Come,
Spend another moment with me
Be the chorus to this melody
Be the refrain that drives me insane
Be unabashed and unashamedly you.
The tempest, the temptress, relentless
Leaving me restless and battling with verbosity
Reeling too…
Cos I’m feeling you
As I stutter and stumble,
over the intensity of the chemistry,
within the brevity of that moment
That moment you spent with me
Dazed within your gaze,
I was revelling in you
My..what a rendezvous!
How decadent…
Such a treat, however fleeting it was,
What a meeting it was
Leaving my heart beating through my skin
Breathing heavy with a devilish grin.
Now,
I wanna feel your refrain again
Whisper your name again
Indulgently…
Intentionally
Lay you next to me
Simmering with subtle intensity
Staring… impatiently
Unapologetically
Daring you to be unsubtle with me
Well,
What do you say…Pallavi?
Spend another moment with me?
Bas ek pal? 😛 (Just one moment)
Tag: poetry
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Pallavi (The Refrain)
-
Old man traffic cone
I wonder when the day will come,
The day when I will be that weathered old man
Standing and staring at the traffic
Almost as if to say,
This is enough for me
I’mma stand here and watch the rest of you mugs run
You’ll all stop eventually
But fresh ones will keep coming
Keep on running
Pretending we have somewhere to be
As though the circles we run will set us free
No thanks youngun, this is far enough for me
Peace and love ✌🏽
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Unavoidable
If I were to find myself on the day of judgement
I’d tell God to join the back of the queue
There’s many more innocent hearts I’ve broken
And questions left behind,
within a lifetime’s silence
It is their eyes I fear the most
But I accept…
God?
God can have whatever is left.
-
Hopeful
The heat, pulsing through my veins
Cannot be found in my tears
The joy, dancing in my laughter
Pirouetting in-between breaths
Its a spinning top,
Chasing it’s own reflection
Bouncing off the bristling breeze
That cannot be toppled into silence.
-
Summiting
Somehow, words tend to fall short.
Clichés of bleeding pens,
Of pouring hearts onto pages—
Nonsense!
They never crossed the writer’s door.
Ring-fenced within words, the heart is mute.
To believe otherwise is vanity—
It’s foolish
One can write and write, yet the words arrive stale,
Pale and cold in the shadow of mountains
They try and fail to describe
I do not know which medium would suffice,
Just not that of the scribe
How many times, in how many ways,
Have I longed to make you see through my eyes?
Make you believe what I believe—
Yet as soon as the word is written,
It is at the mercy of what you perceive
It’s make-believe
And then somehow,
The mountains I peaked become molehills…
Or maybe..
I’m just blaming my pen.
-
Ice dance
You live in a little snow globe in my heart
I can shake it up and watch as the snow adorns you anew,
Smile and relive that frozen moment—
That fragile, timeless void where we danced,
Where you were mine,
Where it was too warm for snowflakes to touch
I can still tap on the glass,
Hold that little world within,
Where I always kept you,
Quietly adored you
Though now,
I’ll always remain on this side,
Peering through the snow
I can’t join you anymore
My world cannot be held,
At least not by these hands
But no one can take this you from me—
This you, immortalised,
This you, for me alone
For this, I thank you.
I’ll let the snow settle now…
It could never touch you anyway.Imagery inspired by this scene from the film Edward Scissorhands: https://youtu.be/J6xzL0TrsRY
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Open water
Flipped and tumbled by the waves
The swell, relentless
Turning me inside out
In this chaos, calm comes easy
The ocean cannot touch the depth of my stillness here
No
It’s the shore that terrifies me
-
Potpourri
I want to find a forgotten old photo,
on my phone when it says ‘remember the day when…’
Then fall in love all over again
Get those old butterflies to dust their wings
Ask this old heart to skip a beat and sing
Knowing where those blurry smiles would lead
Like a lush gardens very first seed
The sweet fragrance of nostalgia in bloom
Instead of the dried petals that perfume this room…
…how do I disable this memories thing?
-
Walking with Dante
A strange addictive quality—
The draw of yearning and desire
As though I’m playing hide and seek,
Yet deep down, I don’t want to find you
For the pain and pleasure is the pursuit
The resistance, the obstacles—
Each step a stumble toward a home,
Though I fear what I find will never be enough.
Merely an inn, a halfway place,
It will be the spark alone—
An ember fanned by my own breath
Its flicker swelling into a blinding inferno,
Until I can no longer see the way,
See the truth
Only the figures I manifest—
Dancing…in the flames.
Thus I walk
Willfully ignorant in pursuit of elusive bliss,
I shun the end of the road
For limbo isn’t torment,
If the journey becomes the station.
What do you write after ‘the end’ anyway?
I’d rather die half way than ever pen those words.
-
Friday night
It’s a curious dichotomy
Anticipating yet awaiting nothing
Noone is at the door,
Nor will there be
Yet, when the wind rattles the latch,
I glance—
Just in case.
A lonely leaf, crushed into the doormat stares back
There’s still 3 hours till bedtime
Maybe I’ll vacuum tomorrow…
Maybe I wont
-
Bird of spring
God make me a bird of spring
Stretching the first time its wings
Wary of the drop below
Yet fearless of what it does not know
Take this knowing away from me
Undo all I’ve seen and set me free
-
Under the clock
Perched in the rafters of Waterloo station
Watching the show unfold
A production of epic proportions
Stage left, right, north, south, it’s a free for all!
Some seem to know their lines, others a little lost
Missing their cues, they beg the departure board for clues
Every direction, every face, invites indulgence in sonder
Who are they? Where are they going?
Infinite stories unfolding
Impossible to know
How unsatisfying
In the midst of this choreographed chaos,
Under the disembodied – allegedly iconic – clock, two bodies meet
Greeting with a kiss, a quip and slightly averted glances
Nervous and slightly breathless
A new romance
About to leave the station
Godspeed to you
-
Putting it on paper
Am I writing you out of me,
or writing you into existence?
Does the paper take the weight of the words,
or immortalise a fleeting thought?
Oh the irony…
-
In the stars
The universe may be infinite—
As I believe is love
Yet just as the universe entropies,
Eventually,
love drifts,
sometimes lightyears away—
fragmented
Given away willingly,
sometimes unwittingly,
Fallen into orbits long left behind,
or ahead
It’s hard to say which way;
that’s the trouble with entropy
All I know is, it lives on, apart from me—
not created nor destroyed
Timeless fractures, destined to be,
stardust stretched across the galaxy’s expanse,
glancing back with longing and askance,
yearning to be whole again,
a burning comet in pursuit of its own tail
To that end, it will surely fail,
but oh, the tales it would tell if it could
The thought’s a comforting one,
even if futile
So I quiet the longing,
close these eyes,
and smile.
You’re all in the stars now,
as you always were,
and will always be
-
Silence
For the longest time there was stillness
Unspoilt, uncracked, unbreakable
Until silence awoke and spoke to me
She broke through and spoke to me
She spoke in such a way,
That I heard her voice
Though not a sound was made,
I heard her voice
Though not even a blade of grass did move
At once, I was soothed and scolded
Soothed by her presence in solitude
The companion I could hardly discern
She held me and strengthened my fortitude
Though her touch was not gentle, I learned
If I had known it would burn,
If I had known it would burn so deeply
I would have chosen to keep her at bay
Instead of harbouring her voice
Harbouring her voice so close,
As if to savour the sensations
The sensations of her labouring intonations
Savouring her lamentations
Or did she just echo mine?
Did I pour my heart out willingly?
Or did she decanter this wine?
When did I become her cupbearer?
The cupbearer of silence
Did she have my acquiescence by design?
Or did I seek her counsel?
Perhaps she was always here
Biding her time
Biding her time to thaw the stillness
To breach these walls
Knowing they’d fall
Knowing I’d seek her call
I wonder,
Did I finally choose to listen that night?
Or was I compelled to stay?
The night that silence spoke to me
When she spoke in such a way,
That all I could hear was her voice
As if I even…
As if I even had another choice
-
Unravelling I
Why is one never full?
I fear this appetite will be the death of me
Yet, I will still ask why
As my last breath slips through my throat
This insatiable desire to know,
Tell me how,
Tell me why!
And then why and why again
For a moment, I’ll pretend I’m done—
I’m satisfied
Untrue
Deep inside, I’m never satiated
The wise say, “to be is all”;
All else is white noise
Make the wise choice to accept that being is enough
And then diffusing as does ink in an ocean swell
As does the sweet fragrance of jasmine
Stolen from its home by the breeze
As does the sunset kissing the horizon
Yes, yes, yes!
I understand the concept
I’ve read the works and felt the shiver of being
The shiver is evanescent
Yet my thirst, is an unquenchable curse
A famous poet spoke of a thousand desires
Many fulfilled, yet the yearn for more burned inside
In truth, this is all I know
To know
To know I know not enough
To know that knowing is peering through the looking glass;
To be is the other side—
Is peering inside oneself
Finding the source of I
Removing I from within the heart—
As the old Sufi – Bulleh Shah – once pondered
It all sounds so profound yet impossibly simple
I wonder where to begin…
There it is again
I wonder, before I can pretend that I do not exist
I always come first—
Ego before everything else
A prisoner to I
I think…
I think I will wonder why
Until the ink is lost in the swell
Just as it was before I ever wondered
As it will be long after I cease to be
I wonder how long that is
Perhaps it is not for I to know,
Perhaps the question is the folly
I wonder what will unravel first
The thread I’m pulling or I?
-
Urban Buddha
A whirring fridge,
Intermittent hissing
from an old boiler
And the clacking staccato
of a suitcase bouncing
along the pavement outside
With me in the middle
The conductor of this cacophony
Struggling to harmonise
this discorded orchestra
As the magpie is tone deaf,
And that leafblower
is messing up the crescendo…
I think I’m meditating wrong
-
Tethered self
Everyday, I close my eyes
Exhaling slowly, I ascend to the heavens
Revelling in the footnote like significance of I
For a moment, I see the minutiae that is I
A speck of self-aware dust,
Lost in a blink yet suffering with meaning
Supposedly, I am one and none
Naive conjecture or is it my blindness that is naive?
Inhaling, I’m betrayed again by the I within
That merely flirts with oneness but is tethered to this world
Afflicted with desires, wants and dreams
Wryly smiling at the irony of the want to be free
Exhaling slowly, I pull against these chains once again
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