Laundry Day

My blue bottle of detergent has pictures of lillies

I wonder if someone loved them ever, I find them gentle

Their fragrance doesn't match the way the liquid feels

Yet they seem to make my clothes smell beautiful

I hate having washed the sheets you slept on last meeting

I know they will never smell of you here-on, and as beautiful 

I often have held them close and slept, feeling your presence

They now smell of a shade of lone lilly, drying in the wind

You remember, do you? How I looked at the clear detergent

Often asked if I should try and taste it, just to tease you

Maybe I should one of these days try to taste it a tad bit

There is no 'you' here to stop me from doing just that

The AI version

My blue bottle of detergent, with its pictures of lilies

A gentle reminder of a love that once was, but now feels distant

The fragrance of the flowers does not match the harshness of the cleaner

Yet on my clothes, it leaves a scent that is much finer

I hate to wash the sheets, the memory of you still lingers

But as I hang them out to dry, I am reminded of the beauty of the flowers

I hold them close, trying to find solace in their scent

But they only serve to remind me of the love that I resent

You remember, don't you, how I used to tease you with the detergent

Asking if I should taste it, just to see what you would do

But now there is no you to stop me, no one to turn to

So maybe I'll take a taste, just to see what I've been missing.

If a tree falls in the forest

I often find beautiful wood grain tables that have these gentle swirls

They are like the curves of your smile, which is as astonishingly beautiful 

And like the wood that lived and perpetrated it, has long gone away

You have taken your smile from my eyes and left for lands unknown

When you are held in a stranger’s embrace, does it not remind you

It shouldn’t too, for I held you closer with an intent to become you

Here I am now as you, and searching for me that loves you

Yet even 'I' as 'you' resents the 'me' that was at some point

It may be that the will of the stars that bound us at an old moment

And their very will now is for me to trudge this now pointless existence

Alone and tattered, rusted and battered, as a being that rues his living

Yet your memories some days are the only air that I lovingly breathe

Let the eyes flood again tonight, I have this beautiful woodgrain table today

I plan to use it to write and in between rest my head amongst my poetry

I have a pan under my eyes as I rest to collect my tears as I cry for you

I will mix it with the soot of the lamp that I write under as I write about you

The AI version

I often find beautiful wood grain tables, with their gentle swirls

Reminding me of the curves of your smile, which once lit up the world

But now you are gone, your smile taken from my sight

Leaving me to wander this earth, alone and in the night

When you are held in another's embrace, do you think of me

Or have you moved on, to a new life, a new reality

I held you close, tried to become a part of you

But now I am left with just memories, and a heart feeling blue

Perhaps it was the stars that bound us, but now they've moved on

Leaving me to trudge through this existence, rusted and battered and worn

Your memories are all that sustain me, the only air that I can breathe

As I rest my head on this wood grain table, and let my tears flow free

I will use this table to write, to pour out my heart and soul

As I cry for you, and mix my tears with the soot of the lamp's glow

I will hold onto these memories, as I try to find my way

Through this lonely existence, without you here to stay.

I admit my erring

The last time I missed a punctuation in a poetry I wrote of you, it hurt

Not for what it meant or what I changed it to

It reminded my soul of its degradation as each passing day drifts

And time has only been an unkind lady luck that loves holding my hand

Between the words of what should have spoken of utter love

Were utterings that transformed to an endless lamenting barrage

The blurring of my vision mid writing can be a very tangible excuse to state

Yet those tears bear no responsibility for my heart should have seen better

In verses that are marred by such inaccuracies how can I voice

And the fact you never read them is only an insult to injury yet

You didn't call for these, so, why, would you? need? to read! either, or

My shortcomings are far worse than the verses I spew forth

Should you ever read these, know I at best can only bow down in apology

Hold me by my earlobe and drag me back to sanity if you could my love

Before this ends me, before I end me, maybe, tell me, you, will read!

Or at least will graze your gentle hands, gaze on the poems on the papers I leave 

  

Hey Love, Again and Again

You could be that siren who knows? alluring me to crash on the jagged rocks

Ending me, reddening the water yet afloat in a yearning for the song of your speech

As each word mutilates my will, ravaging me, making my eye sparkle like yours

Breathing just enough life back into me to be in this endless sea of incessant taunting.

It is your hair, those long tresses, the softness and the shimmer of theirs that allures

Or it is the soul-melting beaming smile that rises from your lips as they curve on each side

Maybe it is the essence of you in the air you exhale that I crave to breathe and drown my lungs 

Or maybe it is this unending, unrelenting, overpowering mystifying presence of you  

I would be on a ship every life I get and be drawn into the reefs you wave at me from

Wish to be drowned under the very reflection you cast on the icy seas you live on

If there is another day that I could spend, I would spend it reddening the green sea

Rushing towards you in madness over and again, wishing to see you be the end of me

When November faded

Those gentle red rose petals last November  brought the warmest of feelings

They faded faster than the setting sun on a winter night of biting cold

For once I had been happy to have floated in the gentle fragrance they brought

I am back to cursing the eleventh month for the atrocities it brings me

Why would this revert to the age old torment of being a month I gruesomely hate

When the other months have neither been kind nor a bastion of hope 

And here I am wandering the nights of a soulless December

Awaiting another year to pass to consume me in it's fading embers

I call not to you, my gently harsh and perplexing calm bringer

For yours and mine is a journey to the realms of disambiguation

When you found me in the torrential downpour of a rabid rain of woe

I knew you were another ship, waiting out the storms in my port 

Hitting rock bottom is ok when your pillow is soft

It is after 1 AM and the only thing on my mind seems to be you casting me into a dark void. I have had nightmares before, but this seems to be a waking one. I turn my face around to the pillow and try to force myself to sleep, but then it doesn't help. The allure of having you in my arms is a craving that incessantly taunts me. 

Where is the gentleness love was to bring to my heart

Has the love I have had not been of comfort to yours

I was in love enough for the both of us and more

Then why does the heart not heal since we have been apart

Or is it that love is a misgiving, conferred upon me to render grief

For there is such a wide chasm between us, and it runs so deep

Will my heart ever be free of your longing and if so when will it be

For there seems to be no end to this unfathomable loss of sleep

As I turn to my phone my fingers twitch, I want to send you a message and say things that I would want to, yet none that you would like to hear I know. I look at your name that displays brighter than the other names and think, if you are all my life will ever be of. I fret not if that is the case, for I haven't seen it better without you, neither before nor post. I could write another verse and lament in the drudgery life brings each day, but you are what I seem to cherish the most, so love gets a free pass.

Where did my eyes misplace their bountiful sleep, for I want to dream

Of you, of me, of the places we once roamed hand in hand and gleamed

It is the approaching year-end where I seem to have lost another year

The only solace is these random once in a while conversation I hear

I have to ask myself on why this is so too, and not the way it should

I know this makes no sense, for I have never even grieved as I could

My eyes have remained as dry as the dead that are buried alive open-eyed

Or maybe I have cried so often in your parting that the tears have all dried.

The AI version

It's after one AM and all I can think about is you

Casting me into a dark void, a waking nightmare that's true

I try to force myself to sleep, to escape the pain

But the longing for you is a craving that remains

Where is the gentleness love was supposed to bring

Has my love not been enough, has it not been enough to ease your suffering

I loved you with all my heart, and more

But since we've been apart, the pain is hard to ignore

There's a chasm between us, a gap that's hard to cross

I wonder if my heart will ever be free from this loss

I want to send you a message, say the things I wish I could

But I know you wouldn't want to hear them, even if I could

As the year comes to a close, I feel like I've lost another year

The only comfort is the occasional conversation, a moment of cheer

I wonder why this is, why I can't move on

I know it makes no sense, I haven't even grieved as I should

My eyes are dry, my tears have all run out

But I still dream of you, of the times we roamed and roamed about

I'll cherish those memories, even as the pain remains

For you, love, are worth the heartache, worth the pains.

Coconuts in my head

This existence in pieces of shattered thoughts of bygone

Glued together by failing hope of wanting making me long

Neither of which brings either of us any hope nor peace

Its a parallax, where the reality and dream seem to crease 

I woke up today and hoped to not pen a verse of mire

Yet the heart has no obligation to consider this as my desire

When the mind tangles with your thoughts in its confined walls

All I can do is to break down and stutter in your muted calls

When the sun at the end of its journey today shall rest

It will as always paint our pictures of togetherness in the west

I can only watch in unbound agony and be wrapped in torment

Knowing you shall never ever read the verses of this very lament

Why then does your rise in my horizon, bathe me in cravings

I was too strong to have brushed off this dust of my longings

But love had to be the falling coconut frond on my head

To hurt and bleed my will and turn my life to that of a dead

Dear Jayadeva - selected

I would wait a thousand lifetimes to know of love from you 

How you embroider the hues of passion into words that still

And then they gently hurt, for ages yet they somehow mesmerise

I would wait at your door to learn to colourise words like you

Never could I ever in a million words paint, the gentleness of feeling

Of the almighty suffering in pangs of separation and with the fervour

Your verses rain upon me like billions of sand grains and embrace me

Remind me of my inability to express like you toward my own lover

I wish to know each word you thought about and flow like they do

When you scatter them on pages, entwining life into lifeless paper

In this lifetime I haven't been able to fathom the depths of your verses

I shall wait a thousand lifetimes to know of love from you

The AI version

I would wait an eternity to feel love from you

To see how you weave the colors of passion into words that still

And yet they gently wound, captivating me for all time

I would wait at your door, just to learn to speak with your finesse

I can never, in a million words, capture the tenderness of emotion

The all-consuming pain of separation, the fire of desire

Your words fall on me like a shower of sand, enveloping me

Reminding me of my own inability to express my love with the same artistry

I long to know each thought that goes into your words, to flow like they do

As you scatter them across the page, infusing life into lifeless paper

In this lifetime, I can't begin to understand the depth of your verse

I will wait an eternity to feel love from you, to know it for the first time.

AI in 17th century style

I'd wait for ages, through countless lives

To learn the art of love from you

To see how you imbue your words with hues of passion,

That freeze and wound, and still enthrall

I'd stand at your door, just to learn to speak

With the same artful mastery as you

I could never, in a million words, convey

The tenderness and depth of feeling

The all-consuming pain of separation, the fire of desire

Your verses fall upon me like a shower of sand,

Embracing me, reminding me of my own inability

To express my love with the same eloquence

I long to know each thought that goes into your words,

To flow like they do, infusing life into lifeless paper

In this lifetime, I can't even begin to fathom

The depths of your verse, the art of your expression

I'll wait for a thousand lifetimes if need be,

To learn the ways of love from you.

Monologue with my father and mother - selected

Words have meanings and some change them as they are used, much like people. I am not prejudiced, that would have needed my mind to be rendered in synchrony by a contorted upbringing. I have been the bread left exposed to air, growing mildew, turning itself into filaments of mycelium and my thoughts are the spores that find like bread slices, grow with them often upon their very nature. They lose their identities and become me. It could be called love, yet is it? These questions I ponder upon often and yet the more I ask the more I have questions. My father in a shade of his blue skin could have been more reasonable I think, my mother could render my world in a shade of pink too I wish, but I know better now or so I think and here I ask again then:

Father, who seems asleep is yet awake on the endless deep

Why is my mind a conflagration of such overwhelming seeds

Why am I not prejudiced, why am I not those that comply and keep

Where is my innocence, my lack of care, my peaceful sleep

Why am I not blue, nor pink like either of your shades

Why is my mind not the most peaceful, and in torment wades

Why do I seek no love from this world, your hands lovingly made

Why do I keep away from this very world as I build my palisade

One could argue that fathers are rigid, the mothers are gentler. I know neither are, nor will bend at the banks for irrigating my mind with care, love, and thereof. Maybe then this very existence is to question mine, if this doesn't translate to myself of rejection then why it doesn't, if it does why it does. Father would not care, nor would mother at his feet. Not like she is enslaved, for in his eyes that open every now and then I see my mother swirling in pink petals of a prodigal lotus bloom to them becoming like lotuses. Kamalanayana as I call them sometimes, yet they feel too distant to me. I could fathom that could be for the unfathomable depths he sleeps on largely ignoring all that happens knowing he has decided what should. In this dichotomy of thoughts, I ask again:

Father, why is it I feel forsaken by you, yet I know you have not?

And that you know I think and make peace with all of it, why though?

Would you not want me to be held closer, assured of calm and love?

Why do I feel lost in these other creations of the very familiar cosmic dust?

Tell me if you would, maybe this time I would make sense of it

Maybe fail again, and assure myself that I cannot ever ascend in thoughts

Why is it when there is so much of gentle pink in your beautiful eyes?

Yet my hurt of this life looms constant, where is the love of thee?

A dance in the dark

I remember your gentle whispers in the dark as you wrapped yourself around me

Those wisps of warm breaths once tingled my earlobes gently, causing goosebumps

This unsettling night devoid of those are a river of black ink flowing mercilessly

Washing away the pages I hold to scribble my thoughts of pain, causing paper cuts

The bleed from my fingertips swirl in the blackness, paint unsavory pictures

Of an absence that speaks in loud blaring trumpets to deafen my own thoughts

I seek to deflect my mind towards the shore, yet the pull of your river of woe wins

Dragging me along, filling and displacing the air in my lungs making me choke

The stars of woe glimmer bright, on the dark flowing waters, in an unforgiving waltz

Swirl me in between the crest and the trough, breach my will and subjugate my wants

It never does trickle, these thoughts of you, it is always a deluge of deep hurt

And hopefulness erodes, as I yearn for your kiss and a last-minute want of being held

This is the strata of my world sans your gentleness, and in marring trepidation 

A self-subversion from the grandiose might I have forever arrogantly kept up

I have nothing, I am nothing, when your arm raises to measure my love for you

And find my heart shattered into a million pieces like powdered broken glass

The remittance of time - selected

Have you seen the boats resting retired cast aside after years at seas

The metal ones, the mighty, multi chimney bearing monstrosites 

How tattered they look now, battered from ever as they lived

Only to now never glide audacious on the often unforgiving storms

The barnacles underneath ate into the hull, embedding themselves

They were quite uncouth, blinded by an idea of a vile permanence

How strange that they now are long dead, on the exposed underbelly

Filled up with silt and mud when the ships were dragged ashore.

The ships know nothing of revive, nor do they seek it anymore

They could have; if not for the utter destruction due barnacles

How such rude interjections brought about nothing good for either

Yet the barnacles may still blame the ships for their untoward end

The ships shall rust and rot, the years may eat into their hulls

Their chimneys will topple, the floor shall be red in their reddish rust

Yet the corpses of the barnacles may still puncture feet

Of some innocent explorer that trudges amongst these beaches

Some harm never heals, Some souls never sleep

Some sins never fade, some fires never offer warmth

At the end of it all, I will perch at the rocky cliffs, watching

Until an end that would be as unceremonious as of these ships.

An analysis by chatgpt.

The poem employs the metaphor of ships to represent the poet's life, and barnacles as the people who have caused harm or hurt to the poet. The ships, described as once mighty and majestic, are now retired and cast aside after enduring years at sea. They are tattered and battered, unable to sail audaciously on the storms they once braved.

The barnacles are portrayed as uncouth, blinded by a false sense of permanence. They have embedded themselves into the hull of the ships, causing damage that cannot easily be repaired. The ships, despite their potential for revival, are unable to seek it due to the destruction caused by the barnacles.

The poem reflects on how the barnacles may still blame the ships for their own demise, despite being the cause of their destruction. The ships, as a result, will rust, rot, and eventually succumb to the passage of time. The chimneys that once stood tall will topple, and the ships will be left in disrepair, with their hulls covered in reddish rust.

The poet also acknowledges that the harm caused by the barnacles may have far-reaching consequences. The corpses of the barnacles, now long dead, may still pose a threat to innocent explorers who tread upon the beaches, puncturing their feet and leaving lasting wounds.

The poem further conveys a sense of enduring pain and the scars left by those who have hurt the poet. Some harm never heals, and some sins never fade. The poet watches from rocky cliffs, perched in solitude, until an unceremonious end, much like the fate of the ships in the metaphor.

Overall, the poem speaks to the lasting impact of those who have caused harm in the poet's life, and the sense of resignation and acceptance that comes with the inevitability of unhealed wounds and unresolved endings

The tug boat at the lighthouse

Remember this love, I am the one who will have to watch you bleed

Not in favour, but in absolute helplessness for my hands are tied

By and away from you, for me to pain in what would be borrowed

And all you would do is point at me and accuse me of inaction as always

This haunt would then be embedded deep into the recesses of my soul

While the larger part of your thoughts would erase such and retain little

Just enough of me watching in helpless pain but not my tied hands

And all you would do is taunt me endlessly in some convenient truth

Know this though love, I have known the extent of your taunts and thoughts

They already hurt me even before they are stated by you profound

But how little does it hurt you, under this pretence of forced distance?

And all you need to do to ease me is to glance at me once 

When you are at the end of your self-imprisonment from love

Turn around and ask me once, if at all on what hurt of you feels like

But you know I will smile at your glance, erase the misery of this longing

And all you would wonder at such is if you ever walked away.

Then a rhyme appears as December approaches

Hey there December, welcome to my life

There isn't much I offer other than my heart

I hope maybe you may find it of some use 

It has the coldness within, of a million moons

If in the nights should you struggle to cast a freeze 

Run the wind upon my heart, it shall chill the  breeze

I assure you of it's sheer ability to send the deepest chill

It can lend you its howling cry, and bring all around to still

Remember that it is cold enough, to outmatch your spite

There is only darkness left, for it was dead to light

You can run amok, steal the warmth from all around

As you run to the end, set my heart upon my final ground

January will arrive next, and it has it's own pangs

And to you months of cold I offer my deepest thanks

Nothing can equate with the darkness of each night

I lie cold and awake in the absence of love's warming light