A Life Afloat [in Verse]

Where Are We Headed?

There is no forecasting the future

Alpha-beta gamma delta are keep gonna coming at ya

Omigod Omicron this thing will never end

To live with it you gotta make your routines bend

Meanwhile, earth keeps on getting hotter

The worldwide supply of peace getting shorter

Like the fuse on the bombs of angry mobs

Drowning out people’s distraught sobs

Violence is creating lots of jobs

Just not the ones for which peaceful humanity lobs

Vested interests sucking up people in their nets

Hedging millions to make billions in bets

What’s human life worth when they got jets

In their money-backed empire the sun never sets

Live Hard

Here I am creating poetry out of neat & clean words

Dropping cracking pop culture & flipping some birds

The time to rhyme has never been better than now

My hunger to rise higher is gonna make you go wow

There is no reason for me to want to escape

The life of a superhero is spent in a cape

I am the Harry Potter getting Peeved at Severus Snape

Oh yeah my rhymes are heavy that’s why you will feel the need - the need to rewind this tape 

Fantasy and fiction combine well to guide my wandering mind

Film and movies are a mine of info when I find the world unkind

Far-thinking TV with high concept breaks me out of the working grind

Gaming is an awesomax escape that ironically puts my eyes in a bind

Masks - just the prep for the impending apocalypse 

Keep your nose where it belongs and seal up your lips

Get used to the new normal before we cash in our chips

Let’s get to neo-normal in which we will cruise in spaceships

A generation crippled by computers

Workforce nation trampled by commuters

Dry arrows in my quiver will make your mind quaver

Yes I am stubborn in my ambition for nothing will I waver

You better play it safe and stay behind the line of scrimmage 

while you try and find a way to slay your bad boy image

All this dissing and this fussing that you‘re failing at achieving 

misusing words leaving me laughing till I’m keeling -

OVER!

No Grieving for the Living

Life is bound to be chaotic and nature is innately unpredictable 

Make the most of the time you get - this incarnation is irreplaceable 

It doesn’t matter when your body died

What matters is you should’ve tried

To live a life that was wholesome and kind

Even though sometimes circumstances put you in a bind 

One day to the next you must keep on living 

With a positive mindset and none of that negative grieving

One day or the other all of us will be dust

So just try to keep our heads up all of us just must

There’s a lot that I keep bottled up inside 

There’s so much of my pain that I try to hide 

Life is a spiral, I must keep exploring the bright side

I know I have it in me and so do you

What matters is how you tried

I was forced into the rat race

But I put on my game face

And escaped from my fixed place

To be my best version and rap at this pace

Luck is a big factor, I know this to be true

When life gives you lemons, you gotta squeeze them too 

To get the bitter juice flowing fast through my veins and my mind

And spit out all these rhymes before time runs out and becomes unkind

Long after I’m dead and burnt to a cinder

In my loved ones memories, these rhymes will linger

If you want to do something big like me

Pull out all the stops and live free

Choose Wisely

What would we be without words & languages?

I am never far from my roots with my Bihari soul brothers I am deep in cahoots

Drawing massive inspo from the way they followed their creative pursuits

From Manoj and Pankaj i learn how to play roles that portray many moods

Double esses Shatrughan Sinha and Shekhar Suman are motivational dudes

Patience is my everlasting bastion of hope

Thanks to 6hourism I am never at the end of my rope

Writing rhymes that mesmerize minds to beats that are dope

Come join my awesomax tribe and together we will rival the pope

I’m an alien rhymer making earth rappers ill 

Lining up these killer rhymes because I got absolutely zero chill

Get your papers and pencils out kids, and learn this hard-hitting skill

Do your homework and get into, not just an excuse to abuse or kill

Choose the ideas that you Accelerate 

Choose the idols that you Illuminate 

Choose the cases that you Adjudicate 

Choose the thoughts that you Pontificate 

Go grab a lexicon to see if you can take a stab at being an icon like me

No lab in the Vatican can carve a slab into an angel to fight a devil like me

Grow flab on your ass can while you blab gibberish when you try to rap like me 

Lemme order a slow Uber for you to take you to hell while you try to figure out how to be like me

I’m the writer rapping verses you can’t emulate

I’m the thinker dropping curses that will educate

I’m the one creating universes you can’t speculate

I’m the leader inspiring mindsets that will decimate

Stand up to me and go ahead, take your best shot

I’ll throw you down and release the onslaught

Of words and phrases that will make your brain rot

You crawled out of a hole, hater boi, go back to your slime pot 

If you GOT to have an idol then you GOT to choose the best

It’s not HOT to sit idle or STOP when life’s a test

Don’t SLOT a bridle in your THROAT that leaves a bitter taste

Take the SHOT that’s vital to reach the TOP of Eve-rest 

The world is right under my feet lying there for the taking 

Positive patience is the key to achieving what I’m thinking

You fool, don’t keep trying to float on a ship that’s sinking

No lifeboats here to save you, your engine light is blinking

Fragmented thoughts cascading as if a landmine went off

In the circuit board of the mind there’s no switch that says “off”

Sleeping waking lucid dreaming can precipitate a blast off

When I’m in dreamy space it’s all I can do not to float off 

Sometimes when I lay my head down and I’m dreaming

There are people in my head who always end up screaming

Now I’m a lucid dreamer so I can shut them down

And carry on with my waking life to record this melodic sound

If you haven’t seen Waking Life then you should Google it now

When I saw it and Scanner Darkly I thought Linklater, take a bow

Depicting life by way of art and cinematic magic

If we get too caught up in dreams it can be tragic

Elevated Thoughts

Thoughts and emotions are inherently complex

That’s why the mind is the muscle you have got to flex

Be inspired by goodness and carry out your fact checks

Don’t believe the hype or you might fall under a fake hex

Break away from verbal violence and hatred 

Aim to hold yourself true to what you hold sacred

Don’t let anyone fill you full of fear even though the world is full of dread

Be a shining example for humankind, beat a path everyone else will want to tread

Doesn’t matter how many retakes perfection takes 

None of us are born equal but we all make mistakes

Right now is the point in time at which we’re all getting started 

This moment right now is the only one to which life has led

No ifs or buts , there are no parallel universes or heavenly ways

I will live my life well and so should you , and never stop creating minds that amaze

Knowledge Supreme

Collection of knowledge has always been my prime priority

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance showed me quality

Lord of the Rings and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opened up my mind

Authors better than Sartre or Camus are getting hard to find

In finding my voice among all this chaos I rejoice

To build yourself into what you want is your choice

Time and life are inseparable so go with the flow

And have positive patience while you let yourself grow 

The older I get the more scars I gain

Digging deep inside to bury the pain

What did you think you would find

C’mon step up if you’d be so kind

Knowledge is never-ending there’s always room to explore more

Luckily we have infinite space inside the mind to store and grow

Remember to Forget

I’m wrecking minds with these mellifluous rhymes 

Calling back to heavy days in my olden times

In a way, scars are great they show me I’m healing

Immersing myself in creating worlds outta things I’m feeling

Imagination is the fuel that powers the will to create

Spread love and peace and stay away from hate

I got these thoughts that are floating around in my head

From the time I woke up right to the day that I’ll be dead

I’m gonna lay it all out now so you can all follow along

Branch off on your own create a place where you belong

Leave all the negativity by the side

Spread positivity so you can add to your pride

Like a pride of lions rules over the land

Do the best you can do and trust in nature - it’s grand

Mellifluous Magnificence 

I don’t know any directions 

So I can’t ever misguide you

Pulverize you with thoughts

Beguile and mesmerize you

Evil plans and greedy thoughts 

Best to not go down that way

It’s false hope and untruths

That’ll defo sweep you away

Climb Higher

Spirit as high as the sun in the sky

It doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter why

Reach the top and then you can heave a sigh

And get some well-deserved rest as the world passes you by

When we were growing up we dreamt about what we wanted to be

A doctor or engineer or lawyer (or standup) with a fancy degree

Life goes through twists and turns that you can never see coming

But that is no reason you should give up on your dreaming

The real difference between privileged wannabes and I

Is that I know I’ll be at a level as high as the sky

While they’ll be spitting stuff written by ghosts 

Participating in silly little feuds and roasts

And doing reality tv for making up social media posts

I got a slow smoldering fire that feeds off of my innermost desire

I’ve been broke been hungry been alone and been tired

But now I got my life together so that I can pursue my dreams and aspire

Throw out my creativity for the world to enjoy

There is no need anymore for me to be coy

So come on up

Climb higher...

It’s not much farther 

To the end of the world

Come on up climb higher 

Or would rather 

Still wallow in the mud?

Eminem laid it out inspired by the best before him

Brought up his daughter and tried to work it out with Kim

And now he sits at the top of his kingdom

I will be the same, break away from the humdrum 

I am an unwilling part of the rat race 

Gotta deal with onrushing reality at a fast pace

My book is serious, these rhymes are too

I play around with words coz that’s just what I do

The state of the world - zeitgeist - makes minds bend

Give your ticky tocky brain tricky matters to comprehend

Trying to get through it you’ll go off the deep end

But I hope my sage advice will get you on the mend

Be able to distill

The truth from pretending 

Hold your mind still

Till you’re comprehending 

There is more than just being alive in life than you think 

So bring yourself back from even the most calamitous brink

It’s not impromptu: I like to craft my rhymes

Go over them almost infinite times

Make ‘em pop and click and link up like a chain 

And in the end, pure creative satisfaction I gain

The Lap of the Himalayas

Inspo: Never Give In, the School song of my alma mater, the Lawrence School, Sanawar

The Himalayas are the purest heaven

From Himachal to the Sisters Seven 

And I climb higher every chance I get

Once I reach the top, I will feel set

How hard is it to make a good life

When the world is embroiled in so much strife

Hope goes down the gutter and into the drain

When I see these calamities and people’s pain

But we gotta move ahead, collaborate, and reach for the stars

And one day in the future our children’s children will be born on Mars 

Never gonna give up on my dreams 

No matter what comes my way

Sometimes life unavoidably uphill it seems

Never Giving In gets me through another day

Reminded of my time at Gaskell Hall

Literally hanging at the parallel bars

In the mountains I felt so small

Still do, when I look up at the stars 

You know what, my mind cries,

“I really wanted to see comet NEOWISE

Now it’s gone and we won’t see it again

By the time it returns, on Mars we will reign

The Time Is Now

Fact of the matter is that if you got a mind that’s acrobatic 

Then putting down words as they come to you can be a lil problematic 

Sometimes the thoughts will descend to places deep and dark

Navigating through them all is no walk in the park

Still you gotta forge ahead

Percolate

Heal over the scars

And sure shot, no matter what, keep aiming for the stars

Ideas and thoughts wandering 

This life of ours I’m pondering

The earth continues to spin in the void

Not in our lives will we be hit by an asteroid

Infinite space is where the future lies

Generation by generation taking to the skies

Leaving behind all this hatred and violence

Building a bridge to the future with generous positive pay-tie-ence 

Weaving magic into words and words into magic

To deal with the news both fake and real, it’s tragic

Still we got to live life as we best know how

To do the right thing, the time is now

Create Till You Can Create No More

Don’t think it’s ever too late if you got the will to create

Adding subtracting rewriting verse after verse

To be dissatisfied with it all is the cruelest curse

But I will build a back beat to this flurry of words

I will get through to everyone from jocks to nerds

I write it up 

Light it up 

Put a syllable in there to legitimise it up

Gonna string my rhymes together to tie it up

Gonna keep creating till I can breathe no more

That’s just the way life goes, so go with the flow

There is always a feeling of existential dread

Spreading bottom to top from toe to head

Nevertheless I gotta crunch these rhymes

Sharing all I’ve learnt through my share of these times

Pharaoh Monching all, twice EMMing it all

Forming my spiral of hip hop rap standing so tall

Now I gotta traverse this

Have found perfect bliss

Gotta build on what I sow

Rhyme upon rhyme I throw

So live it up

“There’s no tomorrow” is cliched

Hitch it up

“Live in the moment” is just as stale

Ignore The Nays

You’re drowned out because you are part of the crowd 

To be heard away from the herd, you have to be loud

Make your mark, establish your name

Embellish your game to garner more fame

Leave controversy to those who do it 

Make waves without contributing to it

Wave the naysayers away like the flies they are

Temporary, like our existence as we go ‘round a star

Still you gotta make it outta the mire 

Never Give In till you get what you desire

The world is there to cubicle you away

Break away from the chains and slip away

All is good till we are sane and alive

Staying alive does not mean taking a dive

Break free of artificial gravity and inhale

And when you’re out of patience: exhale

Bollywood

I wanna put out a good vibe for the future

It’s not a big deal about who you know or you don’t

It’s all about what you create because of what you want

Celebs and famous people got more people working their front

I power through to the day when I get the call from the people I want

Try to fit your thoughts better into the good feelings you’re having

Instead of sinking deeper into the negative spiral you’re spinning

Set your aim as high as the sky as can be

Make yourself a winner for the world to see

Caught up in these thoughts I ended up with a song from Bollywood

Playing on repeat in my head and becoming thought for food

Empty lyrics don’t entice me and the dialogues are almost never any good

Which is why the extra drama can lead to being misunderstood 

Maybe that’s why an actor’s life seems so attractive

In the drama that they do, we audiences lose perspective 

But there are always those who are able to carve out a niche

And that’s where I am headed, get that inside your head, capisce? 

To every one who knows that they want fame

Carry on, human, you have the right to a name

Just because the world is drowned in flame

Doesn’t mean you have to stick to the same

We privileged have very little patience

Time is hard to deal with, no matter what your essence

That’s why I gotta breathe through time

And keep on hoping that you’ll understand my rhyme 

Raise Your Games

It was never in my nature to drop fake names 

I drop logic bombs on my way to winning games

Laugh out loud while your minds go up in flames

Check your facts because you got the wrong aims

Come around to my arena if you can handle my complexity 

I’m bound by nothing, in my mind runs electricity 

Sometimes when I’m thinking bells go off in my brain

‘Aw Mah Gawd’ here I go rhyming again

Thoughts coming on a roll faster than a Shin-kan-sen bullet train

Better get them down before they drive me insane

Life is gonna go on nevertheless so Never Give In

Giving up on yourself is the closest thing to a sin

Bear no ill will unto others, kith or kin

And keep positive patience, let the world spin

So do like I do and persevere in the face of it all

Take your time to do your magic with the ball

The future is calling, get up and answer the call

It’s hard to keep getting up even after you fall

People falling behind my Shinkansen train of thought 

Rappers following in my vein because they come to nothing but naught 

Making stupid music videos with girls and cars

Standing around like dimwits in dimly lit bars

Listening to the stupidest advice of people who are greedy

Writing lyrics saying “I’m the best” but sounding so needy

Here I stand dissing that nepotistic culture

Old man, you are a bonafide parasitic vulture

Claiming lives of young people left and right

Without giving them an even chance in a rigged up fight 

The past is a source of strength for a positive mind

But not for those who look at it for faults to find

We gotta move ahead, collaborate and reach for the stars

Let’s get up to the moon and see if we can light up Mars

Just like the way we did earth, made it too hot to handle

To nature’s destructive force we can’t hold a melting candle

So we better beware when we are swept away by the current

Of time and of nature when on retaliation they get hell-bent

Greed is the tapeworm in society’s belly

Fed by all the stuff you see on the telly

Break out of the mold so you can see

Make something of yourself, be like me

I got the will to create poetry out of words 

Drawing on everything: jocks geeks and nerds

Now y’all hear my words as I mean to speak ‘em

Purity in my thought so I don’t need to clean ‘em

Dig a little deeper don’t be superficial 

This life is natural, greed is artificial 

Let some deep thought sink into your brain

The money is not enough to make it rain

You v2

When I think about the past 

I feel it just went by too fast

To become the best version of you 

Try to focus on the good and the new

That’s the way to lay down an uplifting track

Once you start building it, never look back

A lot of times thoughts are going so fast 

I feel like my mind is going to blast 

It’s good there are things holding me down 

I know the world, I’ve been around 

Not a babble of syllables 

It’s a series of parables 

Get back to Aesop's fables

See how they turn the tables

In the blink of an eye

Despite all you try

To go with the flow 

Easier said than done, y’know 

People use loud music

To be non empathetic 

Escaping the hard questions

In favor of tonal undulations 

Everybody’s got a point of view

They could all be right, but can they all be true?

If there are indeed infinite universes

What if this reality is made up of all our verses?

Absent Empathy

Families are hypocrites, they say go on

Sing and dance and entertain us

But when you wanna share your energy with the world they say Woah

Are you out to publicly shame us?

The sentiment is unempathetic but I’m not apologetic

From Kurt Cobain to Moliere I draw on lots of aesthetic

People get all flustered when rhyming with orange 

Those people are not seeing the lack of challenge 

In fact, the thing that I find highly strange (stranger)

Are that such defeatist mindsets put us all in danger

There’s no crushing pressure for cussing gratuitously

When it rhymes and makes sense it fits in unconsciously 

Hip hop upstarts peppering curses in their patter unsubtly

I got way higher standards and I think about it meticulously 

There’s no holding back in a life of creativity

RIP Mac Miller at 26 after writing spiral poetry

When you go all out you Lose Yourself, see?

You gotta watch out for crippling negativity 

There’s a lot going on in my brain that’s hard to explain

Words tumble out with no regard for a refrain

Music wise everything seems so mathematical

Thoughts are just the opposite, diabolical 

Carrey’s Truman looks at eyes in magazines and says close but no cigar

A damning reflection of materialism: things seem great from afar

The constructive mind says, ‘this, right here, is the start of being a star’

But I just feel so constrained, all the words in the world seem sub-par

Futile thought says, ‘Isn’t numb the way to be’

Deluged with the knowledge that tends to infinity

But take time to absorb everything you see

Get out of the ennui and let the mind wander free.