asthadwivedi

[asthadwivedi]

[asthadwivedi]

[asthadwivedi]

//Sweet Nothings?

-astha

What you wanted from me was "nothing"

Oh Honey! Gotta give it to your baseless audacity

So why did you rob me of "everything" I've ever known,

Taking things i didn't even know I had:

Hope, nonsensical constructs of "romance" invented by some old lonely sad man

And now I'm putting up wanted signs for my (read our) childhood, or maybe just a stroke of warm innocuous intent

Yeah I know, I've been told I get caught up in this juvenile fantasy world i create

So may I borrow just one cup from the ocean of everything glittery, naive bullshit starry eyed ambitions of caring community I lent out to you interest-free?

Or maybe i can crash in any corner of your thoughts for tonight

Any dusty, re-used couch would suffice as long as you acknowledge you made this mess and it exists

Haunting both you and my younger self.

Or you can do your usual: pile it in your attic of Sweet Nothings

_____________________________________________

'On the way home

I wrote a poem

You say, "What a mind"

This happens all the time

Industry disruptors and soul deconstructors

And smooth-talking hucksters out glad-handing each other

And the voices that implore, "You should be doing more"

To you, I can admit that I'm just too soft for all of it

They said the end is coming

Everyone's up to something

I find myself running home to your sweet nothings'

[asthadwivedi]

//LAST CALL TO EVE//

We're too broke, too millennial, too young, too crazy

Too mad genius artist for the suits to write about us

Not until they find our note when we're gone

We wear too much clothes for them to cast us

And we have too much voices for families to buy us

But I keep this secret code of club to women like us inside my blouse

When you reach the door you'll be greeted by a witch resembling me

And you'll need to chant all your sins and believe they're

Your good deeds in chains with forced masks if you want in

You'll be asked to leave your pouch of tears, book of fears by the door

To shed your human skin and become the goddess

Who breathes fire and consumes them alive

Join in as we rehearse final murder plan

Act it out, draft it in, paint it all, call it art

Look at the torch we're holding, it is burning on the fossils of our childhood

Take it, let it ignite you and burn the list of your victims to ashes

/NO WONDER WE'RE NEVER OUT OF KOHL/

Repeat those names till the blueprint of our alibi fits on the tip of your tongue

Laugh it off, call it lyrics to the next hit or script

Of the psychological thriller someone left at your doorstep for

They thought you'll be perfect for the psych ward scene

Come, take my hand, the space ship is about to leave

Venus has been calling us for so long now, crying

The vapours have started to settle to form rings now

The moons are not able to unveil the eclipses

Come, we're about to take off to our home

We tried our best. These Martians, they don't deserve us.

We should have stopped at the 286th warning sign

We should have stopped when we came across our gutted bodies wrapped in torn saree

The bleeding vaginas, they called us.

Who were we bleeding for? Why were we bleeding?

We should have thrown our saviour complexes before entering earth

We should have let them die before they killed us.

So let's pick whatever is left of us and go home to mother

We did our best and now they deserve to rot motherless

Take this torch, Eve and hold my hand before it is too late.

But it is too late isn't ? Goodbye sister!

I'll use the last bit of my voice that is left

To pray to God, if he isn't dead yet, that death comes quick

-ASTHA

[asthadwivedi]

Love it when you think that future is bulletproof

That we can keep on winging it detached from any context

That whatever needs to be said or done,

ought to be said, done and Lived Now!

Now? - Yes.

Oh so much obsession with your "carpe diem"

But oh well, I guess you were right;

The aftermath actually is secondary afterall !

//' So testosterone boys and harlequin girls will you dance to this beat and hold a lover close?'

[asthadwivedi]

It feels like Fahrenheit 451 and I refuse to put the hose pipe down , no matter what it takes, to diffuse any and every threat to the freedom of idea, expression.

Because if it weren't for art you would have died with plain canvas in casket begging to have painted all the beautiful, tragic, epic colours of your life witnesses.

Because if it weren't for irreverent satire on the mess that is this world right now, you would have forgotten how laughter is truly your best medicine and might be the only way to navigate through this chaos.

Go dig out the archives , and try imagining a world without a Van Gogh, a Di Vinci, a Mark Twain and remember how they were anything but what their world tagged them to be -Crazy to not mould to command.

[asthadwivedi]

I had started hating the monsoon, nostalgia, starting over, all of the fourteen love songs by one of my favourite artists, most of the food, mirrors, bicycle ride, rose, tea, rose tea, unnecessary lists, my morning and evening stroll rituals, chasing sunsets and etc by last June. But oh, the difference a year can make!

Here I am, still learning from nature how to survive the times of war over and over again. Still wondering how a missile-hit land, after a forest fire, can trust the Sun to give it life and warmth again ?

Still comprehending how the ashes, blood, chocolate wrappers, a lost phone that had a kid's laugh recorded, torn book-leaves, hopes drowning in a disaster hit land-

how do they seep deep into the soil and lay beaten down to metamorphose from death into nurturing bed for seeds to sow, to grow into a Full Blooming Miracle.

Stubborn much?

[asthadwivedi]

And then the thunder said

You've been selling words

Saying that you own them

"Pick whatever you like:

The trending ones are four lettered

Here's the top choice - LOVE

You can use it in place of illusion

The second ones is solid red - LUST

Well, you can use it in place of love

Or maybe just buy - LIES

That can be proxy to both

We also have HOPE, HATE, HELL

Which will stay with you like stains

No matter how many times you wash

Take a handful of BRAVE and SORRY

They come in pair and will cost you five

Although when you see me measuring

You might think that the scale is broken

But it's just that the latter one

Has been used too many times

To be able to weigh the same

And hey, before you go

Don't forget the GOODs

and the BYEs

They also come in pair

But no body knows why"

Yesterday night it rained,

And now your store is a Holi aftermath

All shades of polish washed away

Into a pool of almost beautiful pallete

You see, you kinda overdid it

And now you can't separate the whites (lies)

You pick up the bare words like pebbles

Laying done and naked on river bed after floods

And I'd like to see you getting ripped off

Of the tainted money, back to rags

Haven't you heard, honey?

Words and misery spread like wildfire

Especially when stirred together.

Everyone is asking for refund.

But why are you so surprised finding me

Being the first standing in front of a long queue

[asthadwivedi]

Sometimes when you run, its either towards something or away from somewhere

What's your excuse this time for sprinting in loops?

Let me oblige once again: it's neither.

It's definitely not a great idea in a well of mirrors

and will only land you to your rock bottom

And it is so very tempting to search for cracks in the mirror

So if you don't find any, stop trying inventing dents

Because even if reflections could speak, shout

They surely will never serenade your idealistic idea of you

//A song and a half from a ghost//

[asthadwivedi]

seasons has to be the mood pallette of God

i hear spring knocked on the door early this year

guess she can't wait for us to leave our winter cold regrets and collect butterflies

so, let's get out and hoard everything we can pocket in the gardens

before monsoon storms squander the summertime lovers' plans

why pick bouquet of dandelions over bunch of roses?

well, to trade them with whispers and laughs, of course!

sometimes wilderness don't belong with storms

it's rather more magical to be blown away,

very slowly

[asthadwivedi]

your words never made much sense to me

maybe because I had been reading you in Braille all along

ran my fingers over and over until all that's left was

watermark faded in background

the only upside to this outrageous blindness is

that you get to tap into oblivion,

that you get to watch feelings slip away

from your fingertips to background white noise

Today, I visited my last year's summer playlist and you were barely there

//blessings of a watermark//

[asthadwivedi]

The scariest thing about someone dying from hunger is the lack of blood at the crime scene

[asthadwivedi]

and yet

I think

I can't seperate the idea of you from the memory of you

I think I miss you more than I can actually remember you

And I think I'm ready to write again

Can it please translate to, 'I'm ready to live again' ?

For God knows I had once lived

like I've never lived in all my lives

[asthadwivedi]

just a canvas; not a muse

[asthadwivedi]

Decaying Teabags of Monsoon

I had never seen monsoon sob before

There's nothing romantic

About the crackling horizon

In the twilight sky or the stars

It's just rocks and reflections

Witnessing an apocalypse approach

You stand across the yard blaming raindrops

and not tears for ruining your coffee,

Telling me that our front porch is broken

And I suggest we should patch it up,

Repaint it with your favourite colour,

The shade that I absolutely hate in secrecy

It'll all be alright, as long as we can hide these cracks

You nodded in agreement and replied that

we'd still know exactly where they are though

It'll still be broken no matter what we do,

Unless we replace the foundation all together

I still wonder if you were talking about us

After we are done plucking butterflies

out of linings of our stomach,

where do we go from here?

Maybe let the silence branch out

until the entire house looks like autumn ground

or

we can assign this memory to chamomile tea

and discard it tomorrow so it wont bring up this night.

We can switch to Jasmine , or Rose or anything else.

My grandmother had at least 30 varieties

I think I understand why after 4th flavor now

this has been a very efficient and handy trick so far

we don't have to waste an entire monsoon over a silly fight

just because my medicine stopped working

or I recognize a hidden layer beneath your cologne.

Listen, it is very simple if we let tears blur the cracks

we can lay out our nights and tag each of them

with perfumes, cafes, street lights, bars, cocktails

that's how we have thousand photographs of rainbow days and none of thunder

that's why we have lists of songs we hate and cry to

So which one should we pick tonight?

You choose from the playlist,

I'll go dig up the backyard and get the box

Along with buried hatchet

And once we're done , all we'll be left with is

A fresh ginger tea morning, a decaying tea bag in trash

The playlist of summer we met on repeat, an artist we both hate now

The dead autumn and a new kaleidoscopic monsoon

[asthadwivedi]

When I called you my moon,

The translation was never to

Cause high tides untill my heart floods,

Or Eclipse my Sun leaving me blind, drowning

And now the mirrors' cracks reflect shadows of our ghosts

And you can't heal a shadow with a bandaid, anyway

[asthadwivedi]

Gaslighting is often piggy backed onto defence mechanism;

You told me you're precious to you

And that You is all You have

Maybe that's why you came with a parachute for one

And jumped at the sight of smoke, literally leaving me falling

And there's never any smoke without a fire,

What doesn't kill you makes you a killer;

I brought knives to the gun fight because

I had already carved out all bullets into blades

And empty cannons can do only so much damage as your empty words

You call me stone cold now just because you

can't access wounds to stab into anymore

You call me crazy now just because you lost the key to my thoughts

You call me the worst names now because you can't scratch a face so unfazed

So it's time you put your empty guns down to the floor,

right next to your empty, cruel soul

Because when the gloves come off, masks also follow

And you , my brutal, jejune Lothario, are standing in front of

The founding stone of the kingdom that you tried to burn to the ground

You raised the stakes so high because you held all the aces

But all bets are off so show your hand and walk away from the table

Because what's not yours anymore to abandon is

Precious, and oh! Not just to me.