’m always afraid of boring the others. I can’t figure out what to talk about? I have been told to speak more but I keep running round and round in the vicious cycle of-should I call it-shyness? Social anxiety? Whatever it is, it kills all words that dare to come out of my lips. As if, I try to push the words outside of my body but the words come running back inside like scared little children. I know this is stupid, people will not probably hate me if I talk to them, but I get a feeling that I have nothing worthwhile to contribute to any conversation-so why waste words? In the span of a year, thanks to my shyness, I have had a proper conversation with hardly half a dozen people in my university.
There’s another side of the same coin-I get bored by other people easily. It’s a paradoxical feeling- I believe they are cooler, smarter and more eloquent than me, yet I mostly don’t want to listen to them. In the end I end up not talking to anyone at all. I am happy in my own company, but sometimes it does get lonely.
Things are looking up since I am actively making an effort to talk to others. Technically my second year has not yet begun, and I hope that this year is going to bring me a lot more smiles 🙂
I am again afraid of boring you, reader, so I’ll end my piece, but on a less-whiny, happier note. Here’s a picture of a temporary tattoo I drew at a tattoo art competition at uni (the topic was stardust). I stood second (because not many participated XD ) and so it’s a good memory of my first year.
Think of dreams and smile at memes, reader, and we’ll meet again.
What will you do
When the youth of your body
Leaves,
Like a cruel gorgeous maiden
Who never cared for her lover
What will you do
If your experiences tire you
But never bloom into wisdom;
Your dandelion hair
Shedding
Every time you sigh
What will you do
If nobody cares
As you descend-
Rather, drown
Into your second childhood
Cheating on your diabetes diet
Sucking on mango seeds
Over and over
Like a greedy baby
What will you do
When one sudden morning
You catch your mind running slow,
Buffering every other minute
Yet not slow enough-
You can still observe
The annoyance it causes
To others
Their attention span getting shorter every second
What will you do
To hide your pain
When the shopkeeper screams-
Justifiably, you tell yourself,
It’s another day
Of forgetting the hearing aid
What will you do
When phone calls make you jump
Dreading
Who it is this time
Anxiety chewing aloud on your miserable mind
In the silent funeral
What will you do
When you can’t escape
The necessary noise of daily soaps
Reality TV
And hours of meaningless news
To fill the void
In your days
Evenings
Nights
What will I do
When I wither away in winter
Even though I never knew
How to blossom in spring?
Sky stretched on the canvas.
So much blue, she is lost.
Specks of happy clouds
Float around like white cotton balls
Just like she used to run around the house
In a pale white frock
On humid summer afternoons.
Afternoons have kept their promise.
They peek in every day
To check up on her
But the girl has all grown up.
Afternoons now
Are dismissed daytimes.
Busy, yet boring;
That time of the day
Everyone wants to get over with.
Evenings arrive with hopes of glamour-
Breezy walks,
Cheery dates.
Playtime for children in the park.
Her playthings are gone, her
Playmates have long forgotten her.
All that is left-
Miles of scrolling the screen
And fear of missing out,
As work piles on.
Sky stretched on the canvas.
So much blue, she is lost.
So much she could’ve been,
So much she never will.
Time to paint it all afresh
With the hues of night instead.
With strokes of black paint
Strikes the midnight hour.
What will you do
