January 2023

Poem: Time To Come

Poem

I have been in these woods for years now
as I have watched you graze and grow.

Thousand nights, I have spent
creating this spear so vicious…
It’s potency higher than death!

No, I will not to kill and prey you
I will to make you crawl towards me, so I can smell and embrace you

Yes. I have watched you mate and grow,
but that doesn’t concerns me at all
for…in front of my desires,
those events are too small!

You will come to me…by your own will
and lay down in front of me as I feel better than God!

Your smell intoxicates me,
My music is intoxicating you
It’s time to crawl to me now
this is where you belong
My presence is metamorphosing you!

(Edited)

From my book Paranoia.

All Reasoning and No Feeling Makes Life A Dull Thing! (Published in Illumination)

As a kid, I didn’t have access to friends outside school and I wasn’t too friendly with my family members. This meant I had only myself to bond and play with.

My self-bond and self-play included various forms of imaginary fantasies, stories, and games — expressed through various parts of my body and books around me.

It is in light of the latter that I want to share an idea here.


Poem: Stareway to Heaven

Poem

A drizzle,
Under a metallic roof.
Surrounded by,
leaves dancing to an unadulterated tune
Real ones!
Cool breeze…literally
Not contaminated by globules of global fetish
bulbs…too far away.

What else does one need?
While you’re there
Just while you stare
you are not,
A desiring clockwork.

From my book Paranoia

Poem: Thus Spake Spit

Poem

A small light in these dark caves,
for now enough to save from extinction.
Slowly…igniting and turning into a dragon’s breath
I come from there,
the thought of where itself will frighten you of thinking
forever.

The fires will burn and burn…
drift and drift…
on it’s way
burning the heavens itself –
The same heavens
you lust for,
and kneel down or bend over for!

See, you are constructed with codes of geometric perfection
I have been spit due to lack of inclination
if you are an atheist
then I am God
if you contempt on barks
then I am a Dog.
You ascended into the mountains
I descended into the caves,
for you heavens are dearer
for me darkness is nearer.

Soon…when your mountains and heavens have burned
and turned
into thick dark clouds overhead
then…
when you finally see what I see
and shiver at the sight of raw darkness
I Will be your God
and show you that light
and watch as you learn to levitate and rise beyond
and smile at death forever
bless you!

(Edited)

From my book Paranoia


 

Conquering Event Anticipatory Anxiety

anxiety

One small victory in this huge war.

I have written about anxiety before. But today I want to discuss one of its lethal forms called Anticipatory Anxiety.

  • What are events? — Events are occurrences of limited time-span. Life is the sum of events.
  • What kinds of events cause such anxiety in me? —Events that include people or entities I am not comfortable with in the event environment. For example, if the event is a walk in a certain street at night, stray dogs that bark are things I am not comfortable with in that environment.
  • What is common in all those event anxieties? — Something undesired will happen in this event.
  • Personal Examples of Event Anticipatory Anxiety
  • What is the solution? — Try to recall instances of events above where you have been successful in order to wash the traumatic memories and replace them with successful ones.

Conclusion —

  • Event Anticipatory Anxiety is when I have the same anxious feeling while anticipating certain different types of events.
  • Such anxiety is caused by events that include people or entities I am not comfortable with in the event environment.
  • The prevalent thought in all those events is this: Something undesired will happen.
  • This is due to the traumatic memories of true events in the past when the undesired has happened.
  • What is the solution? How to be free from this crap?
    Recall instances of events where you have been successful so that you wash the traumatic memories and replace them with beautiful ones.

Medium Link

The Beginning of the Mobile-Film Journey :Not Me!

This film began the journey of Shot Chitra, a mobile-film project started casually by me and Sanket Dhungel and later joined by Subesh Bhattarai.

Our goal with this project is to have fun shooting short films with our low-battery and low-storage mobile phones. Editing with terrible computers hasn’t been fun though! The satisfaction after publishing them have been euphoric, however.

In the earlier films, we improvised a lot. No screenplays, no stories, no plans – just general ideas. But lately we have started to co-write screenplays. We even wrote one with an AI tool!

At Sundarijal filming Be Brave!

At Dhulikhel during the shoot of The Selfish Game!

The one linked here is called Not Me! 

Channel: Shot Chitra
Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRLhyx13iivPr7LGVz1aCrw

PLEASE COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE and let us know how you liked this project of ours. Let us know if you would want to join in on the fun too!

Astra Album – Experimental Electronic Sound/Music. Composed in 2015/16

This is an album I created in 2018. My goal with it was to experiment with static noises, funny voices and digital plugins in order to relax and explore my mind and feelings. I was listening way too much of Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Tanpura sounds of Indian Classical Music,  Faust, Early Darkthrone, Burzum.  HAPPY MIND EXPLORING!

Track Listing:

00:00 Tunnel

07:13 Tikr

11:20 Slumber Seek

29:02 Noonpus

35: 09 This and Nothing More

39:55 The View From Kirkoffskoff

Poem: Sky and Clouds

It was a sunny morning
and so you planned to bask all day
when a lusty cloud came
from who knows where
and made it dark:
Now you shiver in pain.

You write these words
They go talk with gods
The gods get it
and make it sunny again!

Though the cloud seemed gone
You see it in the horizon
The damage has been done!

You have to be a Rshi:
Compose mantras and chant them full time.
And you have to plough your field
Chant and plough
Chant and plough.

You can see some clouds out there
But the sky is clean up here
You can’t un-see the clouds now
Chant and plough
Chant and plough.

It is night
but it’s too bright.
You want that cloud now
So you write different words
They go talk with same gods
The gods get it
and bring the cloud back again!

and the next morning…
you repeat it again.

The gods are greedy
The gods are crazy
They want sweeter words
They want them all the time
They want to play
They play with you all the time
But you don’t mind
Because you need a clear sky in the day
and some clouds in the night.
You are greedy
You are crazy.

You go through all this
to keep them near
To eventually reach beyond
them and there.


 

Poem: Me and Them

It’s evening and you sit here with your laptop in your room
while the world rushes home closing their desktops at work.
You’ve always been this way. You realize.
You and the world have always been this way.

When you were a kid,
while they learnt real politics outside with their imaginary guns
You learnt imagination inside because you couldn’t understand the politics of the world!

When you grew up,
while they played kings and slaves in streets, classrooms and playgrounds
You played god and designed and destroyed sportsgrounds and movie-sets inside your head.

But you were not as strong or stylish as you present yourself here
You were weak, bleak and you were scared of their breath
Not because they spat fire. But because they stank!
But you couldn’t ignore them because your horizon was still a virgin
And so you sat with them and even tried to impress them!
Even their bad breath you thought was a norm
So you stopped brushing too…
You were not at all as strong or stylish as you present yourself here.

It’s always been this way.

And then when you reached an age where boys made girls cry
You yourself cried in a classroom.
And then you were stared-at, kicked, teased, yelled-at:
By insecure blokes who saw nothing when they looked at themselves in the mirror.
You didn’t understand then that their expression towards you
was their expression towards themselves
You couldn’t understand that because you didn’t play with them outside.
And now they look at their watches at work, nervously waiting for the time they get to go back home
while you get to sit here calmly in your room writing magical words like these that turns them into whatever pleases your mood.

You’ve always been this way the world and you
First, the world throws shit at you and then you throw the world into shit.
And now the world plays king-king down there at Troy
While you play god-god up here at Mount Olympus!


 

Poem: Kush Galli

Composed at some point in 2016. This is about an alley near my home named Kush Galli where I frequently went to smoke.   

Never knew when this passage became a rest-path
A path of contemplation, solution.

You stood there, never knew from when
and lighted one cigarette after another
conquering one thought by another
While you always gazed around in reluctance.

It has become a house now,
yet always trying to illustrate a reason to make it home.

Sometimes,
You get there after a long while,
assuming you have got a license.
Other times,
You try to hide there, yet go there to hide.

Oft,
you act as a passer-by smoker
Yet, a ring of smoke you leave over…

If smokes could carry thoughts and desires
then may be,
someone can smell it
and inhale what I had to exhale…


 

 

 

10 Pieces Of Poetry That Broke My Mental Frontiers

what is poetry

Poems: Power of words to those who like to both think and feel.

Poetry, if done and read right, can thrust your mind (states, perception, beliefs, etc.) into previously unvisited zones at such breakneck speed that in no time you find yourself changed beyond even your own recognition.

This is largely because of the concise nature of the art: Mental States, Environment, Perceptions, Opinions, Worldviews, beliefs, knowledge, etc. compressed into a few words with analogies and non-linearity. They are like mighty bombs that can decimate any walls, bridges, boundaries and frontiers — If done and read right!

I say all this because I have had a strong and healthy relationship with poetry. Myself having published two books of them.

They have changed me, shaped me, destroyed me, designed me. They have helped me come out of many misery and sufferings. They have shown me many beauties and feelings. They have helped me break shackles and relationships. They have helped me build relationships. They have helped me explore, experiment. They have opened many closed doors. They have closed many open doors. They have broken emotional and mental frontiers allowing me to feel and see things I never would have even imagined existed.

Here are 10 pieces/sentences/lines/stanzas of poetry that have broken my mind’s frontiers.

Lunatic: Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

You’re clever, quick with words,
your exact equations are right forever and ever.
But in my arithmetic, take one from one-and there’s still one left.
You get along with five senses, I with a sixth.
You have a brain, friend, I have a heart.
A rose is just a rose to you-to me it’s Helen and Padmini.
You are forceful prose, I liquid verse.

This extract from a famous poem by Nepali poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota I read more than a dozen years ago, fueled me with so much rebellious energy that I still move with the same stock.

To break any frontiers, you need energy. You need constant energy and force. These few words did it for me. This is mental poetry at its best and finest.

Alone: Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

This poem connected me with myself.

I started seeing differences between me and others. I started seeing things in me I had never seen. I started accepting myself like never before. I started exploring my desires. I began the process of knowing myself. I ceased to be afraid. I was finally proud of who I was. I developed self-respect. I developed strength. I discovered myself.

1: Sad Toys, Takuboku Ishikawa

By Unknown author — http://www.echna.ne.jp/~takuboku/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2713139

When I breathe,
This sound in my chest
Lonelier than the winter wind

Japanese poet Takuboku Ishikawa died of tuberculosis. This particular poem expresses a lot. It grabs you by your outward looking head and rotates it enough so that you can look at yourself. Here and now.

There were bright glowing stars in my frontier, but after I read this…the direction of my frontier changed and I saw black holes.

the wine of forever: Charles Bukowski

the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

I could have chosen a lot of Bukowski verses but I chose this particular stanza from this particular poem because with it I accepted that there were and are people in this world whom you can trust. In my case, those were people who wrote words. Although I consumed a lot of words in my lifetime, at one point I was stuck with mistrust and paranoia towards everything. This one helped me break that wall.

Also, Bukowski’s writing has carried me not only over things that claw and tear but also over many things that pinch and sting.

A Question: Robert Frost

voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

I was taking life too seriously when I stumbled upon this poem. This helped me tone down the seriousness and smile at the absurdity of existence.

Worldly Wisdom: Friedrich Nietzsche

Do not stay in the field!
Nor climb out of sight.
The best view of the world
is from a medium height.

While Nietzsche’s entire bibliography is a string of dynamite that knocks down frontiers after frontiers, this particular poem from The Gay Science gave me the perspective of perspective. I may look at all the frontiers I can and analyze them, get drown in them — yet is my view of the frontier itself proper?

Where’s the poet: John Keats

Where’s the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
’Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan
Or any other wonderous thing
A man may be ‘twixt ape and Plato;
’Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion’s roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger’s yell
Come articulate and presseth
Or his ear like mother-tongue.

I had written a Medium story about this a little while back:

What Is A Poet? — According To John Keats

A Poet is a complete Human!

fradesh.medium.com

This poem is crucial for me because I like poetry. Reading, Listening, Writing, Spoken, whatever. But, my mind likes confusion.

While I yearned to consume/compose poetry and be a poet, my mind told me that poets were things of the past, waste of a life and things of no impact and substance. Be a king. Kings are the best. Be a businessman. They are the best. Be a pilot. Be a minister, etc. I listened to my mind for a long time. Not completely! Else I wouldn’t have discovered this particular poem.

I could finally see myself reading and writing compressed words and be proud of it.

The Best Time Of The Day: Raymond Carver

Cool summer nights.
Windows open.
Lamps burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love

these summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one who can reach us now.
Or ever.

I discovered Carver when I had too many things going on inside my head and too many desires flowing inside my chest. I was emotionally and mentally confused. At my mental frontier, there was this big fucking question-mark laughing at me all the time. My personal life was disastrous. I was always anxious. I wanted to read everything, watch everything, be everywhere, be everything. Of course, this made me explore a lot of poetry too!

And I discovered Carver and this poem.

This poem demolished the question mark and showed me through tremendous magnification the real thing worth aspiring for.

Tune: Calming Wind And Waves: Su Shi

Listen not to the rain beating against the trees.
Why don’t you slowly walk and chant with ease?
Better than saddled horse I like sandals and cane.
Oh, I would fain, in a straw cloak, spend my life in mist and rain.
(From Selected Poems and Pictures of the Song Dynasty)

The desire for power and ways to get powerful were the furthest my thoughts were managing to reach at one phase of my life. This particular verse from the 11th century Chinese poet erased the boundary in one sweep, opening a brand new horizon in front of my eyes where I saw things more important than power. I spent hours basking in this poem.

Courage: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

CARELESSLY over the plain away,
Where by the boldest man no path
Cut before thee thou canst discern,
Make for thyself a path!

A decade ago, this particular stanza filled me with courage to go take risks, do something new, become something new, become myself, explore myself, design myself — become whatever I am and do whatever I do today!


Read it on Medium:

https://fradesh.medium.com/10-pieces-of-poetry-that-broke-my-mental-frontiers-84e565f7dda1

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