Patchwork Heart

I've done it again 
Put my heart on the slab
Butcher knife in hand 
I didn't think that I could 
Though now I know that I can 
I clean my dirty lenses
A futile effort 
Because perhaps they're broken
And that's why I have no foresight
It doesn't matter though at the end
I'm just a silly man 
My heart I've failed to defend
Now it begins 
Stitching back together my patchwork heart
Soon it will be time again 
To put my heart on the slab
Butcher knife in someone else's hand

(c) Rahul Chidambaran 2015

Missing Happiness

It is a strange thing to feel happy

Something beyond the high of a drug

A different planet than the mirth of a drunk

Immeasurable like the idea of a god 

Leaving you to sit there and nod

While the waves barely tickle your toes

You miss happiness

Not entirely but almost unlike missing a person

Like falling in love with the shadow of someone 

You never really miss being happy, just the idea of it

Like a joke heard more than once becomes less funny on each retelling

You're not sure if happiness is just not as happy as it used to be 

Or is it just me, you ask 

Part of you wants to turn around and run back

Back to where it was always happy 

Back to when sadness was just an empty pack of cigarettes

And happiness was finding that one last smoke

Back when sadness was not knowing what to eat 

And happiness was good old biryani 

And so you miss happiness 

An idea of feeling that poets like me fail to describe 

Even if you bottle it, you wouldn't like it

© Rahul Chidambaran 2015

The Ladder of Hope

By now I should have figured it out
Who am I and what am I all about?
I'm not anything by definition
A stack of many grand delusions
But I should have had something by now
A job I know and some luxuries allowed
Instead I feel like the last kid writing a test
Struggling to get through, his worst at its best
And if it wasn't enough to feel this dumb
My machine is faulty and I'm feeling numb
Finding irony in that numbness can be felt
Trying to laugh, hoping my fears melt
What of hope and all that it never brings?
Just a ladder leaning against nothing
Yet the fool that I am continues to hope
Even as I fumble on the slippery slope
I am ever the wounded optimist
Slowly infected by the pessimist
Yet I find no point in all of me
Write as I do, poems are all they'll ever be

© Rahul Chidambaran 2015

Story of My Life

Do you feel the feeling sinking
Smiles that we wear for each other
Masks to tears that breakthrough
Is this how life must be?
Like they say, story of my life
To find that the perfect hand to fit my heart is one that can't
Am I doomed to loose my love always?
My heart unable to keep it's treasures
Not you too. Not this again.
Yet I must stand on principle.
Stand upon beliefs and standards set by me
Goals learnt from stories and songs
A fairytale that has no place here
Here the good guy doesn't win
Here I am riding in the rain yet again
Riding cold and wet and alone yet
Remind me once again what it means to exist.
For some reason this could be just as bad
For some reason I could turn out worse

Anybody

I exist in my stories
In these words I write
In the notes I play
On these lonely nights

Can you hear me?
The music in these lines
The silence in my sounds
Have you tried?

I miss the warmth
The safety in knowing
I am lost now
The cracks are growing

If you can hear me
Come back and shout
You can be anybody
That I am without

Tripping In The Dark

Spoil me for the world
Soiled now every word
All faces sporting masks
Falling graces slippery grasp

They moved away in my dark
Lights now on in empty room
Then and now dissonance stark
Swept up in witches' broom

Hunger grows for new game
The heart though not tame
Looking around for the start
Tripping In The Dark