Ravaged

Ravaged
By Munish Sharma
Edited by Liam Ford


Some love cannot pass the test of fate
It is too fragile, it cannot bear the weight.
Yet love is given birth by hope
And like a mother to a child it nourishes its growth.
So we begin to dream and in those dreams
We see things that might come to be;
Moments under the moonlight, kisses in the rain,
Or when they say, “I have never felt this way…”
However to find true love,
One must be willing to fall.
Reality, the unflinching father,
Tests us to see what our love can battle.
And if by chance you fall,
You start to question what it means to you at all.
So we emote feelings once love is lost,
To learn what we can from the pain.
I too loved someone.
I loved them more
Than I could ever admit.
A love so strong
That it made me sick.
I loved someone.
But this is not that story,
But of how that lost love transformed me.
Wake… wake… Hear the river flow.
Wake… wake… Feel the breeze blow.
Wake… wake… Hear the birds sing.
Wake… wake… It is time to begin.
I have run all the way back to the start,
To the place where you first touched my heart.
The beauty of the place remains the same,
But the aura has changed.
It is no longer ours…
Maybe it never was?
The pillar-like trees,
That seem to hold up the sky,
The crystal clear stream
That showed our dreams,
The calm breeze
That brought my heart ease,
And all the priceless poetry
That made my heart dance for thee…
That life has spent its last breath,
And now there is nothing left.
So here I lie, wishing for life to drift away,
Deep into the stream that once held our dreams.
Oh, how I wish I were blind, for I cannot
Remove you from my sight.
Your parting has ravaged the endless sky,
Plundered the fertile earth, sucked the river dry...
And all you did is say goodbye.
You have left me like this.
The same energy you used to whisk me away
Has now made me want to throw my life away.
I do not want to bear this separation;
I wish I did not care for this situation.
This heavy heart of mine attracts gravity in another way.
It is no longer open to the sky,
The tears in my eyes stop me
From holding my head up high.
This heavenly place is where our love should have grown,
But now it will forever remind me that you are not my own.
The birds’ songs have begun to sound like hideous cackles,
The odour of the earth has become decrepit and foul,
And from a distance evil begins to howl.
The darkness creeps
And soon it will consume me,
It will slither in to my soul
And devour my heart whole.
My body is seething
Like a demonic being.
I have been poisoned by your love,
And although I have stopped it
From entering my veins,
Much of it still remains.
I beg for the end,
For I feel the darkness coming in.
Shhh...
The enemy speaks,
The enemy deep
Inside of me.
My dear girl
Give me your will
Let me taste
The nectar of your ill.
It is your own fault
You feel this way.
Who told you
Love is great?
Let me show you
What really matters
Let your body succumb
To lustful desires.
Drink the juice of lust,
What good is in living
So virtuous?
Let me tell you
The one thing
That is true:
No one will
Ever love you.
Let these words
Creep into your soul
And there create
A gaping hole.
It must be me… It’s not true
There is something wrong with me… It's not true
It is true.
No one will ever
Love me.
No one
Will ever
Love
Me.
From a distance
There is a glimmer,
So faint at first,
That believing in it
Makes me feel worse.
Maybe there is more to me than you,
But the glimmer grows stronger
And starts to stay longer;
I will be stronger.
It slides its way through the dark.
Could it be here to mend my heart?
In love there are goodbyes.
Fragile things should never be cherished,
For one day they too will perish.
One crushing defeat after another,
Oh, the things we will do for a lover.
We will change our whole scope on life
To make things right. We will forget
What we refuse to give up,
For a warm and soothing touch.
And in the end we may part;
Do I choose to stay in the dark?
Look at me in my melancholy sadness;
I finally understand what my internal wrath is.
The darkness in my heart
Tries to rip me limb from limb.
This is the prison heartbreak condemns me in.
The evil in my mind tries to torture me at times,
But something has begun to change.
Maybe things are better this way?
Love is like an infant child.
There is so much work to be done,
So much time needed to grow.
Love needs to crawl before it can walk.
Love is four letters, it takes four strokes to pen,
But it may take four lifetimes to comprehend.
Our love may have past,
But that does not mean
Love does not last.
I can blame the world
For my misfortune
Or I can love again.
I can believe that no one will love me
Or I can believe it all starts with loving me.
I can spend my life waiting for an unspoken moment
Or I could let the moment speak.
To the untrained eye, I am still the same,
But who can rejoice in pleasure without pain?
Look a little deeper, past the flesh,
Realize that it does not do me justice.
Love is something
We mortals should not resist.
Yet there is much more to love
Than romantic consequence.

Arabian Kisses, Journey, The Boy

Arabian Kisses

Look at my view, what would you see?
Is it the sea dancing with the sand?
The fishing boats upon the sea at night creating their magical city of lights?
The sea breeze flirting with the palm trees?
Or would you look up to the star covered sky and be overcome with the omnipotent all?
Yes I am surrounded by all this beauty, yet the only beauty I see is her staring back at me.
Romance has once again found me, love it seems is all that surrounds me.
Holding each other in a divine embrace will be the only memory needed from this heavenly place. If magic moments leave us with a sense of awe and transcendence, then let this be the greatest illusion of all.


Journey

Sea green colours
Visions of palm trees
Star crossed lovers
My dreams get the best of me

Sandals in hand
Feet in the sand
Being on a journey
Exploring the beat inside me

Fixing the skin I wear
Turning my smog to clean air
Breaking shackles
Getting rid of the evil and pain

This sacred warrior roams free
No longer in captivity


The Boy

There is a boy named Shushi exhaustedly hanging from the side of his canoe made of large tree branches. This canoe is bound together by yellow rope; his paddle, two pieces of wood. He is hunting for treasure. Profitable treasure.
Shells.
Shells to sell to tourists in the lovely town of Pondicherry. He has been doing this all morning. Paddling off the shores of the Indian Ocean, diving into the ocean and searching for the best shells he can find. He tells me he wants to be an adventurer and sail the seas.
So he searches for shells to sell to some day buy a real boat, and live his great adventure.
Watching Shushi tirelessly search for his shells I pray he finds a chest full of gold and gems. After all don’t all adventures deserve a tale or two?

Short Story of No one- Greg Saunders

In the blink of an eye Greg Saunders watched his ex-wife remarry.
In that moment, that split second, he thought about killing himself.
He saw himself sitting on his second-hand couch, smoking his last cigarette, taking a shot of Jameson’s and then putting a bullet through his head... but then he thought he could live. That he could take that pack of cigarettes in his pocket and throw it in the trash. That he could go home and get rid of the damp second-hand couch.
That he could change.
Mr. Saunders wouldn’t have known it then, but if you asked him now he would say that was the moment he woke up. Woke up from playing a victim, woke up from caring about how “right” he was and how wrong everyone around him was. Woke up from his egotistical slumber.
As his ex-wife kissed her new husband, Greg Saunders also started a new beginning. Yes a single tear, maybe a few more, did roll off his face as the woman he called the love of his life walked down the aisle with what she called her soulmate.
He thought how Love has so many other words to describe it, but when you get down to it, Love is the only word that matters.
So the love of his life with her soulmate in hand jumped into a 1969 Corvette and rode off into a nearly perfect day in a completely perfect moment.
Greg Saunders smiled, threw his cigarettes in the trash and began to walk with new purpose.
Perfection had found him that day too.

In the Toronto Airport

In the Toronto airport, while waiting for my flight back home, I struck up a conversation with an Indian man in his 60s. He was on his way back to Calgary from India. Excited by this, I told him that I too was coming home from India. I casually asked him what he was doing in India. He told me he was in Amritsar (Punjab) with his wife because his niece was getting married. He had to come back earlier for work (he runs his own pharmacy), but his wife was staying a few weeks longer.
My family loves her, she is the eldest so everyone listens to her. She is very loving and giving.” He smiled with joy after the comment. I gave a little smirk.
“How about you? Why were you in India? Getting married?” Insert awkward laugh from me.
Then, and I don’t know why, I lied.
I told him that I actually was going to move to India for work, but that I am in love with a woman in Vancouver and that I am going back to ask her to marry me. A romantic lie yes, however what he told me next was a little crazy.
“Sounds familiar,” he said.
“Oh really? You know someone?”
“Me,” he said.
Honestly, I was not prepared for that answer. He told me that many years ago he went chasing after a young lady in Vancouver. She was white. He told me that after he finished school his family thought it best for him to come to Canada because of the better opportunity at the time.
“It was the ‘70s, so basically the thinking was I would make more money and help the rest of the family,” he told me -- which is a very common story of that time.
So he came to Canada to become a pharmacist and that’s where they met.
“Her name was Michelle, Michelle LeClair.” He went on: “Her family was originally from Quebec, but her parents moved to Calgary.” Her father worked in oil.
They met during school orientation. “She thought my accent was funny; I told her it was attractive,” he joked.
Slowly and secretly they started to see each other and fell in love. “Like all young people do,” he grinned. Trust me this guy was like an old Indian Paul Newman or how I would envision an old Indian Paul Newman to be.
They dated for almost two years and then midway through university she switched schools and moved to Vancouver -- something about UBC being better for her career.
Of course, he was heartbroken.
Of course, I was sitting next to this man thinking about how my lie got him telling me his love story, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was supposed to hear it.
“That summer I felt like I was in one of those Bollywood love stories, very sad, and listening to sad Bollywood songs,” he said.
“What did you do?” I asked, like a five-year-old.
“I jumped on a bus and went to Vancouver!”
The scene started to form in my head. I could see this handsome Indian man sitting on a bus with a flannel shirt and bell bottoms while Love Somebody by the Bee Gees played in the background.
“I went to the UBC and started looking for her. I had not seen her in months so I was very excited! Finally I see her in the cafeteria.”
My heart was screaming about this romantic movie moment.
Then he said: “I go to her and she is surprised to see me but very happy, and in that moment I don’t know what came over me, but I ask her to marry me.”
“Young love can make us crazy!” he added. I was sitting at the edge of my seat waiting for him to finish.
“We walked outside and talked and she said that we couldn’t get married because we are from different cultures and her parents would never accept me and that it was best if I go back to Calgary.”
Crushed.
Here I was starting to think that his wife in India is a woman named Michelle. That two people could look past what makes them different and saw how similar they were. That they fell in love and that’s all that mattered.
But no. He jumped back on a bus the next day and came back to Calgary, heartbroken. He told me he finished school, went back to India, got married to his wife Kiran, had kids, and lives a very wonderful life.
“So I hope she says yes to you,” he joked, while I laughed awkwardly, feeling bad that I lied and feeling bad that there was no happy ending.
“So tell me her na—“
“That’s such a sad story!”
Yes he did ask her name, and yes I did talk over him.
“Not entirely,” he said, “I wouldn’t have met my wife if she would have said yes.”
I gave him a half-hearted smile and after a few silent moments he told me what I think is the best part of the story.
“About two years ago, I went to a wedding in Vancouver. A friend’s son was getting married to a white girl... And guess who her mother was?”
“Michelle?” I sounded like a teenage girl.
He nodded yes and my heart exploded. He told me that he went up to her, spoke to her and asked her about life. She said that she finished school and became a teacher, met a very good man and had three kids; her daughter who was getting married was the middle child. After a little more banter he finally asked her: “How did you let her daughter marry an Indian?”
She told him that one day there was a knock at her door, and when she opened the door she saw a young Indian man standing there.
“But all I could see was you,” she told him.
The boy had come to ask for her daughter’s hand in marriage.
“She told me that she never met him before because her daughter thought her husband and her would not approve, and her daughter ended the relationship months before. She believed it wouldn’t work because they have different backgrounds.”
He went on: “She said that when he asked her all she could say was yes, because she wanted her daughter to be happy with whomever she chose to be with.”
He was very happy to hear that and he told me that as she was about to leave, she turned to him and told him that although her husband was a wonderful man, he was too. He grinned at me and my heart went wild!
After a few pleasantries Sagar left to catch his flight.
I sat there thinking about what I just heard. Ideas like the laws of Karma and lessons we must learn kept going through my head. I thought that Sagar loved Michelle, but their love story was a lesson for Michelle, who thought that they couldn’t work; that you have to try and give your all in love, because our failures in love can be our or someone else’s lesson; that all stories of love, no matter what ending they may seem to have, will give birth to other love stories, and because of that there will always be a happy ending in our future.
But most of all I thought I gotta get back to Vancouver to marry a woman. ;)

One Poem of India

Strait out of India with a soul on fire.
prosperity blooming like a lotus flower.
From meditation to yoga with a new definitions of God.
Found heaven in my skin no more feeling odd.
A new Deva emerges, does that sound blasphemous?
Believing in ones self should not come with a ceiling built over it
If me gives birth to we, and we teaches me.
Then like a eternal circle at all ages we are pupils.
No longer will I live in one way of intellgience.
The Galaxy inside me has had it's own big bang.
No Theory is needed I understand theI am.

Found on the back of a page.

Only as enlightened as my weakest link.
So if I choose to run and hide my karma will not die.
Forever in servatude that is what love is.
It's simple to live when it's simple to give

Eye must grow, the great Eye, the one that slumbers
Be devoide of fear if it rips the world asunder.
Heal our Great Mother.
No longer will I be this limited body
"I" am pure energy of the Galaxy.
So many endings my divine sight has seen.
Yet this eye also awakes new cosmic beginnings.