Your tongue,
a blade that remembers
where I am softest,
where the scar tissue is thinnest.
You wield it without hesitation.

You ask for acceptance
as if I owe it
to the thing that has hollowed me out,
made me flinch at shadows,
left me raw and singing
with wounds I did not choose.

Sorrow has blackened the horizon.
The future—
a thing I used to believe in—
is now a quiet ache
that hums under my skin.

I flinch at your sarcasm.
It’s a whip,
a steady rhythm of harm
I cannot outrun.

And the problem you refuse to see—
it is breathing.
It is alive.
It soars above me like a black kite,
leaving me marked in ways
I can never explain.

I search for home
as though it’s a place that exists,
a place that will hold me
without splintering.

But you—
you crown yourself in their love
while their laughter
cuts you from behind.
Every sacrifice I make
is a ghost.

You hand them my offerings,
giving them weight they do not deserve.
And here I stand,
naked of hope,
bare of safety,
still whispering your name
like a prayer
to a god who doesn’t answer.

I came into this world
purple,
a bruise before I’d even been touched.
my mother,
terrified,
watched me fight for breath
that didn’t want me.
suffocating—
from the first second I was alive.

couldn’t crawl,
couldn’t walk—
my body slow to learn
how to move forward.
but eventually, I did.

kindergarten was quiet.
me, the kid who didn’t talk.
preschool, I found friends,
found a voice,
found something that felt like living.

then 5th grade came.
cigarettes.
*****.
pills.
older kids teaching me
how to burn my insides
so i wouldn’t feel my skin.

my best friend died.
two weeks later,
I drowned with someone else.
or almost.
he didn’t make it back.
I did.

then the years blurred:
drugs.
assault.
grief.
relapse.
trying to claw my way back to clean.
trying to feel like myself again,
if I even knew who that was.

sometimes,
I think back to that purple baby,
struggling for breath,
and wonder
if maybe I wasn’t supposed
to make it past that first minute.
maybe life has been one long suffocation.

or maybe
I’m still in that hospital room,
fighting for air,
waiting for someone to say:
“you can breathe now.”

I wage not any feud with Death
  For changes wrought on form and face;
  No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.

Eternal process moving on,
  From state to state the spirit walks;
  And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.

Nor blame I Death, because he bare
  The use of virtue out of earth:
  I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

For this alone on Death I wreak
  The wrath that garners in my heart;
  He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.

We should be hidden from their eyes,
Being but holy shows
And bodies broken like a thorn
Whereon the bleak north blows,
To think of buried Hector
And that none living knows.

The women take so little stock
In what I do or say
They'd sooner leave their cosseting
To hear a ******* bray;
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;

The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take--
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck--
That she cried into this ear,
'Strike me if I shriek.'

Some people glide through life—
clean suits,
straight spines,
their hands untouched by the dirt
we call home.

And then there’s us.
We shuffle, we stumble,
we laugh too hard at bad jokes
and spend too long staring at walls
that don’t answer back.

Our lives are broken bottles
held together with tape—
still sharp, still dangerous,
but ours.

And if we ever make it—
if we ever find a way to rise,
we’ll leave claw marks on the edge
to remind them
we were here.

Today is our only canvas.
We paint as if with colors
Chosen tenderly, carefully.

Love 'change.'
It can give you
A whole new perspective.

टैलीविजन पर
समसामयिक जीवन और समाज से
संबंधित चर्चा परिचर्चा देख व सुन कर
आज अचानक आ गया
एक विस्मृत देशभक्त वीर सावरकर जी का ध्यान।

जिन्हें ‌आज तक देश की
आज़ाद फिजा के बावजूद
विवादित बनाए रखा गया।
उन्हें क्यों नहीं
भारत रत्न से सम्मानित किया जा सका ?
मन ने उन को ‌नमन किया।
मन के भीतर एक विचार आया कि
आज जरूरत है
उनकी अस्मिता को
दूर सुदूर समन्दर से घिरे
आज़ादी की वीर गाथा कहते
अंडेमान निकोबार द्वीपसमूह में
स्थित सैल्यूलर जेल की क़ैद से
आज़ाद करवाने की।
वे किसी हद तक
आज़ाद भारत में अभी भी एक निर्वासित जीवन
जीने को हैं अभिशप्त।
अब उन्हें काले पानी के बंधनों से मुक्त
करवाया जाना चाहिए।
उनके मन-मस्तिष्क में चले अंतर्द्वंद्व
और संघर्षशील दिनचर्या को
सत्ता के प्रतिष्ठान से जुड़े
नेतृत्वकर्ताओं के मन मस्तिष्क तक
पहुंचाया जाना चाहिए
ताकि अराजकता के दौर में
वे राष्ट्र सर्वोपरि के आधार पर
अपने निर्णय ले सकें,
कभी तो देश हित को दलगत निष्ठाओं से
अलग रख सकें।
वीर सावरकर संसद के गलियारों में
एक स्वच्छंद और स्वच्छ चर्चा परिचर्चा के
रूप में जनप्रतिनिधियों के रूबरू हो सकें।
कभी सोये हुए लोगों को जागरूक कर सकें।

सच तो यह है कि
भारत भूमि के हितों की रक्षार्थ
जिन देशी विदेशी विभूतियों ने
अपना जीवन समर्पित कर दिया हो ,
उन सभी का हृदय से मान सम्मान किया जाना चाहिए।

हरेक जीवात्मा
जिसने देश दुनिया को जगाने के लिए
अपने जीवनोत्सर्ग किया,
स्वयं को समर्पित कर दिया,
उन्हें सदैव याद रखना चाहिए।
ऐसी दिव्यात्माओं की प्रेरणा से
समस्त देशवासियों को
अपना जीवन देश दुनिया के हितार्थ
समर्पित करना चाहिए।
समस्त देश की शासन व्यवस्था
' वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् 'के बीज मंत्र से
सतत् प्रकाशित होती रहनी चाहिए।
१८/१२/२०२४.