Chasing Sunshine

If you walked into the room

The first thing you’d notice

Would be the painting –

As captivating,

As it is intriguing;

Every brush stroke

Executed masterfully,

To capture the essence,

Of the artist’s romance

With nature’s abundance.

And yet,

There is a void,

That detracts from the whole –

A sign of rebellion,

A maze of abandon,

Where the brush strokes,

Seemingly lose

Their sense of purpose,

Creating an eyesore

Almost.

And so we find

This pretty picture,

That bears mute witness,

To the most agonising tale,

For such is fate

Sometimes.

And those are the dabs

Of sombre paint,

Thrown in with the sparkling bright,

Of green, gold, purple and pink,

And all else that evokes delight.

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I’m trapped,
And I want to break free
From this nascent cloud that I’m held in,
But it doesn’t let me be.

I’ve longed for a while,
To be liberated,
And fall,
Just fall freely –
Feel the wind
Push me gently,
As I descend;
Watch the world
Become increasingly larger,
Even as I transcend
To the acceptance,
That I’ll soon become
In essence, nothingness.

But in having been,
I’d have made
A tiny drop of difference,
On the dry land
That receives me.

And for this –
I want to break free.

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I

When you step out into the wild,

Take care to place your feet

Gently into the night,

For you know not what hides

Within its dark confines.

I know you,

You have a dream,

Or two,

And wonder sparkles

In your young eyes;

You cannot be held back,

At least, that’s what you think.

II

You race to the edge

And stand there,

With a wide grin

On your countenance,

The depths of the valley

Don’t scare you,

You are quite invincible;

Until they catch up,

And advance –

Bringing in their wake, menace;

And suddenly,

You are no longer smiling,

For there’s nowhere to go,

But into the throes

Of a vicious enemy,

Or the uninviting grandeur

Of the bottomless valley.

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I

I went through life,

Believing in

The innate goodness,

In every human being;

Possessing a heart

Beating behind one’s chest,

Renders one to find their best

To give to others,

Or so I thought;

And if not that,

At least a little part,

A shred even,

Of kindness

To a soul in distress,

Goes a long way.

II

But then one day,

As I walked on my way,

I chanced upon

Something quite the opposite,

Of this perfect world of my dreams;

And once within,

I found I couldn’t retreat.

The only way out,

Was through a dark valley

Of hatred, disgust and self doubt;

Nowhere to be seen,

For miles at a stretch,

Was any measure,

Of the decency,

One would profer

A fellow human.

III

So, now I live my life,

Wanting to, but not quite believing,

That there’s some good

In every human being;

For some folks

Are just too broken –

Some in giving,

And others in receiving.

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Memories

Are not what they claim to be,

Not always, at least.

When you look to yours

For comfort, and some relief,

Instead what you might receive,

Is a measure of veiled grief.

The sun shining brightly

To light up every dusty corner

Of your room,

Plays tricks with you,

Or perchance with your truant memory

Of a long ago afternoon,

And you come back feeling,

More than a smidge perturbed.

You begin to resent the sunrays,

Contrary to always,

When you’ve welcomed them;

For this time around,

They’ve brought about,

A revelation,

Or the beginning of one,

That you could’ve done without.

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You want to talk,

You really do;

You have a conversation with them

In your mind,

To get the hang of it,

But by the time

You feel confident,

They have gone

To catch their train.

All of them do just that –

They converse effortlessly,

And then leave;

While you find yourself

Tongue tied, yet again.

How do you explain,

Without sounding vain,

That you just cannot?

That you wonder,

If they will see

Right through you,

If they will smell the shame

Seeping through,

If they will sense,

That the quasi confidence,

Is a wall so broken,

That it might never have been;

But it did exist,

Before they tore it down,

And left you to drown,

Inch by inch,

In this quagmire.

And yet you never tire

(Or if you do

You haven’t shown)

Of showing up,

And trying to

Live this life,

That was forced on you.

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Where the road forked in two

There stood a tree,

Pretty huge,

Pretty majestic;

Rendering shade

On either side,

The sunrays barely filtering

Through its dense foliage.

When the day came

For it to be felled,

For that day did come,

Although it bothered some,

A smattering of random folks

Who journeyed on those roads;

And so on that day,

They came to say,

A solemn goodbye;

And then they each

Went on their way,

For such is life.

You may give your time,

Your wealth, heart, soul and mind,

And yet be deprived

Of what matters most,

Someone who’ll stay,

By your lonely, fallen self,

Not just before,

But also, long after the axe

Was plunged through your side

To send you crashing down.

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I

There was a time

When you were naive,

When they had you believe,

In the power of their love,

And the safety in belonging.

There was a time,

When you fell for their deceit,

Never quite knowing,

Or indeed, having known,

What it really feels

To be loved as one’s own,

Sans conditions.

There was a time,

When you stood alone –

Absolutely so,

A bit bewildered,

Head hanging in shame,

And very frightened;

You dared not cry out loud,

But you thought,

They’d come anyway

To stand by you,

To take you away

From the battlefield.

And you waited,

For that day

When they would –

But the only fool

In that waiting game,

Was you –

The battered you,

The windswept, broken you,

Now rebirthed into a new dawn

Of realization.

II

Love does not touch

Every life,

Just the same;

Some are ensconced within it,

And some deprived,

Perchance because

They are not good enough,

For such precious things

As boundless love.

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There is a little bit of you

That you lost along the way,

It happened one fine day,

And at the time,

Although it hurt

For a while,

There were other things

To tend to,

Other things crowding your mind;

So you stuffed the pain

In a dark corner,

And moved on,

Until the day,

When you lost yet another

Tiny bit of yourself;

You bowed your head

In shame, yet again;

Yet, moving on,

Was the name of the game,

It always was.

Until now –

When you pause,

To take stock,

And you realize

Just how much you’ve lost

Of yourself;

And how gaping

The wound is.

As for the shame,

You wonder if you’ll ever feel the same

As that day long ago,

Just before

You lost a bit of yourself,

For the very first time.

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You are not special –

You’ve always wanted to be,

You even thought you were

For a while;

And then slowly,

You started to realize,

That you are not.

Nobody cares about

What matters to you,

They couldn’t care two hoots,

Whether you choose

Pink over blue,

Or mundane over footloose;

And for a while,

It bothered you,

That nobody really cared,

Beyond wanting to

Control which paths you took.

But as you grow older,

You resist, become bolder,

And break free –

Of the shackles they employed to rein you in,

And quietly, you slip away,

Like the last light of the fading day,

Into a realm of your own.

For you aren’t special, you’re unknown,

Far too common to stand out,

And you will not be missed,

As you step into the bliss

Of the freedom you have won.

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