Telling them...

With all this talk

day in and night out

of god like children 

getting torn to shreds 

in their formative years.

With all this hullabaloo

in the media and on walls of public urinals

those scavengers carefully

wash their hands off

the puke an virgin blood.

With all the screams 

on the streets of slogans 

against such monstrosity

those hyenas laugh in the noise

blocking the babbles we would never decipher.

With all this technology

we play with and that is playing with us

blurring any lines that used to separate

with a new app born at the rate of a girl child

they penetrate slow but deep.

Do I need a piece of human made technology

to tell me that I have been penetrated into

without my fucking will?

Do I need to stop wearing my scarf 

to show that I too am beaten blue 

in places I would rather hide?

Do I need to increase the length of my clothes

and walk less promiscuously 

away from spaces that make me at fault?

Do I need to hide indoors and hide my self 

and give in to the monsters at home

because I am dissed for everything I am unable to do?

Do I need to silence my howls at night

because this man called a 'husband' thinks 

I have no consent the moment I am marred by this symbolic red powder ?

Do I need to change who I am

and who I want to be

only to protect

my mind

my sanity

my sanctity

my vagina

my face

my beauty

my child

my legacy

my self

my hair

Do I need to tell them 

that

my vagina is not me?

~ Ray

Mad dreams

She woke from her dream
and looked around her

This universe looked obscure
yet beautiful

Tip toed bare feet and naked
on the sand

Came in front of an ocean clear
and stared down at the waters

She saw her eyes and a full moon with the rabbit
staring back at her

'We all exist together yet so alone and apart"
she thought to herself.

She knew she could never touch the moon or dance in her craters
or play with the rabbit

She waited for those full moon nights where
it all felt so real

They were a family to her
that did not always need to see each other

The moon her lover and the rabbit their child
and the stars their friends

And then she went back to the womb
that she hid in.

The universe moved on while she wept
Everything changed while she slept

She woke from her dream
and looked around her

This universe looked obscure
yet beautiful

Tip toed bare feet and naked
on the sand

Came in front of an ocean clear
and stared down at the waters

She saw the nothingness
staring back at her

Craving the sight of her lover
she wondered what was real

Or if transience was reality
and the only thing constant

Half awake and half asleep
she stood on the line

Laughing and weeping
she knew she has mad

The kind of mad that came at the cost
of living in contradictions

The kind of mad that her lover,the moon
drove her to be

The kind of mad where she created
and wove her own reality

The kind of mad where she knew
being alone was the only way

The kind of mad that would teach the world
on this type of love

The kind of mad that would kill her
to make her alive

~ Ray 

I am 'vulnerable' and I know it

I was told to write on 'vulnerability' for my sisters blog. When I thought of how to start this article, I decided to look up what this word 'vulnerable' actually means. My macbook dictionary says this:

Vulnerable: 

adjective: susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm

It is quite true that when one thinks of being vulnerable it implies a negative connotation and warns us to somehow  be in a position to defend, build walls, protect ourselves. Off late I have felt differently about this. 

   

Being 'vulnerable' is... 

• Stripping your 'self' naked and being able to look in the mirror 

I finally decided to look in the mirror. This is something I never did for a long time. With the help of a certain soul that showed me a mirror and said I am looking for peace in all the wrong places - I started peeling layers of yesterday's- hidden feelings, notions, habits, patterns and found that all of them had a link to a certain something I was doing today. I was able to clearly see the link and realized that a lot of it were things I had just accepted without changing even if they were not very conducive to a peaceful state of being. I cut away from a lot of human contact, started off on a detox for my body and focussed only on all things important for me. I could feel like I saw myself clearly. 

• First aid to fresh wounds and making peace with the scars

There were fresh wounds bleeding. There were also scars from old wounds. I realized, some scars were well hidden but some I flaunted quite proudly. The ones I flaunted were often in defense for experiences that had made me who I was today. They were my ticket to behaving a certain way and blaming it on the scars. They were my 'yes thats what made me be this way' when confronted about negative attitudes. The recent wounds were still bleeding and bothered me. They kept me awake at night and made me want to hide and sleep in the day. I would hide them from some people by using layers of sweaters but in the confines of my room I would let it out. Merely acknowledging they were there did not do much. They needed to be attended to and fixed. I thus started using various techniques that worked for me - writing, yoga, dancing, meditation, chanting (a very recent development after years of resistance). I surrendered myself to the whatever seemed to work well and they took care of me slowly. It is important I believe to tend to these before they get deeper and leave those scars. 

• Healing ~ body, mind, soul

This is a process that only gets better the more you let yourself go. This comes with realizing that in essence even though one, we need to look after our mind and body and pay attention to them. The body process started for me with watching my food habits and feeling the impacts it had on me. I felt healthy and my thoughts seemed so clear and not clouded. So it is true that they interact together to form the experience of our Being. The soul ...I can't explain it but it is that feeling when something inside you swells up when you feed it with more of things that come true to your nature. The more I pay attention to my body, thoughts in the mind and doing things that I feel instinctively beautiful about, I feel like I am healing. Vulnerable, but still healing slow. 

• Movement~ Wandering the universe with this 'self'

Now you are ready to step out and dive into the ocean. As a traveler, you wander. You don't stay anywhere too long. You move. Move slowly and meet souls that you can inspire or be inspired from. Once I accepted myself for all my madness, I realized I did not have to try to fit in anywhere. My ability to turn my vulnerability into my asset gives out vibes into the universe that other receptive souls could feel and acceptance came all too naturally. I have also realized that what I emit I am attracting. I am able to see the 'vulnerability' in others and be at peace with that too. I also realize that I have dropped the need to try to fit in anywhere. Not in a rebel-in-your-face-way, but in a 'I-am-my-own-home' so I am protected way. 

• Pain turning into poetry

I do not want to become super woman and be too strong that I cannot be broken again. I value my wounds and scars too much to ever want to stop hurting. I want to be hurt because every time I am hurt, I am much more vulnerable but much deeper in touch with that me inside which can only be reached with a lot of blood and tear shed. I am in control of everything that I let happen to me and what I make of it ~ the pain and the poetry I turn it into and wear on me proudly as a pretty scar. The poetry I make from that space of being comfortably vulnerable is what I am able to share with everyone else in this universe and hopefully inspire in some way. 

Re-defining  Vulnerable: 

adjective: susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm and being at peace with it because you realize you are in control of what to make of it

~ Ray Iyer

Written on March 25th 2014 

Letting go, going, gone.

Its been some time since I sat myself down and talked to myself. Its been some time since I sat in a room alone and heard my own heart beat, felt  my pulses throb, let the emotions gush and over flow like waves on me. Engulf me , toss me around a bit, froth on my senses until I felt like I was drowning. Test my ability to save myself from me. Let me suddenly find myself thrown on the shores of knowing not knowing I was there. Baking in the sun , getting the Vitamin D( D for Destruction) into the body of awareness. Burning my flesh into a million little pieces, till all that is left is a bare naked truth. Stripped off of all knowing. The remains, the ashes from the chaos, are seeds. Seeds of creation. From my own destruction, waited to sprout. Sprout into something new. So is this letting go?

Its also been some time since I wanted nothing. Nothing from this world, 

Scatter

The heart beats

Beats faster than my thoughts

These thoughts are crimson

Crimson red

Red as her lips

Lips that kiss tired eyes

Eyes that have seen truth

Truth ripped apart and bare

Bare as that which trembles 

Trembles in the womb

The womb is a tomb

A tomb of dreams put to sleep

Sleeping with legs wide open

Open up and bloom

Bloom even in the cold winds

Winds of change

Change the heart beat

Beat is slower than now

Now is where we are

Are we really here?

/ The bearable darkness of Being /

I have seen much more, felt much more, been much more, in the sheer darkness which follows destruction. 
I have been born again and shed worn out wings in the darkness.
I have learnt to make love to questions in the darkness. 
I have held hands with pain in the darkness. 
I have looked fear in the eye in the darkness. 
I have circled around as a dervish and felt the power of union in the darkness.
I have drank blood (thinking it was water) in the darkness.
I have seen no mirrors in the darkness which has made me comfortable in my skin, in the darkness.
I am lost in the darkness.
I am found in the darkness.
I am everything in the darkness.
~ Ray

Written on 25th of August, Dubai.

Smoking Blues

I wish you knew

every breath of that white soldier you take

who stands by your hands 

waiting to carry you closer to his nation

and further away from you

I wish you knew

what Id do to be in his place

Gently being held by your fingers

Fiercely lighting me up, igniting.

Placing me at the perfect pout of your mouth

Sucking the life out of me

With your breath you turn me

into another form

Bit by bit,

you let me go

Bit by bit,

you let me flow...

~ Ray