You agitate, I soothe

I laugh, you cry

You procrastinate, I plan

I toil, you sleep

You mingle, I retreat

I reach, you blench

You deceive, I release

I purify, you violate

You mystify, I enlighten

I grow, You shrink

You ignore, I explore

I create, you destroy

You devour, I nibble

I give, you take

You walk, I run

I defend, you assault

You subtract, I add

*I love, you hate

What for you need a pen that writes black?
The man at the counter shot back
What has the blue done to offend you?

Look up the firmament
Over there the kingfisher
Once I had been to the sea
She was blue
Surely you prefer over black
A blue saree for her
So many men have staked their life
For the blue eyes of women

And then as if volleying the winning goal

Why not color all your wishes with blue
To paint the world blue-wish?

As I turned to walk away
My eyes caught the writing on his wall..

Black ink for the black heart
For the fool and the dull
Blue for the man of art
With matter in the skull

I had come to the wrong shop.

One day, we'll  finally
fall in love with what we have been,
with who we have been.
One day we'll be finally
see beyond our flaws,
And see what we have not seen.
One day we'll say those three words,
and we'll finally mean it;
One day we'll be found, and we'll be forever lost in the idea of it.

Just one, special day apart from today,
we'll walk the same road once again
Our feets sore from a long walk,
our maps leads to one another.

It may not be today,
or in the depths of tonight
it may be not the next day after,
Or the years after that.
Or even after this lifetime that we had.
It just have to be one day.
And I'll hold on to that day.
That one day, when we don't have to wish for that one day.
And things will happen.
And you and I, will happen.

One day.

There was a tale of a young boy
Who flew the skies, lost and alone,
Seeking a place, a place called home.

Until the ends of the earth, he sought
The only dream he ever dreamed of.

He flew and flew, and so did time.
And as the years withered by,
A place...
A place called home.
Not once did he ever find.

But then, he fell and met the earth.
And for the first time since his birth,
He smiled with pure glee.

For now, under the ground,
He was truly free.

“We get it, you write.”
What a laugh
You get it that I write
But you don’t understand
That this is the only way
I can say how I feel,
Say what I think,
And I can say it masked
By metaphors or
Similes
That would leave the
Reader guessing what
I mean.

“We get it, you write.”
But you don’t understand
That the words flow through
My head every waking moment
And I’m constantly thinking
Of the next line to be typed,
The next word.
I can’t go a day without
Thinking in poetry,
Without wanting to express
Myself with these paragraphs,
Without needing to release these
Feelings.

“We get it, you write.”
You get that it’s frustrating
That I take a random sentence
You may say that intrigues me
And turn it into something
That you never noticed when
You were saying it.
You don’t see the world of
Possibilities
That are unleashed with
Each word you mutter
Under your breath
But I do

“We get it, you write.”*
And I get it that you will
Never understand that
It isn’t just writing to me
Because, after all,
I am the
Poetry
And the poetry
Is me.

Right now, I’m on like the Sun
My 1000 watt smile burning in my core
Shedding heat and light in all directions
But, most importantly, spreading to me too
And with a burst and flare I take on my tasks
Spewing heat and passion in all directions
And far away, hanging in the vacuum of space
I watch the things I’ve touched flourish

Let there be life

But this is only half my story, because I am not the Sun
Much as I pretend to be, I am not a creator of energy
The amount I have is finite
Life is not in my orbit
Rather, I’m pulled in by its gravity
It’s all I can do to influence the tides

See, there’s a dark side to the Moon
Those days I go missing from the skies
That you never seem to notice
You only ever care when I’m giving off light
Those off days, this is what they’re like:

Force the corners of your eyes up and fake a smile
The light and heat are draining from you, but you keep giving
It’s always this cold on the dark side

And you compliment and do favors and get assignments and don’t yell
A puppet being yanked through the day
Each time you interact with another person,
You wish they could read the sadness on your face when you turn away
But when they ask, “How are you?”
You say, “I’m okay,”

By the time you’re done with the day’s giving
You’re so tired, you can’t think of what to do for yourself
I takes all your effort to click next episode, next episode
Or bring the chocolate to your lips
You feel a strange mix of gratitude for the numbness
And self-loathing for what the little time you have on this planet has become

At bedtime, one flutter of your heart makes you worry you’re about to die
And a sleepless night later, you promise yourself you’ll ask for help
That you know you never will

That’s what off days are like

But the thing is, I can’t even claim victimhood here
Unlike others who suffer these feelings rightly can

I chose this life

I chose to be a vessel for the Sun’s light
There was a point in my life where I looked in the mirror
And understood what would happen if I kept thinking and acting the way I did
Always give, give, give
I may not have known how deep emptiness and fatigue truly cut
But I knew they were weaved into the path I was set to take
I read the fine print and signed the contract anyway

It’s worth it, I think, in an ends justify the means sort of way
After all, in the end, none of us will really matter
But humanity will, if we do our jobs well
And with on days, that’s more than enough to keep me satisfied

But with off days, I sometimes wonder if I would have been better off never having opened my eyes.