Autumn creeping round
Leaves on trees not colour bound
Gold will soon be here

My thoughts are stuck in my pencil,
And the paper refuses to help.

I was Harriet the Spy
to cope with your cruelty
thank god for that movie

Memories gaslight me anyway
whispering that I was wrong
and not good enough

She said "I'm falling in love."

I said "I'm falling apart."

Isn’t it funny,
The happiness we pretend to have
Is the very thing
Holding us back from living.

On the surface, love and hate
May seem black and white.
But that's not quite right.
They're feelings.
And feelings can change.
They're also like humans.
On the surface, people may seem
Scary or really nice.
But give them time,
And they may make you think twice.
First impressions are important.
But take them with a grain of salt.
And if you get fooled,
Just know it's not your fault.

“Falling in love” is a contradiction in itself, because in love there is only the rising, the ascending, not the falling.
You can not fall in love, but rather, rise.

you confirmed all of my horrors
when you said you can't touch me sober

there are two types of sadness

there’s the kind of sadness
we ignore and
try to get rid of it
by finding new things to do
or we find someone to talk to
by blatantly avoiding any type of conversation
about feeling sad
about having any feelings at all
and then there’s that kind of sadness
that takes over
and it consumes any activity we do
we know it’s there
and there’s no possible way to avoid it
so we feed it exactly what it wants
it craves the sad music
it craves the isolation
it craves the anxiousness
and the sadness comes storming in
it has no manners
here we are calling sadness, an “it”
when all it is
is a feeling
that most people
call home

Dancing at night in dark blue denims.
You left the taste of lemon
in my mouth when you asked me to drink it.
I smiled out loud when I heard of your visions.

Dancing in the diner parking lot.
The cheap speaker you brought
is still playing our music.
I yelled that we were infinite just like you taught.

Dancing at the railway station by rail cars.
Looking at the stars,
thinking about which ones we belong.
I point to a pretty pair and you smiled at the dark.

Before social stratification (differences in wealth and power versus lack thereof) hunter/gatherers rarely fought. They were all equal and sensed it.

But when groups became big enough, they formed cities like Sumer in Mesopotamia, and concomitantly some people got wealthy and powerful while most did not.

Society, therefore, became, in time, stratified and in more time created superficial distinctions among the people of that city.

Obviously, my commentary is grossly oversimplified, but the point I'm going to make here is spot-on;  namely, what has never changed among human beings is the locus of everyone's innate, inviolable worth, which is within each one of us, not without.

But the people of Sumer and other cities that followed were duped by the illusions of wealth and power as being worth, and that led to stratisfication of different groups based on false premises. And that led to making some groups slaves while the wealthy and powerful remained, they thought, superior.  

This was the wrong turn in the fork of the road humanity took.

Humanity thus forgot we all have the same worth, and this inimical illusion only ballooned over millennia.

The right fork we need to find is the one the hunter/gathers had taken and the whole world needs quickly to take that fork again before we all destroy Earth.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

It's 11:11
and for the first time
after a very long time
I'm wishing for myself
and not for you

your name is
forbidden in
my mouth
or in my heart
because when
i think about
you;

i'll cry a little more,
hurt a little stronger
love a little softer
because you no longer
make me feel sober

i'm drunk on the
memory of you

If you could read my mind,
You’d see a thousand papers
Filled with broken poetries
And deadbeat proses
Full of woeful verses
With mournful pieces
Of unfinished stories
That are yet to be written
And failed to be spoken;
If you could read my mind,
You’d hear horrible screams
And earsplitting weeps
From shattered dreams,
Kept in a nasty notepad,
Scribbled on a bed
Of bloodstained words,
Ringing in my head.
If you could read my mind,
You’d see the shadows
That lurk within me;
You’d hear the bellows,
Screeching the words
“I’m tired,”
“I’m a failure,”
“I’m stupid –”
I know it sounds stupid,
It’s pathetically foolish
And seems like *******.
If you could read my mind,
You’d feel the tears
I had ever failed to cry;
You’d see the people
That make the weak weaker;
You’d see the monsters
That consume my head;
You’d hear the hollers
That failed to be freed;
You’d see the heart
That still bleeds and bleeds.
If you could read my mind,
You’d see the face
I’ve failed to show back then,
The face I’ve faked back then.
If you could read my mind,
You’d see a character
I had ever failed to become
If you could read my mind,
You’d be able to read
A book you never wished
To touch and read,
But sometimes I still wish
Someone could read my mind.

I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.

You are not the love of my life,
You are the life of my love ❤️

The poet lives two lives.
One on the outside,
And one in their mind.

When you look in their eyes
You could see an abyss.

If you looked long enough
You could sink into it.

But most people don’t see it.

Take the time to read the words, though,
And you would know for sure.

The poet lives in two different worlds.

In the deep corners of 3am,
I find her.

The emptiness in my eyes,
The truth behind my lies,
The fall before my rise,
And the goodbyes;

It scares me.

The dark beneath my skin,
The light within my sins,
The voice that loudly sings,
And my broken wings;

It scares me.

The wounds I can't heal,
The pain I can't feel,
The loss I can't deal,
And when I am real;

It scares me.

The silence in my little talks,
The stillness in my moonlit walks,
The thought of separate ways,
And my numbered days;

It scares me.

The demons under my bed,
The words spinning in my head,
The blood in my sweat,
And my cold breath;

It scares me.

-Paras Bajaj #PoetrybyParas
Instagram : @mr.parasbajaj

Break my bones;
cut my throat.
Pull me open,
learn the ropes.

Breath me in;
taste the fear.
Shank my skin;
stand and cheer.

Kick my head;
let me bleed.
Unbolt my veins;
enjoy the read.

Gouge my eyes;
punch my face.
Wrap me up
in your embrace.

A rose and a cactus fell in love.
They understood each other's thorns.

loving you is like loving sunset
in the end of the day
it happened

it's gradual
it's quiet
it's magical
it's fated

before slowly, leisurely wrap my world in darkness