Bent

Love begins with such tenderness –

Even the tears are made of joy!

What wonder it holds in that time,

Oh, what magic it does employ!

The many things that irks love now

Were what held away all its fears.

Who could truly know that sadness

Would supercede past joy in tears?

Each twist in the body was seen,

As some Grecian statue of old;

Now twists are seen with angst and pain

And addressed with manners so cold.

Love glimmered like burnished gold,

When it was young and fresh and new;

But gold doesn’t oxidise with time

And take on shades of green and blue.

Carpe diem, the poets implored,

They chased love and it chased them, too,

This chase has gods fall weary,

Then what the poet, or me or you!

Hubris is a part of all love,

Love declares it rules no ego;

But most of love fades over time,

Under pride and lust’s undertow.

Love, they say, shows its truer form

As it grows with time, some say years,

Some say it lengthens slow or fast

And rebounds truest when death appears.

Love distorts due to other loves,

Experiences are benchmarks here;

Doubt’s a seed people love to sow,

Watered by your own unseasoned fear.

Needless to say, love confuses

All its promises, in the end,

It isn’t love, if fate and time ask

And the imposter agrees to bend.

That Guy

I’m the guy who sees the first star
In the night sky
and thinks of wishes to be made.
I’m the guy who collects each card
That he receives:
Cards carry thought in writing,
colours carry emotion.
I’m the guy who will love a book
As a gift,
But loves the inscription more;
Those few words are the reason
For all the rest of the words
Printed within.
I’m the guy who forgives easy,
Millennia of letting go
Is carried in my unconscious.
I’m the guy who cries
When watching a sad movie –
(Yep, i’m that guy,
So beware.)
I’m also the guy who doesn’t expect less,
Though there is more understanding derived from each facet of new experience.
I’m the guy who doesn’t regret
Much.
I’m the guy who loves easy but long.
Love tends to last
Over money, life and even time.
I’m the guy who recognises,
The inevitability of loss,
Yet chooses to return
To what appears fragile.

I’m the guy who has learnt a lot
But isn’t done with learning.
I’m the guy who wants to give up hope
But isn’t done with yearning.

Trojan

It’s all a matter of time:
Love evolves into honesty
And the tube light glare
Rips through at some point.
The thing that was once hidden,
Under the guise of empathy,
Lies naked for all to see,

Like a broken body after rape,
Open to the lenses of posterity
And a boggling public
That cranes to see which part
Was most abused.
The need to hide exists no more.
Justice demands sight and hearing.
A lynching is required.

Love is stronger than romance
And it can withstand a slap,
Or two.

Compromise is a grey area.

Love was not the same,
Either for Helen or Mumtaz –
Tom had jumped on a sofa
And after begetting children
Of blood, they say,
It all ended amicably.
I mean, the jumping ended.

I think myself grand enough
To think mine will last.
I shall let the Trojans in though;
Because I love horses.
(That is a different kind of love.)