Trail of hickeys
On veiled skin-
Speaker of stories
Of storms and sins

Travel!

Pick up a bag,
Pack it light,
Venture off into the night!

Spot the silent ones,
Strike up a conversation,
Closed souls hold the most precious stories,
Let them open up to you, ever so gently.

Find a painting, a photograph, a sculpture!
There's a tale behind every hue,
every curve, every stroke, every frame,
Art is a window to the mind of the creator,
Get inside there, explore it, immerse yourself deeper!

And read. Wade through romantic sagas,
Edgy thrillers, flights of fantasies, and mythology,
Float through ages and places and people,
Let words in black and white teach you
the meaning of existence; let the silence of reading
sing to you the hymn of living

And then, my friend, go on,
go on and Write!
Write about your travels to mountain peaks
and fiery seas,
Into strangers' eyes, into your lovers' souls,
Scribble into your travelogue the meaning of
that graffiti at the corner of the street,
And your journey into books!- write, as
you hop from universe to universe,
To places,
Through pages,
Inside minds,
Ahead of time,
And watch how your experiences
Smoothly fall into place and
Effortlessly rhyme

No mistress of metaphor
No star of sonnets
No heroine of haiku
No queen of quatrain,
Merely in touch with the -
Language of longing,
Sanctity of sin,
Din of desolation,
Poetry of pain.

Slow cooked over a simmering flame
is how I'd like our love to be
Full of earthy fragrances and soft
crackling of fire fuelling our chemistry

Wafts of aroma will float through,
with the gradual deepening of the flavour
Impatient bubbles will form and burst,
Heightening the temptation to savour-

That delightful melange of emotions,
But we'll hold back and let there be
A deeper hue, a thicker consistency
To our painstaking alchemy

For the dish of love will be best served
When conceived with patient devotion,
So lend me a hand darling; let's slow-stir
together, our delectable concoction

Reluctant subject,
I nervously peered at
your kind lens as you clicked
I must have shut my eyes
The sun is so harsh anyway, I thought,
or given that crooked, half-hearted smile
that I usually end up with

Helpless photo-ruiner,
I gazed in surprise at the beauty
staring back at me,
And saw what you see in me
and fall in love with, everyday,
Looking at myself through your eyes,
I quietly realised,
It was your photograph's grace

The age of letting time take its
own, slow course is gone, perhaps
For every hour is rush hour,
Every meal is a quick-bite,
That cup of coffee always instant,
Honking even before the signal goes
from yellow to green, the rule

The age of savouring the moment
to its delicious limit is gone, perhaps
For every flaw is now a breaking point,
Every argument cause for a split-up
Every mismatch provocateur of second thoughts

In the age of waiting being obsolete,
Patience becoming a virtue redundant,
The plain, small joys of life becoming insignificant,
The material replacing the abstract,
The direction of the swipe on a touchscreen
Becoming the decider of the fate of love stories,
I'll never find you, perhaps,
If this world continues to function
Like a real-life dating app

Who are you?
The you we keep writing about,
We- the poets; poets around the world,
Across time immemorial and
space immeasurable,
We write about you,
We shape your skeleton
With the strength of all the pain
We've borne, and we sculpt your flesh
With the wistful beauty of our tears,
We bring you to life with our words
Make them course through your body
Like blood,
Who are you?

The cry of our first heartbreak?
The joy of a lover's return?
The stunning silence of absolute loneliness?
Of turmoil and torment, the stinging burn?

You're all of the above,
and more- profoundly more,
You're a piece of every poet's heart,
Infinite power, immense emotion,
You are the cumulative of every drop of blood
The poet has shed through their pen
You are the story that stays stifled inside
the confines of paper, until someone comes along
And unlatches your locks,
Absorbs the burden of the poet's grief,
And at that moment, brings you to the form in
which you had been intended to be.

It is then, that you, the very essence,
the very soul of the poet,
Can take flight, blissfully relieved,
When you are read, your creator is finally free.