Tag: truth

red on green

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

pleas to sustain and spare the pain

we’re bared to you for your gain

no cloak no quilt

only a mother’s guilt,

watching the glee with which

my green roots and shoots

trembled under your creaky boots;

grumbling old men with jittery teeth

that clatter and grind over beetle leaves

and worms in gums that chatter together

leaving big stains and a cancerous pane

of crimson and brown and blood and hound.

grumbling old men that don’t hesitate

to strike check mate-

and bring my fate,

axes and picks and saws- a dozen

only to kill all millions heathens.

grumbling old men that use the knife

to kill all of their wives

it’s similar to that don’t you see?

I served them too with brilliant tea.

so life is cut and life is eased

life is cut and life is eased

for deserted plains that resemble grey

desperation and dismay

-Tanmay

brown

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Everyday we drink tea, resting the tea cups on round jute coasters on a large brown wood coffee table with an even larger brown tinted glass surface.

The tint makes the newspapers below look 30 years old- as if they were fished out from our storage room, but of course they bear today’s day and date- neat and crisp.

The rusk often drips into the tea as we stare into our respective screens on quiet mornings of days’ that we know entail toil. The unuttered desperation for rest adds to the silence, broken periodically by the stunted cries of stunted sparrows. The sparrrows are smaller than they used to be 20 years ago. Their plumage pathetic now, dirt-like instead of the browns that we have preserved in our eyes.

A three-some of green parrots show up at the window near the dining table, overlooking the cemetery. Always in threes, and always silent for the fear of attracting a predator who’d claw them down.

Only once have I sighted a large hawk in our skies, gawking over the cemetery as if it was its land. How would I explain to it that that land is disputed property…

-Tanmay

muse solaire

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

*

what hesitation do I hold, when the sun broke through me

how do I stop when you already hallowed mine pen with thy lips, and so I wrote on

the papyrus too thin, letting the letters suspend in the air- a curtain for your face

nestled in hair that beamed of spring in monsoon, evident of misplaced power commandeered by

the eyes, the eyes capable of inciting cold blooded murder and vanishing into sage like meditation,

altering the course of comets and destinies,

but lip service is all I am providing now, hoping that the letters be assimilated and drunk, hoping that there’s more…

*

-Tanmay

PS: I am in the mood for writing poetry only these days. Please bear with me.

sleeping

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

The devilish pleasure and luxury of being able to sleep the whole day, the whole night and the whole evening. There’s construction work going on in the apartment above us, and they were working in the room above mine. The noise under which I went to sleep was no joke. No room was spared either, the noises were everywhere. But I slept through, waking up in a compounded glory of multiple hollow meaningless victories.

It’s not even me skipping my responsibilities. They’re too less. What else am I supposed to do in a state of limbo, a state of lax muscles and an idle mind?

Any suggestions about better use of time would be welcome.

-Tanmay

buried alive; logic; reasons

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Music and loneliness have a symbiotic relationship. Music doesn’t cut away the loneliness but it sure numbs the pain that arises out of it. I remember in my second semester at univeristy I had my earphones resting on my ears constantly, no matter where I went. In February 2018 I was introduced to Logic’s Under Pressure by a fellow music enthusiast and music producer. I fell in love with Logic instantly. He is revered by a lot of people for his honest take on anxiety and depression, almost as if an older brother is listening to you and your fears. I remember sitting alone for breakfast eating quickly whilst listening to Buried Alive, the memory is etched so clearly that listening to the song again now brings back images from that time and a thump in my body because of the physiological changes that anxiety brought forth were sometimes more pronounced while listening to relatable music. It was mostly a wrenching of the gut- up and down so strong that it would force my hip up if I was on my bed.

There was a dependence that I fostered on certain types of music that helped channel some of my confusion with life into energy to get up and do shit. I owe a lot to the artists whose music I listened to then. The desperation of loneliness demands prompt attachment to anything constant. People couldn’t be there in the way I needed them to be, so an only child was still the only child at steel tables, with two hundred of his peers ten meters away. It was almost necessary, the way my life unfolded then; it made me impervious.

Everything happens for a reason and the reason is made clear after the happening; almost always.

-Tanmay

self portraiture in hell

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

rough sandpaper

against my cheek,

she hummed her tale of yesteryear’s glory

and I focused on the roughness against my portrait

what if it were to leave a stain?

what if I were to be a branded man?

a marked man

taken to the gallows

for not listening to the glory of a woman

glory of fire, blood and tears in a holy mix-

injected intravenous,

with Stairway to Heaven playing in the background

I never liked that song though

would have rather listened to the cat and monkey screeching at each other

and with her tale unheard still,

she slapped me hard

and I saw stars for a moment

and then she got up and left

and so did the monkey

naturally I named the cat Persephone.

-Tanmay

screaming subconscious

~ Tanmay ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes I don’t understand the origin of the pain that seeps into my poems. The knowledge that there have been terrible experiences is not enough to explain why there is pain still. Why is there hurt hidden beneath, or is it in the air around me?

I attribute it to a subconscious that is still screaming. It is still reeling from the jolts that erupted years ago. The subconscious is screaming because it has no one to talk to- but only me to talk through. Manifesting its active pain into my passive actions. The silence that I prefer hides the screams of the void within.

The pain is too romantic to go away. It’ll cling for as long as it can. It’s a struggle to get it off and whether you like it or not there’s going to be a lot of self correction and learning then unlearning and learning again. But it’s a harder struggle per se, so I resorted to numbing myself, and making myself immune to the world, keeping my pain guarded closely in my arms, feeding its ego and nurturing it further. Till life itself became unsustainable and I was on the brink of losing a lot of what wasn’t mine to lose. I had to take charge of myself through the loneliness and the tough nights and work on my mind.

Taming the mind is a long process requiring practice and discipline, repeated a million times only to reach a point much below any semblance of excellence. Life itself is that process. The way you navigate your life is your process, and that navigation is in your hands only when you’re aware of yourself. Deciphering the meaning of the world and the purpose of existence is nothing but an attempt to understand your own life. The process requires many attributes- such as controlling impulses. I react too quickly to impulses rather than analysing how they might affect my time ahead. Reactions might trigger a fall of a long chain dominos that is nothing but a recipe for disaster. Analysing choices offers insight that will add to better judgment in the future. It sounds easy to say all of this, but the truth is we as human beings falter too much for our own good. Sometimes it’s not under our control either; but if you adopt an attitude of servitude to yourself you might lessen the negatives.

Your mind should work for you.

-Tanmay

you’re not special; neither am I; sadly

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

On my 5th birthday there was a clear crisp radiant rainbow in the sky. That was one day I felt I was absolutely special and that there were higher forces working for me to make my day. It felt good.

I don’t know when and how I knew from a certain age that there was no such thing as being ‘special’. Mathematics can prove that. There’s too many of us and the probability that there’s many people who are quite alike you takes away the ‘special’ quotient.

It was good for my ego I think, I didn’t have to learn that the hard way. The metric that we choose to measure whether someone is ‘special’ or not should be our own choice else you won’t be special to the only one that matters: YOU!

You may use the same metric for others or you may pick a different one. At the same time you’ll have to understand that others are also judging you through their myriad metrics etc. So you’ll not be special to everyone.

Think.

-Tanmay

hard loud music; well of inspiration; meaning

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Imagine being a little tired or buzzed out but not willing to sleep. Now put in a heavy rock track (Negative Creep- Nirvana), or hard rap (m.A.A.d city- Kendrick Lamar) in the background. This exercise usually puts me in the center of an empty universe, free, unchained to mold the clay of existence into forms, forms that are understood by at least one another. It’s nothing but a hunt for ‘meaning’, you chase it, I chase it, but especially the insane/genius chase it. The subjectivity of meaning results in a uniqueness. This uniqueness is valuable only to the one who birthed it. Some are lucky though, their meaning becomes popular and we share it and talk about it.

A by product however is dissent. That’s where most problems lie. Meaning becomes truth for the one who beholds it. A campaign for truth might spark up when enough believe in it, and the opposing camp comes bearing torches to burn the others’ truth to the ground.

Most stories emanate from this background.

Thoughts?

-Tanmay