Do you hear that?
an ode to being an adult human being
I turned 22 and it only got worse from there.
I am increasingly relying on sating my hunger by feasting
on the happiest episodes of strangers
on the internet,
but last night when my phone screen lit up,
someone had gone missing, again.
& I rolled over, went to sleep, hungry instead.
Somedays, I just stare at a picture of me
clicked in the kitchen,
holding the coffee mug with my lover's unshakable stains.
Moonlight was leaking through the window
dominating the wan glimmer of the refrigerator's heart.
& I was not sad
& the flavours of the city I love
lingered in my mouth - my only mouth
which was not yet a graveyard
for all whom I loved and I still had room
under my tongue for anyone who'd love me.
***
do you hear that?
It's the last workday of the month
I and some of my colleagues celebrate the crisp cash
in our bank accounts,
what a shame it is to spend it
on half-baked freedom.
in this town where much of the joy is lost in the need to hold it
in this town where the mailman unfailingly hand delivers my debts
and asks me to consider myself fortunate
enough to just have my name on anything at all.
***
A wave of anger rises with the rising water
that separates my brother and me
and the land between us has grown
more treacherous.
In the blood-soaked earth,
seeds of hope and yearning
for a coveted return to their distant home lands are sown
by reluctant hands.
& nourished by the baptismal waters
of a girl who never returned home
just around the corner.
& tenderly the seeds germinate.
birthing roots of fractured innocence,
and shoots of silenced laughter.
***
I hate myself for letting that poet in the park
(fingers dancing on a typewriter,
choreographing verses with a rhythmic clatter
like of raindrops drumming upon a tin roof
under the skies where children look up
for bombs)
somehow successfully sell me a world
where kids sprint barefoot,
through sun-drenched fields of golden sunflowers,
petals kissed by gunpowder smoke.
their heads swaying gracefully like men in formation
marching in the graveyard, they can't see yet
as the summer breeze carries whispers
of both life and strife,
the air rich with earthy fragrance
and lingering battle cries.
I hate myself for letting that poet in the park
sell me a world where
no house burns at the end of love,
all surrenders don't end in blood,
and people dance to the sound of
machine gunfire.
where the fragrance of a comet's tail
seduces comatose constellations back to life
and stars are not just stars but
portals that open only long enough
to forgive ourselves.
***
so do you hear that?
the sound of rain
leaving footsteps on my heart
and the way my heart turns them into
heartbeats.
the sound of my back
cracking
as I carry the weight of my deads
as I learn everything about love
through the absence of it.
***
About the Creator
Mesh Toraskar
A wannabe storyteller from London. Sometimes words spill out of me and the only way to mop the spillage is to write them down.
"If you arrive here, remember, it wasn't you - it was me, in my longing, who found you."
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Comments (20)
Scent of cremation grounds of sentiment, but such ineffable beauty. Love it!
I hear it.
This is beautiful. Comparable to the works of old. Congratulations on the top story
Congratulations on your Top Story😉🎉
This is powerful. It starts slow, then moves quicker like feet trying to keep pace with the increasing tempo of a drumbeat. Gripping.
YES!
Wow. This is just fantastic. I near speechless. Well done and congrats on the TS.
This is outstanding. It is one of the best poems I have ever read anywhere. You have a talent unmatched. You should be very proud of this. Congrats on a very well deserved Top Story.
No words in this mere commentary will touch the depth of your mastery here. Therefore, all I will say is, "Thank you!!!"
Congrats on TS!!🖤🖤
"Deep" doesn't begin to describe this. Masterfully done and a very worthy Top Story!
Congrats, Mesh <3
Emotionally moving and surreal!!! Congratulations on Top Story!!!♥️♥️💕
Oh goodness! So happy this received Top Store recognition!
This really sucked me into your world with your words. Congratulations!
I truly cannot fathom the well of your poetic heart, Mesh. You continuously stun me with your words and ability to express such deep rooted and sublime feeling. Allow me to address a few areas I found particularly noteworthy. The ENTIRE STANZA from “a wave of anger” is beyond words for me. “tenderly the seeds germinate. birthing roots of fractured innocence, and shoots of silenced laughter.“ You remind us of the missing person from stanza one, and it stands here as a sharp painful contrast to three things: your feelings of bleak adulthood, missing your family(brother), and seeing the corrupted world you exist in. It is truly a mark of deep thinking that you have been able to weave these together as you have. To see a missing girl and link her to a feeling of kinship, even in a twisted, unequal way, to how you feel apart from your family is just an incredible poet moment that does not diminish the emotional heart of its reality. I cannot leave out this part: “where the fragrance of a comet's tail seduces comatose constellations back to life and stars are not just stars but portals that open only long enough to forgive ourselves.“ Holy f@&k. Do I have words enough to digest this to you, and all that it means? The world of sorrow in these words, of looking to the stars for forgiveness, is an image I will never forget. Your final stanza is pure magic. I hear your heartbeats as false heartbeats, driven to continue living through the woes if the sky itself, a sky that perhaps holds some bridge of shared connection to those whose love you are absent from. I am not crying 😭.
You take the words and knit a vest of outrage and sorrow- this is a deeply glorious poem
This is really speaking to me this morning! So many fav parts but “in this town where the mailman unfailingly hand delivers my debts and asks me to consider myself fortunate enough to just have my name on anything at all.“ — even this rather mundane daily thing, you’ve managed to make me see as so much more!!
Gosh, this was so emotional! I loved it so much!
you have a phenomenal way with words