Hate is the Antonym of Love

Do you have a dictionary

Look up the dictionary
What do they say is the antonym of love
Sorry what, what’d just say
Hate is the antonym of love, you say
Yes, you are right
Hate is the antonym of love; the opposing exact of emotional upheavals, or so we are told

I was told the same, for you and me, we are no different, you see
Dictionaries don’t quite decipher differences half as much as we do
So much so that I often wish a life of grammar that effortless yet congruent

So much so that I wish hatred could be the way out of love
So much so that I wish hate was indeed the antonym of love
So much so that I wish wars could be the way out of wars
So much so that I wish bullets could avenge bloodlines
So much so that I wish black and white could be the way out of grey
So much so that I wish apathy could fathom what lies beyond binaries
So much so that I wish band-aids could heal heartburns and scarfaces
So much so that I wish words were all about words, just about words
So much so that I wish acquaintances never turned strangers ever again
So much so that I wish deaths weren’t an everyday but once and for all

It costed me blood and bones, and, skin and flesh
It costed me the entirety of a marriage and countless liaisons called affairs otherwise

It costed me half a life of a lifetime to know we have been lied to
It costed me half a life of a lifetime to know we should have burnt those dictionaries long before we adulted
It costed me half a life of a lifetime to know grammar is but relative; congruency and differences are but subject to conveniences


Hate isn’t an antonym for love
Hate never was the antonym for love

For hatred never healed the wounds love had left behind; hatred did cut deeper though


Hate isn’t the antonym for love
Indifference is

I Am

In a cosmos of ceramic beings and toothless tales
I am the poetry and the poet

Between skinning lives and parching homes
I am the death and the corpse

Look for me in the concave entrails of your imposing insecurities
I am the salt to your bruised vanity


You are nothing like me and I am nothing of what you’d desired
You are just another casualty
I am the conspiracy

Hail the Insane

What do you call them
Legends in love
Or
Martyrs from a Micawberish matinee

What did they get right
Where might have you gone wrong
You have often wondered
Haven’t you

No
Nothing right
Nothing wrong
Magnum opuses don’t come with a recipe

It’s the arrogance to stay insane
It’s the disdain to become maverick madmen in an obsessed world waging wars for the sake of sanity in the name of equality

Sane is a dystopian folklore; hail the insane

felo de se

Death isn’t a choice; death is the only obvious

I.

We have probably been telling us the same old lies over and over again

But, is one lie told a thousand times over, half as real as the truth

But, is one lie told a thousand times over, half as appalling as the truth

And yet here we are, living mirages over and over, hoping this time around it’d be life at the end of the desert

If only, the illusion of life was half as rousing as the idea of life

But then, we hope

For, the promise of a dawn inspires

For, the actuality of a dusk weeps cold sweat

But then, what happens when the dawn just doesn’t seem apparent enough?

Broken promises are like broken pastels; survival turns synonym for life in the bargain for renaissance

If only, pastels could scream in broken spaces

II.

What happens when the illusion wears off?

Do you wake up like you’d, off a usual night’s slumber

Does death instead make sense after all, to the disillusioned existence

If only afterlives could be penned in novels and essays

But then, would you write poetry if you could become?

III.

This wouldn’t be the first time that I have desired death

It was a long time ago; long enough for desires though not long enough to be forgotten

Long before I had killed Gandhi

Long before I had sung ballads at my funeral

I had desired poetry long before I turned poet

IV.

The lies have dropped dead somewhat like the withered yellow leaves of the last twig alive

The disguises have given in to the betrayals etched in the faces beneath the skin

I have walked in and out of love at the length of broken marriages and wrecked affairs

I have sold borrowed intimacies and voyeured adulteries like they were groceries

I have let acquaintances burn in the name of a thousand gods because it felt good to watch

I have erased the entirety of existences like they were scribbles off a pencil

And yet, I haven’t found life

I am not looking for life, not anymore

V.

Death isn’t a choice; death is the only obvious

Society and Otherwise

the ones who could
auctioned souls at meat shops
borrowed desires at brothels
rented faces at highways
bred mediocrity
and called it society

the ones who couldn't, slept to ghosts; poetry in the breath, whiskey in the oesophagus

An Antinational's Love Letter to the Government

The Government tells
The Government tells a lot
I don't listen to any of it
For I don’t believe any of it


For I don’t believe in tell-tales, myths, fables and folklores
For I’ve learned to believe that sees the eye, my eye
Anything and everything above and beyond are but figments of fiction
Lives that breathe in fiction are more often killed in the brittle pages of yet another novel
And if I had to live fiction, if I ever desired to
I’d rather live and die a fiction of choice, not one of compulsion



If the Government tells you to let go of your faith, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you what to eat and what not to, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you what immorality might cost you, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you to hate and kill in the name of God, let go of the Government
If the Government tells you how it disapproves of how you behave, let go of the Government

If the Government calls you an anomaly for who you are
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you an absurdity for who you sleep with
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you a disease for what you write
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you an antinational for what you believe
Fail the Government
If the Government calls you an aberration for not adhering to the Government's idea of democracy
Fail the Government

Let go of the Government
For the Government has long let go of you
Fail the Government
For the Government has long failed you


The Government has faces
And the faces will come and go
But the idea of Government is not on sale or for bargain


The Government is just an idea, another abstract, if not for the people


And, the Government is but about governance, and not forced acceptances
And, the Government is but about governance, and not a nation in itself

The Government that believes otherwise is cancered


And if the Government has let go of the very people, and if the Government has failed the very people, what more is it than an idea misconceived
And don’t we all know, miscarriage is but a synonym for abortion?


A cancered Government is no better than a cancered mortal
A dead Government is no better than a dead foetus

Bukowski's Dream

Have you ever sought life in the stench of the slimy enamel and the soiled bones of a spoilt foul flesh
Have you ever sought soul in the severed skin of the spineless existences of insolent bedbugs
Have you ever sought universe in the vacuum beneath the death mirages of a stranded desert


My poetry resides in the midst of measured lives and busy pretences

When They Finally Burn Me

When they finally burn me
I’d have died a thousand deaths

When they finally burn me
I’d have died a thousand deaths but not lived lives enough


And yet every time I died; I’d tell myself this would be the last of them
And yet when the epilogue knocks the door, I’d tell myself this too would be an erstwhile lost in time


Flesh and bones smoked off a burning cigarette right to the ashes



When they finally burn me
I’d have died a thousand deaths
When they finally burn me
I’d have failed at life


The dead would mourn the death somewhat like the poet mourns the poetry