Pride

Paint a picture 

Pink

Red

Orange 

Yellow

Green

Turquoise

Indigo

Violet

Let the colors speak

A thousand words 

Let them blend 

Create something new 

Let the world see you 

And revel in the fact that you are different 

Change it one day at a time

So that when your grandkid is born

He can have 8 colors to dream in

Not just black and white 

The Bilge Master

The Importance of Fiction

Fiction is a lie they all say

And you should always tell the truth right?

But what happens when the truth is so bitter 

That you have to lie to have it understood?

A book's hero and his actions 

Tell a seven year old kid 

That good wins over evil

That seven year old kid grows up

And keeps reading 

He reads of bloody wars fought for freedom

He reads of deadly disease

He reads of mighty warriors 

He reads of the Dark Knight

He sees in Superman hope 

In Green Lantern will

In Spiderman acceptance 

In Catwoman grace 

He grows some more 

Gandalf teaches him to challenge the odds 

Aragorn to stand and fight 

Atticus tells him that all lives matter 

Ichigo inspires him to protect the ones he loves 

Jimmy Valentine tells him to repent 

Santiago teaches him the art of perfection 

Morpheus gives him the power to believe 

He learns so much from the nonexistent

That one day he realizes

The people in his life who don't exist 

Are the ones who taught him not to lie 

They taught him to view the world as an open book

They told him to have faith

They put in him values 

They drove away his fears 

So the next time someone comes into a library

Make sure you remember 

That fiction isn't lies 

And learning can happen from any source 

The Bilge Master

Tributes

The cards have been dealt 

From the dilapidated deck

The ship you should have been on

Has sailed 

If you miss the train I'm on

You will know 

That I am gone 

Hide your hand 

Hide your hand 

If we could do this waltz 

Differently 

If I had stayed 

And not been led astray

If you hadn't pledged yourself

To the Jesus of Suburbia

And if our son

Had been one of rage, not love

What then? 

Fools in the garden

Dream on while they can 

Fools on the hill aren't liked

By those who don't know how 

To listen to music 

This is our last waltz 

And yes, it should last forever 

For with you I feel that I could stay 

In love forever and a day 

And I wanna know what it's like 

On the inside of love 

Before it's too late 

And I'm lying on a concrete bed 

The Bilge Master

A Note to Myself: A Guest Post by Sanchari "Grizzly" Mukhopadhyay

Sanchari Mukhopadhyay is a Human Resources professional. After saving the day at her full time job, she takes up healing through words at night. She has her own blogspot and dabbles in poems, blogs and short stories. When she is not doing either of these, she is binging on Masterchef. Please welcome her to From Life to Me folks!

The Bilge Master

Warning: Mature language used. Do not scroll down if offended easily

I remember you; crying over a stolen pencil.

I remember you; lamenting over a broken heart.

I remember you; rejoicing over your successes

I remember you; celebrating small wins

I remember you; falling apart the first time you felt betrayed

I remember you; picking yourself up piece by piece

I remember you; seeking constant validation

I remember you; not giving two fucks about people’s opinions

I remember you; trembling with fear of public speaking

I remember you; giving kickass solo presentations

I remember you; being closed off and insecure

I remember you; being vulnerable and selective

I see you; all grown up now, so far ahead of everything that never mattered anyway

I see you; bloomed beautifully, a tad broken here and there but doing alright

I see you; observing everything, coping up with every minuscule change and taking it in your stride

I see you; having better control of your emotions now, knowing when to push and when to pull back

I see you; still unforgiving, still loving

I see you; learning to love yourself and knowing your demons better

I see you; still using dark humour as a coping mechanism

I remember all of you; I see all of you; I love all of you

Last Goodbye (Meetings)

I just came back 

From saying goodbye 

To everything that was us 

And the things that were not 

The house feels dead without you

The artificial flowers in the hall

Seem to have wilted 

I feel old...so old

You will remain as old as the hills

That have been carved out naturally

You leave behind a fragrance of your own

You leave behind a crumpled dress 

From the last time we made love 

You have made my life a bag full of yesterdays

You have shown me the nature of sadness 

Amid the noise pollution of today

I will still live in this house 

I will still make coffee 

Eat a bagel

Walk the dog 

But I can't get used to living 

Without you by my side 

It's a lie when they say

You fall in love

You don't, you don't 

You rise like the sun

But even the sun sets, so it can rise 

But I guess I've flown too high

On the wings of something that can't be quantified

And like Icarus, it's time to fall

The Bilge Master

Age

Fifteen and the guy on the football team

Seventeen looking for a fight 

Eighteen, getting drunk legally

21 ways to sing 21 Guns 

26 and looking for love 

32 in the blink of an eye 

35, insatiable wanderlust leaking out of every crack

In the heart that was broken at age 9

Someday it's 40 but you're not alone 

At 50, you're sleeping soundly 

When you reach 68, you wanna stop this train

Yearning to be a teen again

Until at 80, you can't see

And by the time you turn 100

You return to being a microscopic cog in a macroscopic machine

The Bilge Master