Alone With Everybody By Charles Bukowski

The flesh covers the bone 

and they put a mind 

in there and 

sometimes a soul, 

and the women break 

vases against the walls 

and the men drink too 

much 

and nobody finds the 

one 

but keep 

looking 

crawling in and out 

of beds. 

flesh covers 

the bone and the 

flesh searches 

for more than 

flesh. 



there's no chance 

at all: 



we are all trapped by a singular 

fate. 



nobody ever finds 

the one. 



the city dumps fill 

the junkyards fill 

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill 

the graveyards fill 



nothing else 

fills. 

I stand in the Cliff

Remember
How when we had our first breakup
I had torn down your letters
And grounded them
Digging a hole in the heart
It admit
It was filmy
Maybe clumsy too
Now that we have parted
This time for more than a day
I refuse to throw away anyone of your things
For memories are not to be thrown
In wells
For you are still here
In me
For I carry you within
And
This might be filmy as well
For
I hope you carry me too
And we will keep carrying
For one day this weight
Will grow into weather
Beautiful Prose
Unlike the one writing
And we will fly
And maybe sing too..

Choice Paradox : Meditation

I have always been into poetry. Not in the passionate. Like we all are little bit in the stars. We don't look up too often but when we do its always a pleasure. One of the earliest Poems I have read was The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. It had some impact on me. So when five years later facebook asked me to jot down my favorite quote I immediately wrote down.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

 

Since then I have changed that quote. And since life is a constant flow of choices and outcomes. Not that its the individual who takes that decision. I have almost have a healthy laugh on the above lines. What is choice? I am learning these days through meditation what does is mean to be aware of emotions and what it takes not let them control your life decisions. And I believe that is my choice. I have read somewhere that "You cannot control anything but the choices you make" and I wonder even if I one gets to control that too. We don't get to control shit. 

The road that is not taken is also an information you have from your visual senses. Maybe both road are the same and you have some certain bias towards the one and hence you go less travelled by. Even if it is less traveled. Who freakin said that the less travelled roads lead to better places. Some other poet you might have read in your childhood or some old man must have told you. Who get to say that this is your decision. And as if it matters, what is the difference, you are talking about. Difference from all the other people. Is it good to be different? Maybe it is good. Patani kya likha rah meh... :/ 

Everything Is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
 as if you were alone. As if life
 were a progressive and cunning crime
 with no witness to the tiny hidden
 transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
 the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
 even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
 the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
 out your solo voice. You must note
 the way the soap dish enables you,
 or the window latch grants you freedom.
 Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
 The stairs are your mentor of things
 to come, the doors have always been there
 to frighten you and invite you,
 and the tiny speaker in the phone
 is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
 conversation. The kettle is singing
 even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
 have left their arrogant aloofness and
 seen the good in you at last. All the birds
 and creatures of the world are unutterably
 themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

---

THE SUMMER DAY

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

My girl

I have seen her grow up
Uncovering herself from thick classes
To  a comfortable sight
From her first
Meeting with the razor
To coloring her hair red
I have seen her long flowing hair
Only to a boy cut
Only to grow up again
I have seen her trajectory
Her pursuit of dreams
I have heard crying
Loudly in the washrooms
I have seen her
Becoming
Her shifting ideologies
In rain
And in the sun
Now I sit back to watch her
From distance
Perhaps like her Dad
To see
My girl
become
someone else..

She was never Yours

We humans, and I guess only humans have this strange fascination with possession. Some of it is a given from our monkey mind but I think the most of it comes from a fearful society. A society that believes that people are things and have to kept in chains.

We believe that there is this pie called love. This is specially true of romantic love. That one things that one person can love just one person. Maybe I am wrong. But my counter is maybe love is like an ocean. Maybe there is plenty of anyone. Maybe its not a zero sum game. Maybe we can love many at one times. So don't get too agitated when she looks at someone else. Maybe its not you share of love which is being shared.

Even when she has gone with somebody else. She was never yours. She was always hers. What comes through its own will will leave through its own will. You might have the illusion that this was you  who kept her there. But she was there on her own. The love is beautiful because you have been there for her.  

Meditations: Love? Craving? Security?

Dekho yaar. When I was young there is used to be this candy center on our way from school to home. And my Mum used to come receive me from school. I used roll everyday one the road begging her to get me that ice-cream. She used to be so embarrassed while she drags me back to home. She would sometimes also get me one. I guess , over the years, the ice-cream has changed. The newest ice cream has been this lover of mine who is now gone. Like she is still on Earth but she is gone from life. And I she is my new ice-cream. I don't know what separates Desire to Obsession to Love. As the relationship has come to pass I am confusing between these two.

Another is  love as security. We live in a lonely world, we feel threatened by it. An uncle yesterday start fighting with a waiter because the Napkins in the restaurant were over. Okay? Napkins when did they become so important. It is because we are so scared we depend on other people to seek safety. He didn't treat me that well. She promised to love me. He promised me to stay with me forever. We accept for people around us to make the world a safer place. Love is one such promise of security. It says when I cry, you get me a nappkin, or better we cry together. Often that promise is not fulfilled. And there is a perceived loss of love. Truly its your security which gets threatened and you fear.

So if you see love as a continuation of  desire and security. And stop romanticizing it so much. You might have a better  time dealing with your heart break. 

Meditations from Plague

In the Plague there is a small passage about young lovers. Because a curfew has been established into the city, the young lovers were stuck in different cities without any contact with each other. While the world around them was crumbling, everybody was dying, things were in deep grief. The young lovers were lost in the world of their own. This is so true of love, the world and the pain of the world becomes a backdrop for ones of emotions. Cut off from everything outside. 

With love.

I love you... I love with evey ounce of my blood... My every cell of the body loves you.. In the past month how much I missed you? Every Moment. How much I wanted to reach out to you? Every Moment. How much I still suffer? Every Moment. But somethings changed I gradually started enjoying it. Fighting with it. To be on your own and just to be on your own. I have created and continue to create future senerios of us meeting, on what will I say? Should I drop into your room? Should I ask Ashu? Is there a chance? Can you grow our lost love back? What will I say? What will I do? Where will we meet? How will it go? Where would I stay? But it came to me today I have a option of not meeting you altoghether. Not because I am pride. I dont think where there is love there is space for pride. But in my hearts of hearts, I want this to go on. My spritual journey. You have taught me a lot in relationship and you continue teaching it t me even after we have ended. I love you. But I love myself a bit more. I want to explore this area more. Of self love. Of being to kind to first me and then to the world. And I dont want to cause of pain of rejection or misunderstanding. So I wont tell you that I am in Delhi. You dont need to know. That would be easy on both of us. No? That is that. I have been practicing on feeling emotion and not reacting to them, just feeling them. I have done well with grief and anxiety. I think I can manage desire too. Lets see how this one goes. Remember I love you with every thing I have got. But I love myself a tad bit more.  

Khanni

Har roz nayi prem kahani likhta hu meh
Kabhi muh boli sunnata hu
Kabhi likh kar btata hu meh
Har khanni meh tum hoti hu
Har Khanni meh meh hota hu
Magar har khanni kuch aur hoti hai
Jaise har roz koi nayi paralell universe
Dund leta hu meh
Jaha tum hoti ho
Jaha meh hota hu

Kisi khanni meh mein talwar pakade hota hu
Kisi tum pakkadti ho trishul
Dhaal bhi hoti hai kabhi hath meh
Maggar kabhi nehatte bhi hote hai hum
Kisi khani se khushi milti hai
Kisi se milta hai gum,
Magar milta hai roz
Kuch naya
Jab humare bare meh sochta hu meh

Kabhi sochta hu
Kya yeh khanni meh likh raha hu?
Yah yeh Khanni hai jo muje likh rahi hai?
Shayad yeh Khanni hi hai
Jo har roz apna lekhak badal leti hai
Meh nahi hu
Tum nahi ho
Bas hai toh yeh khanni
Jo humko istemal karti hai
Apne hi kisi kale maksad k liye
Jane kaha jana chahti hai yeh
Kisse milna chahti hau
Yeh khanni meri nahi hai
Iss khanni ka hu meh