Day 365: Goodbye Tomorrow

A friend of mine asked me a few months ago about what I had learned from the entire experience of writing this blog and I realized I said "nothing in particular". Though that's not true I guess that answer was a long one and I was just not willing to say what those things were. I guess I needed more time to think about the question and to perhaps simplify it in my mind. When I started this blog, the goal was simple. It was to write a year of poetry based on topics that others would provide either directly or indirectly.  Though it took a little more than a year it was an experience like no other. I have tried to capture every possible mood that I could in that time frame, the ups and downs of lives and the travels alike, the restless nature of writing and the bitter cold and warm summers. I have passed through much of my days hoping I will be able to write tomorrow. As I write my last one today I can't help but feel a sense of wonder that fills my mind, I don't know where I will go and hence goodbye tomorrow seemed apt to wish writing farewell for now. Thank you for being a part of an amazing experience, you have been encouraging, insightful and most of all my conversations without saying a single word. Thank you all for being a part of a great experience.

Goodbye Tomorrow
So here I am, have we written it all
Reached where we needed to be, broken every fall
Have we learned that which has mattered most
Or put sticky notes on yesterday, among things we lost

Goodbye tomorrow, my words let them remain
Let them give you company when the world seems insane
Our sketches on the walls  let them fill spaces in your mind
These memories we create let me always be easy to find

Pour out a glass just for you and me
Write even if there are no reasons to set these words free
While the tired ones they walk, quietly back home
Let them find meaning in times they are alone

Goodbye my obsessions , my inspired writings, my muse
You are my only address , this is all that I choose
Carry me with you in memories that may never fade
Goodbye tomorrow, you keep coming back, you never age.

Day 364: Yesterday

If you are ever staying with friends and family you are inclined to ask whether they make your travels sweeter than everything else. Whether they are reminders of things that we collect in the passing of time, or whether they are unscheduled stops we love to make. I keep imagining one of my favorite songs as I write this piece and dwell in bits and pieces of nostalgia. I wonder if we are collectors of time, if we choose to remember whatever we want and somehow pull them from our memories. Whatever be the case is it simpler, is it better. Are they cast in spans we call as days , as I keep writing this one as mine gets away.

Yesterday
For I have been caught in the start & end of songs
Finding places I call my own, or where I can belong
These restless hours that pass by my finger tips
While I talk to you, without a single word from my lips

These yesterdays in our minds that we seem to create
We fill them with memories with nostalgia we populate
While some may find these place marks silly at times
I collect them like a mad man, as though looking for rhymes

Come find me in warm companies of friends & family
Bound by thoughts that stay with you & yet you are set free
While some may look for solace in perfect yesterdays
I am looking for just a few that are here to stay

No we are not lyrics to a song that plays on repeat
We are lingering thoughts that haven't decided to leave
In the quiet spaces as I wait for wings to fly again
I wonder what yesterday wished to be & that which remains

Day 363: Simply Put

I think choosing a topic sometimes should be as simple as talking with a series of thought processes that bug you just the same way as when you sit down to actually write. Nonetheless it seems that what can be summarized in those brief moments leave a lot that we wished to include. Simply put explores the idea of what can be simply written down sometimes, about muses in life, about inspiration that are restless and somehow hard coded in our psyche and perhaps they are experiments of how we recreate something different every single time we try. These are versions of my very own nostalgia somewhere hoping to meet yours on a long walk somewhere.

Simply Put
Simply put things are rarely as simple as they seem
I am writing from afar and in between the moon beams
The night sky in my thoughts as simply as can be put
The wind footprints on the wet sand left barefoot

Simply put you are my favorite glass of wine
Poured out of an aged bottle held up in time
You are memories held close , nostalgia in a jar
Smiles I think about when I am afar

Simply put you are quiet conversations in my mind
Somewhere around and always easy to find
You are perfect walks in between the restless hours
While I look for time that is mine & yours, we exist in ours

I lose my sense of direction every single time
But simply put you are reasons that I sometimes forget to rhyme
These imperfections in an imperfect world ask for more
Simply put I am summer wind through the open door

Day 362: Let me Fly

Chances are if you have read me early onward by now you know that I like to write when I travel, especially about the travel. Not because I think it is liberating as always but because I think that there is something very special about a traveling heart and soul. Something that finds pause among a crowd of people, one who is listening to stories . These people gazers and the illusioned alike, these concerned ones and the ones aloof from the world, come together and it is in the companionship of a diary that I make these journeys as I write back to you.

Let me Fly
Let me be close to you and yet let me fly
Let me borrow these wings even if I know not why
Dream as though thoughts they form without a pause
Till I found what I am looking for , maybe just the right cause

Let me sail into the wind, the sea, or whatever way I may go
I will draw lines on deserts and beaches the only way I know
While these thoughts in my head like travelers diary today
Will choose to get filled almost written in its own way

I am looking for stories that are quiet for now
They are packed in my mind and in my suitcases somehow
I carry them with me from one end to the next
The traveler writes and his world never rests

Yet those who will come to me, I will ask them "let me fly"
Let me come back just after more time has passed, if only a while
I have roadmaps I don't look at and yet I will not get lost
I am traveler at heart, a storyteller at best, looking for a cause

Day 361: Bitter Sweet

I never had quite a dilemma writing a poem and then struggling for just the right words to include. It is one of those moments when an obvious contrast is not so obvious to your mind. I wonder if I am taking these long pauses for a reason, have I planned them in my head or am I slowly changing thoughts as they form in time as I write. Whatever the reason maybe, I know this one was a tough one where I had to decide the favorable or unfavorable taste that I want to leave with or maybe combine them into something simply bitter-sweet for you.

Bitter Sweet
Come take a walk with me into the unknown
Come dream of things we are yet to make our own
Feel these drops of flavor that stay with you
Telling a story if you choose to find or maybe write one too

What is bitter and what is sweet?
Are they the same to you and me?
Or are they transformed desired freshly plated
They are thoughts that are quiet, they are the unstated

Perhaps candy coated shells that hide
They are prelude to an aftertaste that survives
Yet reminders of things that for a brief moment stay
From sunrise to the end of hours this day

In time I will find, that from which I will learn
Where you could taste writings & thoughts you could discern
While the bitter and sweet will blend into just one
And I will leave you with words, perhaps recipes, only half done 

Day 360: Wandering Wanderers

Not all wanderers wander and it is the nature of travel. It is the nature of people to feel the need to roam and be lost and yet fall in love with nostalgia of just the same. I am amused by the need to travel, the notion of the wandering wanderers and while I look for no subtle hints of where to go next, I am fascinated by all. I am in the lost farewell at the airport you say, I am in the bus tickets you keep folded in your shirt pocket sometimes, I am maybe the directions you ask a stranger when lost and maybe maps  that you never use. In the wilderness of the world I pay an ode to you the wanderers who live in journeys every single day. While the whole worlds finds a place to be , you refuse to stay.

Wandering Wanderers
Why would I worry about tickets I am yet to buy?
Choose destinations before knowing if I could fly
I would wander without knowing I am a wanderer at heart
Just looking for places to go and waiting to start

For those who are lost among the familiar places
Who are forgotten and remembered in the everyday faces
Traveling home or far away from one
We have started to fade, but we have only begun

Am I a wandering wander at heart, are you one too?
If I follow no maps and directions, will you follow through?
For now I have no good answers; just questions on my mind
Why being lost is hard and yet is the easiest thing to find

In words that travel far and some that echo back
I am keeping notes of all the things of which I lost track
While we may all come and go, we will leave a trace
While the wanderers who wander, try to find their own place

Day 359: Words we Mean

For the next one week I will try to write perhaps the last week of writing before the project that ran a little over a year comes to 365 poems and a year or more of poetry writing. I have been asked by many about what I learned and though I cannot comprehend in the full complexity the nature of that, I have learned in bits and pieces. I have learned in good and bad times, in the best and worst possible of time and in hope and also in despair. I guess one thing I can say is that the ideas and things that keep moving me have never run out and maybe only slowed just a bit when I wasn't paying any attention. I guess it all comes down to doing something because you need to, and because these are the only way and words I can reach without knowing. These are the words I mean and for the last week they are with you hidden waiting to be seen.

Words we Mean

If either one of us knew
Time we collected & of moments so few
If all was written out into your heart
While we collected scratch space right from the start

Till the end of endless days were reached by just the two
We would walk endlessly and find places to go
I would wait till our writings like flavors of food
Would taste & feel different as much as they could

But these familiar spaces we walk between
The green grass and sunshine that grazes your knees
I will pick and choose the colors I need
I will follow no one and yet  I will let you lead

I pause just for a while and write the last 7 days
Because I have written for a year & yet I have much more to say
I pick and choose these things I write about
I am storyteller with last acts as the curtains draw

Day 358: Palettes

While I kept staring at the pencil sketches on the side of my notebook I kept looking outside at the rain outside my window. It smells of a memory that you can go to when you close your eyes. It reminds you of the first time you walked in the rain or maybe reminds you of paper boats that would go to no places. I think in the colors we mixed together in the palette we have painted with only a few while the rest are still waiting for brush strokes to spread them around. My color palette grows in my imagination for now, slowly as we sketch again, come paint with me.

Palettes
Come paint me like the outlines your draw
While you try to recall things that you saw
I will be the sketches in your handbook; for now
Keep drawing with no instructions, not knowing how

These palettes with dried out colors of mine
Have seen much that has passed in the passing of time
While some I have painted on canvases in the background
Important things that have refused to stick around

How do we capture a thought or a memory?
Is it fresh when it forms and nostalgia to be?
Or are we painting sketches from rough outlines
Things that we remember and the ones that we define

I am the restless boat on your wall, resting by the sea
I will be tied to nothing but the waves that are set free
While time will pass on and I will capture just today
In pictures and sketches and writings in my own way

Day 357: Sketches Here

I always feel that our notion of carrying memories are similar to when we travel to conferences with posters, locked in poster tubes. Wrapped somehow as we carry them in our mind. The idea was that the poster tubes they grow and we keep sketching and drawing new things onto the canvas. We trace walks we took, we think of moments we share and probably find inspiration scribbled somewhere. As I wrap up one of the conference here in Boulder, I keep thinking about this staring at my very own poster tube. In the hope of more things I keep writing, maybe adding a few thoughts of my own to the days that pass by. The airport windows loom with sunshine and yet it feels just a little cold as though the city waves goodbye.

Sketches Here

My poster in the tube it lay
I watched the sun flickering on and off
I kept wondering about things to say
And hoping some will get through to the top

I was moving around in bed sheets
Hoping a few more hours of the day I would cheat
While the sunlight grows stronger for now
It escapes outside my window somehow

These pencil sketches of people that I know
Some who remember me and some I will draw
As relentless as my travels may seem
I have yet to go these places where I may have once been

Rest for now my friend you have come home
Or maybe just places you don't feel alone
While the rest of us come and go
There are some who leave traces you don't even know 

Day 356: Chocolat

Some of the sweetest things in life are often indeed like chocolates sweet and bitter, blended and tempered and handled carefully. They are sweeter still in my hot chocolate mug and as they are in the pieces I unwrap one at a time. In whatever shape or way, in hope and in dismay I find them better than comfort food or maybe something I would eat everyday if I could. But why lie maybe I do get the steal the taste every now and then and may that's all I writing about, wishing I had hot chocolate instead of ink in my pen.

Chocolat
I am only in the sugar coated wraps of my mind
Sweet tastes and chocolates that I can find
While reminders that warm memories are tempered too
They are aftertastes some for me and some for you

Why make bets on things you cannot see
Why wish upon things and then set the thoughts free?
Keep the hope they are things that manage to stay
Some that are persistent even if they seem to slip away

These questions that I am sometimes asked to frame
The bigger ones that are different but not the same
Things that encompass everything I know and do for now
So I keep coming back to the drawing board somehow

My chocolate chip cookies or biscuits whatever may
They are things I keep in jars hoping they would stay
While some things they drip like hot chocolate drinks
On the edge of my tongue & my seat, while I wait for you to blink

Perfect reminders of sweet things maybe hard to come by
So I write them down anyways, in my words I try

Day 355: I am Rain

It started to rain in the evening as the day ended. The rain it passes by as reminder of things that had been and reminder of things to come.  It treats all equally,  it just pours without reason,  without judgments or without reservation.  It knows of no boundaries that control it,  it rides the free wind.  As you close your eyes it washes both tear and anguish while the lightning reaches a part of you that you hide from even yourself.  I am the relentless,  I am the cold and the warmth of the day.

I am Rain
I am pouring outside your window pane
Between the moments that you find me sane
While I wash away the moments you hide
And bits and pieces of me will somehow survive

I am making a sound outside your door
I am sticking to your roof and lying on your floor
I am still attached to the moving of the day
I am trickling down your back like a drop of rain

I am the puddles you cross over and some that splash
You are putting out fires and leaving behind ash
Yet some things you cannot leave & neither change
Some things as they must, they will simply rearrange

These cold drops on a warmer summer night
These lightning strikes as though putting up a fight
In between the restless days, the hours too will fall
I am rain, I am washing away all

Day 354: Sweet Biscuits

This one was a harder piece to write, I guess mostly because it was looking at something we get to make and yet as something more symbolic. I write this to the sweet biscuits we make, the memories we bake together in the oven. Even on a slow, gloomy and slightly warmer day, my thoughts escape right back to you in the month of May. I am writing this as though hoping that the room smells of that perfect batch we made, the little pieces of warmth I share at the beginning of the day. For all that is unanswered for now, I hope they remain just as they may. Here's hoping it reaches right where it needs to and the aftertaste lasts just a little longer.

Sweet Biscuits
So I packed them all, all that I could fit
And took it on travels; even if just for a bit
Reminded myself of a warmer place
And a smile that lit the day, right on your face

There are words on my footsteps, I write them down
I am hoping to be the familiar, in the box of lost & found
Come find me when you expect me; to be nearby
When you looking for a walk and yet wishing you could fly

I bake memories, as the warm oven it slowly cools
I am sweet biscuits that sit on the tray and on the stool
While the whole house it fills with maybe just your smile
You are thoughts that don't escape & aftertaste that lingers a while

My sweet dreams that I sometimes get to make
These perfect pieces of sweet biscuits that we bake
You lend me a hand and I lend one back to you
We are making memories and keeping them in jars too

Day 353: Funny How

I seem to be slowing down more as I keep writing and edging towards the last few pieces of the blog. I am not sure if this is something I planned for or something that is just triggered in the back of my head. I find a few things funny because of situations lately than anything else, funny how we wish for lost things, funny how we claim to remember dreams that we often forget. In the little things, I wish to write today, I am crawling just a bit and then somehow hoping I will have to leave this incomplete someway. It is funny how we struggle with life and learn from the contrasts at best. For the rest, I leave as though gossips that are untold and in stories that will unfold.

Funny How
Funny how the crescent moon still takes a peak
Looking out for the night, as though waiting for it to sleep
Or how it says goodbye in the middle of the dream
As you lie awake hoping to go right back to the scene

The moments that I climb up and down the stairs
As though looking for something and not knowing where
While the hours come together & the hourglass hits play
Our thoughts as they align, during the passing of a day

Funny how these songs that are stuck in our head
You whistle them time to time and I hum them instead
How life is more of passing that staying still
Holding on to dreams you don't remember at free will

Old friend on the side notes of paper diaries
Are you lost at times just like me?
Or have the crumpled pages and writings remained
Have they somehow refused to simply age

Day 352: Corners

"I guess we all have our own corners" I was thinking out loud. As I said those I felt how true it was in the reality of things, in the open nature of the world we live in. This is not to say that we live isolated in these corners, neither to imply that we close ourselves but to imply we have our own sides to take sometimes. That we are all in visible corners we can all see, we have thoughts we believe, arguments we understand and music we play in these spaces. While it might be a bit naive to try to understand the world as though fragmented when we rather wouldn't, I would like to think these corners are our closest selves that we share with one another.  So I write to the same, out and aloud, thought.

Corners
So we sat on the floor with invisible chaklines
You had your side and somehow I had mine
We each had corners we, even though we didn't decide
While I looked for the spaces that lay unassigned

These little moments that our memories keep
When we smile at random and maybe sometimes weep
These that have touched and formed who we are
Closer than a heartbeat and yet seemingly afar

These shades and colors of the outside sky
While I stare at the myriad, I feel time passing by
Corners that cut close & that are closer to the heart
That are simply reasons, whether close or worlds apart

I will meet you where your mind retreats & we will paint again
Draw sketches of an empty boat, and these we will frame
Why some thoughts that echo deep remain in still waters for now
While we all sit in our corners and figure out the world somehow

Day 351: Fading Light

So though the sun was setting at its own pace, the little glimmer of the light came into my room meant I was following it through the spaces between the window shutters. It was chasing the fading light as the day got longer and wishing for more hours every single day. I have not written for quite a few days now, trying hard but being pushed and pulled with to do lists every single day. I tell myself this should not feel like work, it should still feel like writing, as simple as that. Fading light discusses the idea of our love for contrast and the capability of finding something in all its aspects. As I slowly begin to feel a little better again, I want to capture the fading light as though trying the insane.

Fading Light
I have left the planning and telling of tales
Embraced the wind as I have sometimes set sail
Been clear as the day sky and cloudy too
Rained as the hours pass and sky turned back blue

For I have sailed these winds that blow

Seen parts of me that I do not show

For some things lie uncaptured as it must
I may have lost faith at times but not your trust

In the in between of things little known
I will learn from these pieces that help me grow
While the rest remains unplanned in my mind
Waiting for instructions that it hopes to find

Be just like this wind tonight
Not troubled by the fading light
So that these little things in the day remain
Like loose pages of a book on the floor as they lay

But embrace too; the dark

With its marching half,

The promise of a new light

An excuse to blaze a new path

Catch new winds and write new lines

Day 350: Mr Salesman

Think about being a Salesman for a day, collecting and selling memories back to yourself without charge. Just making the case to reflect back to the little things that you have left behind, maybe nostalgia somehow, maybe pieces you wrote that you don't remember anyone, doodles on the sides of pages or even pictures that speak to you without frames. They are pieces that are kept on displays only in your mind, and yet they are reminded by yourself, the salesman who sells memories back to himself. Who are you waiting for keep going back to the same door, I am just collecting memories scattered on the floor.

Mr Salesman
Mr Salesman and the keeper of dreams
You seem to be selling the world within
Things that aren't on catalog pages for now
They are just on sale from you somehow

Dear philosopher of ages and doodler in my diaries
You are words and sketches that are set free
You are on walls of my mind , like museum pieces on display
Moments where I haven't grown & still get to play

Mr Salesman you are different, like this other side of me
You are my collection of vintage & black and white memories
So you sell them back without price tags in place
Just reminders some rainy days and across some nights

Are you still collecting things to keep
While I count the hours of the day that I dream or even sleep
May intermittent at best you come to my door
While I keep looking back at the things for sale & some on the floor

Mr Salesman you are in the old and the new
You are simple things I try to remember & piece together too

Day 349: By Now

The idea of shared time is unique in some ways, it is independent of planned attempts at being together since these can be moments in your thoughts. While we all get to experience this and wish for it, it is in fiction that is often inspired by real life, that we get to experience it. We get to blur the lines between these notions of fiction and fact and get to relive a few in our heads. Whether we change our comprehensions of things as they are right now, these times that I do not possess are yet alive just like me and written like the rest.

By Now
By now you and I must know
That some things must move & flow
Like ripples in a lake in still waters too
These are things that change for me & you

I seem to be able to hear the dog whistles for now
I am listening intently to unspoken things somehow
They are written in my diaries as I turn the page
They are living free of time and age

By now you must know that I write these songs
Keeping alive the memory of lyrics that are gone
I find solace in humming them during the day
As do you somehow, in the back of your head

You and I on some mornings at home
Will share a cup of coffee together, while being alone
While some will say these are fictions we write
Sharing space and time but only in our mind

Day 348: Smiles at Random

We seem to smile at random sometimes and no matter how inclined we are to think that these are always planned and situational, some of the most memorable ones are the ones you don't think about. Is is the sunshine on a cold day or maybe a memory that came loose and found their own way, maybe a song that came in the back of your head or just a tired mind smiling as you lie in bed? I am amused and amazed and as I find myself watching cartoon reruns on my screen I am smiling perhaps remembering how amusing things were and have been. I like the idea of being able to dig for nostalgia and I also value the randomness when it finds us and makes us smile. So this one is for the smiles at random that have made it to your and my face

Smiles at Random
As we pick and choose hours of this day
I lay claim to a few that come our way
These lines and edges that are in your & my hand
Maybe our roadmaps to familiar places where we land

Why do we smile at random, as we travel alone?
Or stare at the blank screens on our phone
Why things that flee are the ones we wish for to stay?
Our hopes and dreams and stories that come our way

I tell myself that in the back of my head
You are my best of chapters that I have read
So I write a few drafts of my own just in case
Maybe become a few characters or find my own place

These mystery machines and cartoons I never forget
I still keep them as sweet nostalgia in the back of my head
As the little bits & pieces of me travels back in time
I look for a smile, without reason or even rhyme

Day 347: Parking Lots

Probably one of the most random places we miss while going through our day are parking lots. These vast array and spaces with parked cars , some that leave and a few that come in to replace their space. No better example of transitivity among the non living , and yet something that is purely tied to the idea of being calm, being at rest, being parked even if for a bit. Something more permanent even if momentary within that changing nature of these places. Such as some thoughts that come and stay a little longer, that have been known to reserve places and some that like the unclaimed ones collect tickets and refuse to move. For now inspiration truly comes from the strangest places, probably the quieter ones, probably the empty ones at best.

Parking Lots
You are still in my head, like a parked car
Unchanging even if for a little bit, right where you are
These sides of the car door I hold open for you
I am wishing for these thoughts that you have let through

I am puddles of rain that you splash as you slow down
You wait for a while or maybe you sometime turn around
Drive around tirelessly till the end of this day
Without road maps in your heads, without a place to stay

You are still the paint on the sides, the details I rarely miss
While I am the wind on your windshield trying to steal a kiss
Wishful thinking as the song on the radio get loud
You are whispering to me, while I hear the whole world shout

You are still in my head and parked in a parking lot
You are thoughts I remember, even if chances were I forgot
Still places on land , just places to lay down and sleep
Maybe nostalgia that is too sweet and yet the only thing you keep

Day 346: Just Listening

There is a weird connection between those who listen and talk. There are those who feel compelled to do either of the two and then those who are put in situations. I have been late in choosing the last few writings as the year draws to a close at least in a blog and I have no excuse but that I have been trying to listen to things that often do not speak. Whether they are the mood of the day, the rain outside or the often long stretches of hours sitting on a chair. In the quiet moments, I am trying to make sense of the things I claim to know for sure and some that in time become fonder and more expressed. Maybe I am on repeat like the records on a loop but I am listening to you as I write a few, tell me you are talking back too?

Just Listening
To me, you are among the only things I know for sure
You are waves that I can touch and feel on the shore
These things that want me to slow the day down
Not knowing how to keep them for long or even around

So I listen to you like old records on a gramophone
When I am in a crowd but maybe feeling alone
While the lyrics and the music they blend in the rain
We figure out our own address or from where we came.

Just listening for now, to whoever needs to talk
Trying the long road home, with more time to walk
As I mellow just a little bit, trying to pour my thoughts
Strong drinks that stay on the sides of a paper cup

I am dog-eared chapters, folded up in a magazine
The ones you get to read when you find time in between
While the world may need to talk, I listen for now
Writing more chapters, wishing to be bookmarked somehow