Use it!
Not to give you what you want,
but free another heart from pain.

Use it!
As an act of selfless blessing of
appreciation only you can transmit.

Use it!
As a reminder to others of how much they are valued,
some of us have been waiting for a long, long time to hear it.

Use it!
With the sincerity of heart,

Turn it!
Into a selfless Offering!

I have something to show you
A piece of perspective
You, otherwise, would never know
See, through my eyes it went but
From yours it goes and
Words can only get us so far so
We just make more up as we go
I've never felt quite like this before
How would you put it? Um
When understanding looks like a chasm so vast that
Alexandria could be cast down to the firey pits of Mankinds worst shortcomings...
The sad fact is that
We can imagine anything except what it's like to walk in the skin of another.

That night I saw you sail
on wind made into words
on surf breaking in sound
on foam-crested verses
and your song called again
rolled back and called again
in this storm of meanings
wrecks were made of reason
my tears became the rain.

I love to soak in your words
To take them all in, like a sponge
Allow myself to sink heavily

To plunge

All the while feeling weightless

You translate how I feel so exactly
Like you have studied its linguistics
Mine,
and yours
And have mastered it.

Or maybe we’ve spoken the same hidden language all along
One word, to another, to a feeling, to a word,
to a thought, to another
feeling, another word.
Completely understood.
Beyond understood.
Understanding with depth
And sometimes with heights.

We love those heights

I love to soak in your words.

I’ve disappointed heaven
and I can tell you why -
I angered a silver angel
who came down from the sky.

She said, “I'm just a messenger
sent to share the word.”

I stood stone-still and waited
and this is what I heard:

“The coming Judgement will fulfil
- the rightful verdict of the Lord.”

“OK…” I answered, shyly -
in an effort to prompt for more.

But the seraphim started fading away
as if the message finished her chore..

I said, “Wait! I need a message I understand
- you have to give me more.”

The angel's face turned angry
and her tone became unkind -
she flipped her hair like a mean
girl and muttered “NEVERMIND”.

So if you’re messaged by an angel,
I hope you fare better than me
- I couldn’t decipher the message
- and she flew off angrily.

I have said all that's to be said,
And you have listened,
And I have listened,
To the end, gaining what?
Our words are co-absurd,
Inexpressive turds of information,
Dung heap of nonsense,
Good will with perfect enunciation,
But crawling with itch, twitch and head-nod,
In place of mutual understanding,
A babelmist of manners and small talk,
In which we are umbrella-less,
Soggy with positivity,
But it's for the best, I guess,
Have a good day, till tomorrow then?
Finally! Until, tomorrow, we say it all over again.

I don’t accept
I’m not ready
You’re not ready

To say
“I’m sorry”

Because to forgive for me
Is to forget for you

And I’m not ready
For you to forget

I need you to remember
To think
To agonize

As I have remembered
And thought
And agonized

Not as punishment
Sometimes pain is necessary for growth

So I need you to struggle
To grow
To seek to understand

Otherwise your “sorry”
Is a blank canvas
Meant for me to write
The meaning

I refuse to do your labor
To bear this pain alone

I don’t accept
Your “sorry”

this essence has been boiled down to the nearest nothing
and deep down, it feels familiar—

a bird too grown to only now learn to fly,
its wingtips creased the wrong way,
nearly featherless, and weak.
nowhere to go but down
and even then,
impact doesn't promise
resolution.

a poem with too few metaphors,
too much “telling”— we get the point
but SHOW us—
as if listless anger and sadness
it's just a clear-cut visual,
crystalline in memory against all odds.

this essence had been boiled down to the nearest nothing
and deep down, it feels misunderstood.

Me, my wife and our married life

I got married in 2003
Life was young and free
I was 26
and I took the risk

I belong to a joint family
she grew in a nuclear family
Our thoughts were a mismatch
conversations were out of catch

She liked to have an open talk
I was a reserved lot
Her expectations were different
my ideologies were repellent

she was a career woman
I an ambitious man
I persuaded on my own business
her career was left in a mess  

slowly I started understanding
life started turning
she became my good friend
our conversations are in blend

Now our marriage is in teen
Life looks all young and green
With my kids, my dear
Thank you God, my eyes in tear.

Hemang Dani