285 days.

Hey! Hi! And Hello!

I am still counting days? Well, I think I’m good at it. How I missed being here and how I missed my 3rd year anniversary here! Anyways I’m trying to be back and feels good.

It’s been long and I’m kind of looking forward to it, this time (again). I have read all the mails and I have noticed many of you coming back here and reading previous posts. I’m truly grateful for this affection and trust.

Let me know how you all have been. And I know many of us don’t like to say that loud in comments, so you’re welcome to share this via email.

Be well. I’m yet to catch up with a lot of people. I’ll be writing here shortly, 1 post/week for the time being .

~🧜‍♀️

© 2022 mermaidspen

Summer

What is summer if not the
excitement brought by
fragrance of spring
tangled in cold wind,
running through the hills
desperately,
to reach the soil blooming
in plains??

The sun shinning over trees
The source of light and heat
curing blues of winter patiently
and the pearly clouds around
playing hide and seek.
Doesn’t the Sky feel dreamy?

The enticing aroma
of fleshy mangoes
is scattered around the
spring dominating branches.
Birds, now and then
take shelter in curled
lively trees.
Life is blooming everywhere.
Life is inviting me to live.

© 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

Things that matter.

A poem, you ask?
I sit here and think, wondering what
we are,
when doors are shut
Tight and hard.

Alright, I will come with you for the trippy fight;
also, came with my freshly chewed skin,
All the prose and adjectives are here
We’ll keep them the way they have always been.


Let me give you a guilt trip with rich metaphors
Like the whispers you heard last night,
we’re beautifully demonic; we walk like angels.
A war against the world, you say? would you dare?

When next time you come to fight beside me
I’ll remember everything you tried to shatter,
But my question is , are you here because it matters
Or for the fame that comes later?

© 2020 mermaidspen

My Poems

My heart is a building/
memories blow/
like the wind/
Seekers shall find
home in my bones/
My skin shall always
relive the moments here/
even if I go blind/

I draw hearts/
on the glass/
that shelters dew drops/
for love is all I know/
And to embrace the pain/
is no weakness/
For You shall grow/
only when You know/

In the hallways/
wander hearts/
romanticising pain/
In the name of art/
~Ignorant~
you don’t have to turn blue/
everytime/
to know that you’re alive/
Art is apposite/
soulful/
And a smile/
can work wonders/ too/

My poems/
doorways to melancholy/
Past those/ hides/
a happy me/

© 2020 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

Wonders

Don’t just hear,
listen
what one word
whisper to other,
Here, all the words are
adjacent yet far
how they managed to exist,
I wonder.

Also, Instagram

© 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

I’m dying poetry

In his Letters to Milena, Kafka wrote,
‘You are the knife I turn inside myself;
that is love. That, my dear, is love.’

And I can’t help but wonder
number of times I ate my own skin
to feel your touch on my lips.
And number of times I died,
trying to reason with unknown.
In search of words I travel
through my spine; your garden
in my lungs is dead. Butterflies
have turned into fireflies,
illuminating me while burning
my senses, I am alive you see.

There is a reason why I hate September,
we all have reasons, to reason with
unknown is a silent revolution, a war
with possessiveness. Like a failed
theory my eyes look for you
in patterns, for hints, so that
I can reason with my tied hands;
there are songs of lost touch in my heart.

All I am left with are questions.
I can’t come up with an explanation
for my fear of something that already
passed. Like the evening sky
there are too many colours, too many
shades of verses leaving my finger tips;
I paint my nails red when I miss you the most.

My skin sweat in how, why and where?
You ask me why no happy poems?
These, my dear, are barely poems.

© 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