Blue, Pink, Grey

Blue, Pink, Grey

The strangest thing I’ve seen her do is build a sky on her own. She took a piece of paper and a blue crayon and started coloring from the top left. She colored diagonally, and when she was half-way through, I thought she’d stop and pick up a different color to finish. The sky’s never all blue. Sometimes a little red seeps in and it can look beautiful and at other times, it’s white, full of clouds, as if it is a clean slate for you to look at and reboot. It blushes pink sometimes because there are so many poets constantly flirting with the sky. And sometimes, the sky sees people for what they are and goes grey.

Keyboard warrior

Keyboard warrior

There are twenty six alphabets
strong enough
to make someone’s day,
or make you fall in love,
maybe even hold destruction by the scruff
of its neck and save the planet.
You can raise toasts, gods, hell
and sing them lullabies.
You can turn humans into life-savers.
There are twenty six alphabets
at the core of every soul.

Cosmic.

Cosmic.

I visited a dead city once.
It had
no roads, no shelters, no bodies.
There were only broken walls,
shattered roads, and souls –
an aftermath of war.
I believe that after our final lesson
of letting go of life,
the souls learn how to stay
and so among these ruins,
they kick back, relax, and love cosmically
because this graveyard was and is their home.
In the wreckage,
on some stones, I found epitaphs
“A. Stark, died protecting his family”.
On others, I found eulogies written by
one dead friend to another dead friend.
There was destruction here but also a promise
that these souls were safe
from humans.
There was hate but also love,
my fear but also my hope.

I’m scared that the world will end in war,

that the last thing we’ll hear

will be a battlecry or the silent roars of bombs,

that we’ll go out with a big bang too.
We’ll fight for just a day too long

and spit curses,

catapulting us towards oblivion.
I’m afraid that with the flick of a switch,
we’ll ‘factory data reset’ the world

and just like that, cease to exist.
No more history, no more books, no more readers.
Just broken buildings and the howls

of nature. Smoke, ash, death.
I’m very scared that this tendency

of humans to fill in silences with noise

will lead us to destruction
because not many of us understand

that silences and peace are deep conversations

and war is small talk.

But I am also hopeful

that love will save some of us.
When the human call of death comes,

two young souls will hide.
People with hearts so in love that the universe

deems it too big a loss

to lose them.
I’ve always pictured these two kids

finding shelter in the deepest corners

of the world. If need be, the Earth will crack open

and keep them safe inside.
They’ll be put to sleep while heaven

sings them lullabies

and hell itself rises to protect them.
No war, no screams, no hate

will reach them.

And when they’re ready,
they’ll come back up
and be our next Adam and Eve.
I’m hopeful that something as magical
as love
will bring us back to life.

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Into stories? – Let’s live forever
Instagram – @myspirals

Strip-poetry.

Strip-poetry

You taught me poetry doesn’t have to be
long
like
this.
It doesn’t have to rhyme
every single time.
All poetry needs to be is a punch
into someone’s gut
strong enough to make them gasp.
“Poetry is a seed
and you are the sunflower.”
Strip a poem word by word
down to this bare bone,
and you’ll find that poetry
is just a couple of words deep.
Poetry is about when you read it.
Poetry is about how much you need it.

Let’s live forever.

Let’s live forever.

“You know, I’d heard that if you fall in love with a poet, you’d live forever as poetry. But you haven’t written something for me or used metaphors for me ever since I said I loved you. Why is that?”

“I cannot believe you don’t remember why,” I giggled. “You remember how we partied the night we told each other we were in love? We were both six shots down but only you were drunk because of the alcohol. I’d willed myself to not be drunk because I wanted to remember every bit of that day. You asked me that night, after thirty-seven minutes of confessing your love, to never write a poem on you. I was still thinking of how you’d told me that I made your heartbeat the same way it beat when you were swimming – your favorite thing in the whole wide world, and how there were a hundred butterfly strokes in your stomach when I kissed you. But I managed to ask why you didn’t want me to write on you. You told me you didn’t want to be here after I was gone, even if as a happy love poem.”

“That does sound plausible. Let’s change that for a bit. I don’t want reasons why you love me. I want metaphors. Shoot for the stars, poet!” You laughed, six shots down again.

“Okay, poetry. You’re the eighth color of the rainbow. I know there are ‘supposedly’ only seven, but I think of the sky as the eighth color. Humans tend to limit things but poetry doesn’t believe in that. Like the beautiful sky, I see you everywhere. You’re my seventh shot of this tequila. I’m sure I’ll get drunk if I have it, just like I’m drunk on you all the time. Do you know the feeling you get when you go home at the end of the day and your puppy leaps onto you? You’re it. You’re my panipuri (an Indian tasty dish), novels, green t-shirt, my heart. You’re everything that makes me happy.”

“I think if I write a poem on you (it’ll be pretty bad but who cares?) and you write one on me, I won’t be here alone as a happy love poem. We’ll be the happy love poem. But you should know, you’re very cheesy.”

“and you’re very beautiful.” I kissed you.

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Into poetry? – Soulmates?
Instagram – @myspirals