Literary Somethings

I throw my fingers far into the jagged chasm that my mind has become,

Claw and scrape the slithery walls and wait for the torrent.

The torrent of words, that familiar overwhelming gush of literary somethings,

And nothing but emptiness gapes at me.

I hear echoes, echoes of ages gone by,

My words, my old words, my dear friends, whisper

“You left us. You left us for everything the world taught you”

We showed you mountain streams and dewdrop strung glades,

We helped you with the beast that clawed your heart,

The fury that boiled in your veins,

And yet you left. You left for your spreadsheets and IDEs

Your internships, your jobs, your bills.

You swore you’d always keep us at your side,

But we’re not side chicks meant as a back up,

To fill holes left by your main whore,

When we left you, we left you ablaze, we left scars,

Blazing red burns all over your brown skin and

Your sensitive, tender heart,

Gashes down your neck, your hands,

From when you couldn’t handle our might.

Your tear ducts are now empty and raw,

They reek of our absence, of the way they

Wouldn’t stop when you’d write from your heart.

Your tears don’t fall in great waves like we did once,

No, they don’t fall, they simply stall in your eyes,

Confused at the lack of spirit, of emotion,

Dazed at the lack of ambition, drive, direction,

Where is it, your tears ask, where are our friends,

We can’t gush without them.

Being dramatic at 2 AM,

September 1, 2016

Hello everyone!

It's been quite a long time since an update! I'm currently at the end of the college admissions process and at the beginning of the will-they-accept-you phase of crippling anxiety. Now that high school's over, I have an alarmingly large amount of time in hands. The moment my eyes snap open in the morning, true to the routine I've had for the past two years or so, I make a mental list of what I have to do. No word can perfectly capture that momentary shock when you realize that there's no homework, assignment or task waiting to eat up your day. In a way, it feels rather lonely. (o_0) I've constantly been working on something or the other for 12 years, and even for the two years before that, so this kind of emptiness feels quite disarming and frankly, is dangerous when in the hands of an obsessive person like me. Nevertheless, I've realized that it was only after graduation that I connected more closely with many of my classmates than I had done in the past few years. I tried out new restaurants and went to my first stand-up comedy show too (FRONT ROW SEATS YEAH!)!

Anyway, the point of this post was to share with you, dear readers, a particular poem that I had written for my IB English Language and Literature SL course and later even submitted to many of the universities I applied to. The text below is what I've submitted to universities, so it's an edited version of what I submitted to the IB.

I consider this work to be one of my proudest, most heartfelt accomplishments yet. It is often hard to find the right words to capture your mind without overdramatizing it. As mentioned in a previous post, I believe that only the simplest of words can accurately describe the complexity of your thoughts. They make your reader look beyond the beauty of your words into the beauty of the very concept that you are trying to express. It is precisely this that I've done here and I hope you do enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

***

Both science and poetry have immensely influenced my life, character and values. The former makes me look at the universe in awe, and the latter allows me to introspect and condense my thoughts. Despite science and poetry being viewed as contradicting, both have conjunctly furthered my eagerness to simply learn. Through my blog, I’ve written numerous poems and essays commenting on various facets of the society: parental expectations, anger, the glorification of depression, etc. However, my best work yet was a culmination of all these endeavours in my IB Written Task assignment (a 1000-word creative writing piece with a 300-word rationale), for which I mimicked a popular poem: W. H. Auden’s September 1, 1939. This was both exciting and challenging, as I had to critically analyze the present society through the eyes of a man who lived decades ago, imagine how he would’ve looked at today’s world, and how he would’ve chosen to convey his thoughts. I find these 893 words to be one of my proudest achievements. 

***

Rationale

How has the world changed since Auden’s September 1, 1939? This is the question I have attempted to answer by writing a second version of the same poem, set in the 21st century (2016), from the perspective of Auden himself. September 1, 1939 was a poetic analysis of the early-1940s society, just at the brink of war and ideological shifts. Similarly, in this task, I aimed to analyze the present society, with an Audenesque poem - the analytical clarity of Auden’s style would help me achieve my aim more successfully. This poem highlights issues that would’ve irked Auden about today’s world, like morality, body shaming, pollution, terrorism, exploitation of the working class by the economically powerful, the ruination of everyday life by technology, etc. I have also written about issues that have ameliorated from 1939, like LGBT rights and women's rights. Auden would’ve included these to emphasize that there is still time for hope.  The audience of the poem includes those who want a critical take on world affairs and humans, such as social critics and psychoanalysts.

In line with Auden’s style of work, I have used various biblical references (‘Serpents’ and ‘biblical tower’), biological terms (‘tumors of blood’), imagery and numerous metaphors (‘flesh of apple and the seeds within’) and simple vocabulary. The main themes covered are universal love, war, totalitarianism and other political and social concerns.  I have not adhered to a strict rhyme scheme or meter like Auden, so that readers aren’t distracted from the intended meaning of the poem. The tone is analytical and detached, but dramatic and contemplative. This poem also expresses Auden’s well-known insecurities when it comes to his poems, his frequent revisions and his belief that poems are pointless.

Note: To clear any ambiguities in the meaning of my poem, a word/phrase describing the main idea of a paragraph has been added following each paragraph. Different ideas are separated by a comma.

  

September 1, 2016

It has been a long ride, 77 years to be precise,

when I wrote a poem strange, one that I now purely despise.

However, if there is one thing these years have taught me,

It would be that the unbending human heart ceases to change,

It’s cruel, wicked, unbending ways. 

I am no longer uncertain, no longer afraid –

The bold quest taken in seeking a pattern

has reached its sharp, chilly pinnacle;

 The answer, I fear, is horrifyingly simple:

We humans have a death wish,

and a talent to destroy ourselves from within.

I sit now, not in a dive, but in the Garden of myth,

Ruminating, contemplating, thinking

Of universal love, compassion, affection;

Of treachery, violence and ignorance,

O Eve, what have you unleashed?

(Dynamics of the soul)

From the womb till now, corrupted is the race,

That once sang of soaring skyscrapers and rich dreams.

Its needles of steel and plastic pollute paradise,

and it is now crumbling in the destruction left in its wake.

Scholarship, no longer accurate, and the raven, no longer true.

(Urbanization, unreliable academicians and media)

What rays there were, proved to be merely reflections off the moon.

The Messiah, they say, will arrive in all his glory to rescue,

But humans I ask you, what rescue do you imagine to receive,

When you have barred the gates with ugly fumes?

(Pollution)

Love? Love is mercurial. Thumping and fleeting.

It tears from within. Love of all forms,

Platonic and romantic, lesbian and gay,

Are attempts to either fill voids, or create them.

Love today is merely sparks of lust,

What more could one expect?

For we are made of ephemeral dust,

Ravaged by our selfish despairs.

(Nature of love)

  

We are still tornados, swirling, destroying.

Occurrences at the home, errors of the heart,

Allowed mere rashes on the Earth, to bloom

Into fatal tumors of blood and destruction.

Cross seas and oceans, to join a fanatic cult,

That destroys the flesh of apple and the seeds within.

Thrive in differences, thriving indifferences,

Perhaps another biblical tower is due.

(Scars of childhood impact actions, terrorism)

Stations of knowledge and jurisdiction

soliloquize of fortresses profitable and safe,

promise a Garden of inviolable concrete and cement,

and accomplish these with Alt-Right, a club and mace. 

Can only a poet see the missing ‘but’?

The slightest shake of the Earth, can bring down lairs,

and even in the Garden of Eden, the mortal flaws of the body,

are laid, for all to see, naked and bare.

(Politicians deceive and achieve lofty goals with crude methods)

 The holy sanctum sanctorum - violated,

Evil demons trespass into the dualistic world

Causing a diabolical manipulation of Plato’s ideal:

Ideal horse, ideal speed, ideal beauty reinvented.

The public children once sang ‘Ring around the Rosie’

Oblivious to Europe’s rosy history.

But now they draw, on the cracked shell of dust,

straight, meandering rivers of crimson,

as the demons rebuild the ideal body.

(Rigidly-defined beauty standards set by society, self-harming)

Frozen forever in a capture of 1989,

Stands a man in the street with modest bags.

Passively aggressive, strikes a revolution,

Stares at the four green monsters before him,

As the State silently curses, “We’ll settle this soon.

Growth of revolutionary citizens, as in the popular picture from 1989 of a Chinese man rebelliously standing in front of army tanks)

Playing its game of throne and power, assured

We need polity and stability to survive lest we are

untrue citizens for what are we without belonging,

Without pride, loyalty and a proud history.

But reality will always show its nature true,

For when hunger is out hunting, you will

Not survive. Forget history, pride and loyalty –

We will stop the game and only rue.

(Governments brainwash citizens with lofty emotions that won't matter in desperate times)

Glassy eyes of children, the young and old ripped

By a fragile monster fashioned by the victim’s own.

Creations have turned upon the creator,

Who tastefully designed his own hell.

The morning cockerel has been replaced by

a dejected, disturbing digital death knell.

The evening polity of chatter and cigar replaced by,

A grand gamut of glowing, glazed eyes under a spell.

(Humans 'murdered' by digital media overkill)

While a poet commands merely a sharp pen,

powerless to defeat the slithering Serpents.

A ray of hope there still may be for I,

Like any poet, can instill hope, destroy futility

And scribble away verdigris and rust. 

(Power of poetry)

  

Time has mended some tears in the cloth,

The laws of attraction match the laws of the heart,

like cannot repel anymore; the unlike needn’t attract either,

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell?’ Well then, I’ll sing and proclaim:

Natural selection will weed out your breed!

The Second Sex rules empires of wealth.

Unlike physical strength mental prowess is eternal.

They bring down the damp, the deaf and the dim,

with grace and cogent analytical clarity.

(Acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights, women empowerment)

The decades have never been more dishonest,

the decades have never been more advanced.

Might we, a species of collective indecisiveness,

learn from history, revise the past?

Might I, a creature of doubt and flawed produce,

journey to the underworlds to bring back Eurydike?

Would you, beleaguered by the Eros in your construct,

become the creature of my dreams, of a poet’s futile exercise?

***

P.S. If you're an IB student scouting for sample Written Assignments, it might help you to know I scored 19/20 for this assignment (rationale + poem).

Goodbye!

Magical Creatures, Instagram Captions and Romanticism

Twenty-first century poetry sings,

ardently designs the elusive 'she'

She, the dreamy fighter,

the wondrous traveler,

the unimaginable lover,

the magnificent conqueror,

a perfect, aesthetic woman, girl,

that fulfills the longings of

digital hearts.

Beauty standards?
To hell with it!
Let's set personality standards instead.
Let's create a fantasical creature,
with cheesy quotes and unmeaning words,
now girls have to change their personality instead.

Go, now,
become the girl with demon wings and starry eyes,
become the girl that fights to death and silently cries,
become the girl that displays strength but is weak inside.
no, learning coding isn't magical enough,
no, displaying your emotions isn't elusive enough,
no, wanting to bake isn't wild enough.

Mind, Instapoets, 'she' is a representation of
our depression, anger and longing,
emotions that are forever bound by ever-pervasive isolation,
and while you submit to 'her' so willfully,
care before you sacrifice reality for inspiration.

***

I'll admit it, I like poems about the 'she' too. They sound exotic and otherworldly. They give me a fantasical 'role model' to follow in a life dictated by college admissions and academic credentials (nothing wrong with that I guess :P). The words are powerful: they are sweet to my ears, soothing to my heart and invigorating to my mind.

This one, for instance (and for obvious reasons), was a memorable quote:

However, I began to have second thoughts when I began to see kids using these as their Instagram captions. Ten more posts captioned the same way, and it became annoying, but I couldn't exactly put my finger on what was it about this 'she' that began to annoy me - this 'she' was beautiful, daring and exotic and even I  admired her, so what's so different about it when kids younger than me begin to talk about her?

You see, what is odd with 'she' is that this creation glorifies sadness. It makes being depressed, lonely and elusive a beautiful, exotic and fearless thing to be. Crying behind closed doors, instead of seeking help, is lovely. Putting up an energetic, social persona, and crumbling behind curtains, is appealing. Being this messy, deep, dark girl that doesn't utter her deepest desires and acts them out through wildness is fashionable.

And when young teenagers are exposed to this kind of personification (without the context of a novel, unlike the Dean Koontz quote above), while the extent to which it can be dangerous is questionable, it would somewhat alter their idea of practicality. Being practical and responsible would be (and in fact, is) regarded as boring; being reckless, wild and full of fun (nothing wrong with a little bit of each though) would be the 'it' thing. This reminds of the Romantic era (refer Sophie's World book review) when inspiration and star-crossed love was glorified - perhaps it must be mentioned that in conjunction with the rise of romantic philosophers, suicide rates skyrocketed too. It still remains one of my favourite eras though.

On a deeper level, we could ask why we want to be romantic, why we like fantasy and magic, why we don't like practicality and empiricism. As Camus says in 'The Myth of Sisyphus' - without romanticizing things, life becomes stripped of all meaning and we find living to be indefinite and unworthy of living. (On a side note, The Myth of Sisyphus is an interesting read - it discusses if realizing life is meaningless necessitates suicide).

Though this may be a very small 'issue', and definitely a privileged, first-world one, it is something that has troubled my mind countless times.

Tell me what you think?

Self-Made Dreams

A boiling kettle of frothy milk ready to spill over,

Anger ready to burst from the veins,

Dim resignation to life's challenges, 

Mindless stomping through lifeless days,

Quiet contemplation of ending it all,

Fear bursting from hastily-stitched seams,

Too nervous to rhyme properly,

Too busy to properly rhyme,

Fear, fear of living a normal life,

Tired, tired to live an extraordinary one,

Such is the life of a mere 16-year-old,

Barely begun with life,

contemplating termination already,

with all the pressure of self-made dreams.

**

A small piece I wrote on the 25th of May that I was extremely hesitant to post. But hey, in the words of Joseph Reaux, 'Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes' and Sunday clothes are rarely a feast for the eyes, are they? 

In any case, reader, hopefully, I will stop writing poetry positively dripping with teen angst and emotion - it really ruins the vibe of this blog.

Gingerbread

There's a piece by that adamant mountain,
one by that sparkling river,
one in that water nymph's hair
one by that unrhyming canyon.

A piece of me all over the world,
a jack in all trades,
ought to mean that I own the golden eggs,
O Boy, it appears that I forgot another rhyme.

As words drop our syllable by syllable,
mind, not on the page, dear reader,
old fluidity long bygone,
replaced by that empty rock, yes,
the one right there.

Hope is the thing with feathers,
that perches in the soul,
but when your soul is
tried up tufts of hair
rolling across the African savannah,
oops, there goes my rhyme and reason.

Over the course of lines few,
I have lost pieces and rhyme,
reason and time.
Nevermore, mind.

- Lynn Gweeny

The randomness of this piece never fails to amuse me.

Corro, let me run!

Another dramatic episode of cognitive chaos. 

These walls drive me crazy,
there's hate spewing everywhere,
stop with the proverbs and mindless advice,
no, they're getting me nowhere!

I need to run,
run, run, far from this burning hell.
Every step resounds with hatred and fury,
annoyed by ignorance, inaction and the futility of things.

Presente, preterite presente compuesto,
sweet jesus!
Run, run, to someplace away,
stay away and never come back.

Are these people cruel?
Are humans ignorant?
Must I feel blessed to be born in this damned species?
Must I stay with them forever?

Run, run, corro, let me run
to Hang Son Doong,
to the Islands of the Caribbean,
to the Amazonian forests,
I don't know, just let me go.

Sri Chinmoy, you're wrong,
Anger can destroy peace,
not the other way around.

Ugh, I'm suffocated,
Anger - stop eating me!
He clouds my thought, my senses and reason,
I can't think anymore, I'm exploding.

Lord, what's wrong?
Is it me or the world?
There's so much fury boiling inside me,
but who is it I hate - the world or me?

No, stop telling me this world is kind!
It's broken, spoiled and filled with malice.
Arabs, Jews, Africans suffering,
and I've been told learning past perfect will fix this world!

My mind's a tangle of webs,
and I think about the greater good and troubles,
must I think about the world so much,
for the most intimidating thing that could happen to me,
is going past the deadlines.

Ugh, the futility of everything terrorizes me,
Humans, you have brought unto thyself doom,
the futility of this poem manifests as hatred,
I'm grasping at fraying ends of inspiration, but for whom?

*A terrible poem, with terrible words and a terrible rhyme scheme. But dear reader, do understand that I want to publish the original, unedited version of the poem.

Wondering about the Divine Comedy

I just had this thought while reading about 'Inferno' in the Divine Comedy: as Dante descends the rings of hell and sees more of God's increasingly cruel punishments to those who have sinned, he begins to understand that there is justice in God's violent acts. However, I can't help wondering:

What is the difference between justice and revenge?

Is it justice only because God does it? If God thinks we should be merciful and compassionate, then how come he doesn't treat the sinned with mercy? Isn't that hypocritical of God? Now, since God considers hypocrisy to be a sin too, then shouldn't God be punished in the nine rings of hell too?

What if I were to bury a man upside-down in the soil? What if I were to make the hypocrites in my life wear gilded coats of lead? What if I were to burn heretics alive in their tombs? I'm clearly not being merciful in all these cases, I'm being vengeful - or maybe I'm just being another 'God'.

Maybe God isn't setting a very good example for all of us.

The Mourning Bird.

It's when the birds take flight of the day,
back to their nests for an early respite
when I take flight from my daily cage,
to the terrace, to see the dying light.

Carrying a troubled mind of sums and equations,
every step of mine resonating with quotations.
Desperate to channel spasms of anger,
desperate to rekindle the old sense of academic ardor.

The vast blue expanse above is festooned with purple and gold,
the fraying clouds blotched with the hues of red, pink and orange,
little bits of cotton candy glide towards the sun,
who is showering the world with his last rays of glory.

Demure at heart,
fascination in my eyes,
at the sheer magnificence,
of the dying sunlight.

The silent mourning,
for the end that is about to arrive,
when the wind can no longer play me and I, with the wind,
Another long, sighing, night of captivity, of plight.

The herald bears news!

Hello everyone! It's been a long, long time since I've blogged and I'm extremely sorry(with extra cheese fudge and cream cheese and a cherry on top)! In the aims of posting consistently, I hereby take this oath: 'I solemnly swear I'll post every Friday, despite my workload and extremely messed up sleep schedule.' I'll be putting up random content: poems, rants, quotes, books, reviews or simply descriptions of the sick lemons my life is giving me. I'd love it if you guys would suggest what to post about too!

I can't wait to tell you one more piece of great news!!! *DRUM ROLLS* I'm going to start a new page, titled 'Solemn Soliloquies'! In this page, I'll  be putting up poems about the little things I treasure, like the rich coat of an apple, the way dewdrops glisten when the early rays of the sun shine down on Earth and even the warm petrichor after rain. These are poems I have a deep, visceral, inexplicable connection to, and may be about issues I feel strongly about. I simply can't wait to start posting!

Bye!