Purple Days

© 2022 mermaidspen

To bake a cake in the eye of the Storm

It hurts to grow old, he said
with a hint of pain in his eyes,
and looked at his trembling hands
maybe was trying to recognise something.

“Movement is tiring” he said
to bake a cake in the eye of the storm,
To see the same souls and faces
in all the people, in all the forms.

I wonder if it gets better
for they say everything does,
People generalise though
And when they do,
do they think of us?

Maybe it’s more about losing
than to fit in,
All the storms took things from us
But I miss the spot
We used to sit in.

© 2022 mermaidspen

•To do list•

You see, we poets are ships
Lost in a sea,
there’s nothing to risk
and nothing to lose.
I could say you’re dying
to write the last poem, before dying
as if, death of poems and poets ever
mattered.
What matter, are the private affairs
printed on the front page of
sensational newspapers,
with uncertainty.
For it’s easy to blame the time.
Time, as always will tell us
who the best story is,
but stories are not easily told.
If you ask me,
I could narrate my story
but it’s not mine to claim.
Claims are to be made
when bets will be made
and you’ll find me there
trying to steal a piece of art,
For art recognises you.
Art will come knocking at your door
On rainy days,
days you absolutely hate,
for you can’t stay inside to write.
Writes will meet you halfway
in busy halls of empty buildings
trying to borrow words from the past,
bargaining with the future,
deciding present.
They’ll look for poets
But
All the poets are lost in a still sea.

© 2022 mermaidspen

Shadows

How do you manage to keep going
without the urge to throw yourself
away?
How does it feel like hearing everything
but your own heart?
Does it really get better with time?
Do layers of skin mange to cover it all?

Tell me how you escaped the pit
of rusty flowers decorating
humnae need of art,
Is there a way to escape your shadow?
Have you made peace with it all?

Deep down, in your heart
does it shine bright like the day?
Or is it pretty like the sky?
If you smiled bright
and visited be places
Would it matter?

Tell me,
Does it get better?
Tell me,
Is there any way out?

© 2021 mermaidspen

Garden

Another day while I was trying
to escape from the dark,
I saw this boy
in the middle of the park.
Everyone was sitting in the shade
but he sat in the open,
The smile on his face
was near to broken.
Instead of sky
I started staring at him,
when our eyes met
his went dim.
He got up and started walking
towards my way,
shaking hair, a mixture of black and grey.
Abruptly, he gave me a smile
the one, hard to exist,
Before leaving, he gave me a star
on my wrist.

© 2021 mermaidspen

Gods are dying in my country.

Centuries ago, during the
course of evolution, humans
brought the whole species
together, on the base of
One belief system; Religion.
We thrived. They say nothing lasts
forever; humans have this obsession
with change,
To know more, To be more.

And now ( fast forward to ‘I’ )
As ‘act of God’
I see my country moulding
beliefs of generations.
God has now become a tool
To control masses; we are given a
Reason to be scared of the sacred.
I see them locked in fancy buildings
like you and me, having 
‘no right to speech’, worse,
they can’t even speak because
no one is actually asking them.

/I used to think/
I’m an atheist/
but lately/ I have started to
believe otherwise/ like y’all/
I too have a holy book/

My God is as panicky and breathless
as yours. I watch TV
till my heart starts aching,
I clutch the Constitution
close to my flesh, with hopes
of lending some air to it;
I hear him suffocating.
Then I sleep to the weeping
sound of my God (Constitution);
who cries with all the other Gods
because Gods are dying in my country.

Prompt by Samyak

© 2020 mermaidspen

The Fictional Truth

We are in the middle of a pandemic and also the global and national predicament, not to mention, most of us are confused with a lot of questions and quite predictably turn to news. Alas!
I feel like we have no where left to turn to. Like like we are stuck in a loop.

Joseph Goebbels, a German Nazi Politician said, “A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”. Almost everything in our present post-truth, modern world, is based on this single statement. This is the era of fake news. Our media shapes perceptions; all the allegations, investigations, trials, tribulations and decisions are made here. If there’s anything that I learnt from all of this is, if media comes to my home, they’ll find me guilty for the crimes I had no idea of.

From religion to advertisements, I feel, we are running on fragile balance between truth and fiction. It’s always easy to weave fiction; because of our ability and the need to be heard and seen in social groups, people tend to believe in the crowd Or link it to centuries old faith. Works like magic!

Truth is always hard to handle and impossible to process. Can we, you and I, handle the truth about the food we eat, clothes we wear, about how we twisted and turned faith of centuries into nothingness, of how we are using God as a psychological weapon? how we ruined the earth we call home? and how we all are to blame for all the bad in the world?

There is good too, I don’t deny it. But I don’t run away from bad. I have learned to acknowledge the problem. Acknowledging a problem is the only way to solve it.

Truth costs relations. And in present world, who wants to lose faith of someone important or powerful? A lie is thus fed a million times, until it becomes the ultimate truth. We believe in what we hear repeatedly.

~ 🧜

© 2020 mermaidspen

//Touch has a memory//

I have been pretty transparent, if you’re really looking.
On my skin, you could see the boy with hazel eyes
with softest curls and the way,
he is touching my skin just by looking,
You can feel the metaphors
running along my hair
to your fingers;
you can sense the memories
curling up your hand.
Will remind you of the last kiss
or I’ll fill your heart with clichés;
you always fall for it.

Let me tell you stories about disasters and disappointment running deep down under my wrist, in my veins;
If you touch me for a bit longer, you’ll be able to sense the thunders;
touches, devastating enough to burn down the entirety.
But there’s nothing scarier than skin that feels nothing at all.

If I tell you,
consent in love is a funny thing
between the flashback of millions of memories and disruptive silence
in your eyes, you’re lost, believe me.
Once you touch,
there are no more may l’s.

And what about the veins under my skin that still tremble
at slightest touch because there are memories buried underneath me.
You look for justifications on my wrist,
all the longer-than-usual touches,
I’m wearing under my sleeves.

I know you’d believe me crying myself to sleep and how miserable the year has been.

But,
would you believe me
If I tell you,
An unwanted touch can send chills down the man’s spine
when you try to pull him closer after every “no”?
There is always a ” be a man” ready to slip from your tongue.
Can you ever forgive yourself in the name of humanity,
in the crowds shouting for justice while you’re the 5/10 culprits;
for stealing a moment that was not yours; thinking a smile to be a consent or never asking for it?
You know there won’t be any going back for him.
If there was a slight voice of complain,
it’s always easy to be a victim than to take responsibilities.
Funny how you always get away when they’re the ones sulking in pain.

And what about when a man tells you he was molested, would you believe him or say, “must’ve been fun?”

Collaboration with Bharath

© 2020 mermaidspen

//Love is Love//

Words will leave me
at the end of this poem
just like your love
left societies and hearts
day by day or
maybe it was never there.
Maybe I am too delicate.
Breathing before I suffocate.
Am I too slow
to cope up with the
mornings, days and seconds?
But I still am very receptive
towards love, affection
and the foundations of
your faiths and religions.
Everyday I hear lips
shouting “love is love”
but see them denying the same
when it’s time to act.
They let their opinions
slip into air
infecting people,
disheartening the minds
(Sometimes people are
The virus)
Being homosexual or
transgender is no crime;
world needs to stick to love
instead of a gender,
one part of world is on roads,
angry, hurt
and you’re telling me
to deny unlearning
because what you have
been taught is not wrong.
Stop shouting ” we’ll take care
of you, get you checked”
let the people be who they are.
We have so much to learn yet,
we have to go far.
And sooner or later
I’ll find the words which left
but, can you find the love
you threw out of your windows?

Prompt by Meera

© 2020 mermaidspen

// of fears and discouragement//

The times are hard and my fears keep getting worse. In these fleeting moments, there are things I‘m scared of and care about.
And then, there’s me.
I’m my greatest accomplishment. I crave attention and validation from myself and write long paragraphs with weird rhythms to make sense of things around.
I like to think of myself as an artist, an artist that paints emotions in words and verses.
This identity crisis vexes me because what am I to you but bones and skin? What makes me lies hidden beneath.

I believe my words justify my heart and mind more than the features of my face and I run in my head, run for miles, to find the encouragement from my skin; for my senses. I bend like grass and blow like leaves yet feel discouraged and people look for my pictures instead of words.

It’s like a tiny plant growing in cracks, hustling to bloom but failing because no one likes where she’s coming from.
Why do we need a garden to love the flower? Aren’t wildflowers flowers too??
Why do we judge an artist by the skin they are in and not by what they’re writing?
Why do we encourage people with million followers and ignore the novices discovering art?

Prompts

1. What I care about everyday, every minute by : New Media Works

2. Discouragement by : Von Smith