Patchwork Heart

   I've had the idea of a patchwork heart for many years now but didn't know how to put it in a poem exactly. I finally started working on just writing what I felt in prose in January and worked on it quite a bit to try and get it into a poem but things just didn't seem to work out. The words weren't right, the rhythm was wasn't there and the feeling wasn't being conveyed.

   Then forgot about it until a couple of days ago when I stumbled upon it again in my notes. Somehow this time it came together in a matter of a few hours. I really do like how it sounds. I'm tempted to expand it a little more but don't want to mess with it right now. It conveys what I want in a precise and succinct manner. I like that.
In a sense it's inspired to some extent by a sufi song written by Gulzar sung by Rekha Bhardwaj.

The lyrics in the closing stanza are:

राख से रूखी, कोयल से काली 
रात कटे ना हिज्राँवाली 
दिल सूफी ये था, हम चल दिए जहाँ ले चला 
तेरे इश्क में हम चल दिए.

Raakh se rukhi, koyal se kaali  

(Coarse and dry as ash, dark as the koyal bird)
Raat kate na hijrawaali          

(This night of separation is difficult)
Dil sofi yeh tha,

(But this is a Sufi heart)

Hum chal diye jahaan le chala.

(And I follow it wherever it may take me)
Tere ishq mein hum chal diye

(In your love I follow it)

And here is my poem in a similar vein.

Patchwork Heart

A patchwork heart lives on my sleeve
Beautiful in it's crooked way.
This patch work heart is painful
And I seem to have no say.

It's seams are ripped
with every fluttering beat
Every feeling seems so raw.
It's black and blue
and beaten up too
With many a beautiful flaw

The more it breaks
the more it holds
This patchwork heart it grows.
It hurts so often
my fears lose hold
As newer paths it shows.

It shelters within
a bright blue flame
That leads me to salvation.
But my patchwork heart
lights me on fire
And calls it my liberation.

--Megha
1st July 2014

Isha Samskriti School

An old school education for a new generation. Perhaps at least a little bit of this is what our world needs.



-Megha

Let them Feel

When we say that we feel for another, do our hearts really ache? Does someone else's laughter really flow through our breath? Are we really empathetic or are we just lying not realizing that if we could really feel another's feeling, Life would be so overwhelming, so expansive and so amazingly explosive? Perhaps in protecting ourselves, we're losing out. 
This is a simple one is on empathy and compassion.

On feeling one's own pain completely and on truly feeling another's.

Let them Feel

Let them feel the pain that inflicted it.
And let them know they were the cause.
We shall see then,
How many in this world lack empathy
And who is without compassion.

Let them fix the hearts that broke them
With patches of their own misery.
We shall see then,
What heartless men
Steal others' hearts with no remorse. 

-Megha (2nd July 2013)

Dissolution

Sometimes I sit and close my eyes and withdraw from everything around me. It sounds selfish and self centered but most of the time, the more I withdraw, the more I open up to everything else.
 The more I withdraw, the more I cease to exist and the more I feel a part of everything. Every little cell of my being becomes open something I don't understand and it fills the very substance of what makes me. And when I open my eyes, it becomes very difficult to not fall in love with the world. Slowly this feeling fades but I always remain hopeful that someday that feeling will become a permanent part of me. 
That some day I will be hopelessly lost and drenched in that pervading essence that I experience. 

Dissolution

Every atom of my being is open,
To your tenderness and dispassion.
To your silences eloquent, open
And to your words spoken

That which is me,
Obscure and Darkened.
To be born at your wheel
Waiting; Misshapen 

In your hands
Molten
To your resolve
Hardened.

And then I'm broken
Like un-fired clay
Reshaped, reborn 
And woken

And still
To your grace open
For you grateful and hoping

--Megha (16th March 2013)

Birth

Thoughts on the occasion of my birthday.

Birth

Born in August
I'm a child of fall
Of a time of change.
A transformation of colours
Pursues me.
Of dying leaves and
Emptying Boughs.
Those crows with beads
On their feet have departed
As the blue sky, like a Mother,
Gathers her tufts of gray,
It turns dark quicker than it did yesterday.
A quiet rain is to follow.
Muted but wild.
With no fight left to finish,
All that remains is to relinquish existence.

In the frigid winter
Hearts drawn on frosted windows
Are snatched away by layers of ice.
A cold breath exhaled
The final sip of water
What survives is long gone.
Asleep somewhere perhaps
To awaken again someday.
Or is Death the true awakening.
This is the darkness that we all come from.
Like a mothers womb
It nourishes us until we are ready
To live again.
Whether it is the interval between plays,
Or the play between intervals,
A tragedy or a comedy,
Whether we like it or not,
Darkness follows the spotlight
And a change of costumes follows us from the moment we are born.
---Megha (08/30/08)

Saviour

Seeking to be alive also means feeling contradictory emotions at the same time.
Is the pleasure causing the pain or is the pain pointing at life?
Sometimes pain is a milestone that one needs to go through to get to the other side and sometimes pain is like a little sharp pebble stuck in your heel cutting you while you walk on your happy path.
Being in love can be painful, sacrificing something for good can be painful, birthing a child can be painful...being born is perhaps at least uncomfortable! :-)
This I can say for myself: turning from outside to inside is comfortable, easy even. But turning back from inside to outside is sweet pain ..unbearable.
The crossroads where pleasure and pain intersect are indeed mysterious and how we are all drawn it them.

Saviour

Be not my Saviour
Be not my friend
Be a Lover not companion
I'm not here to mend.

In this dark night turn not your face
Up at the stars
Look down at me instead and gently stop
My beating heart.
For in your gentle kisses on my lips
I am born
And on a bed of dreamless nights,
Melting,
To your rhythm I dissolve.
Toil and seek mercilessly
Let humility be found
In the releasing of tears
And in being unbound.

Walk with me a while Love
And sing with me a song.
Then reach out for my waiting heart
And break it until it's gone.

Then..
Let me go.
Be no saint to this sinner,
Be not my friend.
Be a lover not companion
And be cruel to the End.

--Megha (1/1/13)

Precious Moments

Maybe it's just me but Life has a way of flying by even as I take a moment to inhale the wafting scent of jasmine or absorb the twinkling smile of a child. Even as I live in each moment, Time seems ruthless. But I suppose that is the beauty of it all. The knowing that we exist for a tiny blip in the timeline of the universe. Knowing that even though in the grand (I mean really really grand) scheme of things, it doesn't matter if we existed or not but in our reality our existence of course means everything.

And then on top of everything, some moments seem surreal...they seem so precious that it's hard to believe that they exist at all. To me these are the most intense moments in my life. They are moments when I felt truly loved or when I was truly loving. They are moments without prejudice, of complete surrender and of complete acceptance. Some are moments of clarity or genius when everything laid out in front of you makes complete sense. And they may not necessarily be happy moments. Whatever their content or reason, for me they tend to be such passionate moments that I wonder at how we ever exist without them. They make us. They make Life.

This is a poem about moments:

Precious Moments

Precious moments

Intense moments

And moments of open arms.

Dreaming moments

Fleeting moments

And moments when we aren't

Compassionate moments

Silent moments

And moments steeped in the stark

Only moments

        Of Life

        Of reflection and redemption

        Of hearts

        Bruised and golden

Our moments 

Blue and raw

In moments 

We truly dissolve.

--Megha (23rd Sept '12)