Tag: freeverse

Your Calling

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

He meant nothing to me –

Except he was your father

Who turned you away

For being gay.

You did all you could

And I know you would;

Because that’s who you are.

Suffering teaches you

The value of death.

Seeing you do,

What needs to be done,

Breaking a pot,

Taking turns around the fire,

Lifting the water

And the clarified butter,

Like the body of your father,

Like I had done a few years ago,

Made me weep.

Abscesses linger

Of abandonment.

Wounds that have cut too deep

Don’t allow the momentum

Of life to fall back into joy.

You will leave by morning,

For duty, a calling

And a new suffering,

Time has chosen to employ.

slammed doors

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

His passing was sudden
Like the slap when I wouldn’t serve him his food.
There was one last surge of emotion,
Due,
As I applied ghee on his face
So the fire would be kind.
I never knew a father;
But my father,
He knew me,
He said,
He knew I was “like that” since I was two.
And that was enough for him to know of me.
The bullying,
The browbeating,
The beating,
The battery of those slammed doors
Hailing his entry or exit
Out of and in to my life.

But for all that he hated me
I hope karma doesn’t exist,
And he doesn’t enter this world
From another door
That bangs open
Like a bomb blast.

Little things.

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

It starts slow. 

Little things you forget to do. 

Little words you forget to say. 

Some thoughts die, some memories too  –

Just little things. 

It’s a human condition. 

Let’s just attribute it to genes. 

It’s like waking up to life 

And forgetting all of sleep’s dreams. 

It’s a recurrence of the new,

It’s a letting go of the past;

It’s another one of life’s lessons:

All good things seldom last. 

Little things come in that are new:

A word of love, a laugh that rhymes,

A road that hasn’t been taken,

A blurring of drawn out lines. 

People talk of love and faith and hope;

But time corrodes even diamond rings;

And they lie forgotten in the universe,

Swept off in dust as little things,

Just little things.