I was never good at writing about the truth in all it's explicit severity, which was probably the reason I started writing poetry in the first place. A sugary coat of vivid visions scatterred over scarred dreams and held together with some eloquence helped me swallow the hurt of a failed relationship at first, and then, it eased it's way into the possibly false notion of talent.
I really don't think of myself anything special, but I soon found a virtual audience that was kind enough to let me continue dreaming. I found that there wasn't much difference between courage and confidence, and I realized I had a bit of both. One thing led to another, and it was too late by the time I bechanced upon the conclusion that it was the art that held me hostage. So much so, infact, that I didn't even care about the generally accepted principles that governed this branch of art, I knew what I needed to know about Iambs, Trochees, Spondees, Dactyls, Double dactyls and what have you, but never adhered to any specific structures. I might even have created my own meterical foots for all I care. It was personal, although I seldom wrote merely for personal gain.
Although as I progressed, it seemed evident that my predilection for orotundity and grandiloquence will never feel the need to cover up or hide under any false pretence. Neither did I ever feel the need to justify the befuddling setups that I built most of my poems over. It was rather unfortunate that my brand of articulation earned me a reputation of being too "pretentious".
"There's something quite wrong about what you write and how you write it, but I just can't seem to put my finger on it", said an online reviewer once. I knew exactly what he meant.
Something I wish I had known earlier on in my life is that you can't improvise imagination, it always screws things up when you try to squeeze a confession out of muse. But anyhow, poetry made it all seem worthwhile for a whole year, and now: one mental breakdown, two severe (writer's) blocks, and more than a hundred poems later, I bid thee adieu.
For the usual reasons, of course. I need a break, time for myself, to rethink about my life and get away from this glaring monstrosity that had me enslaved for most of my adolescence. That I shall return is an artist's promise, and I always keep my promises whenever I can. There will be those of you who will appreciate a tear drenched goodbye and a hug or maybe even a goodbye poem at this point, but I only have these lines that Rob Thomas sang to give to them:
"So gather up your jackets,
and move into the exits,
I hope you have found a friend,
Closing time,
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end".
Bye.
Closing Time
5
Flashes of an invisible hope
Like sunlight peering in though eyelids shut
Sporadically sliced by each passing tree
Blessing eyelashes folded
(as if in a prayer)
I would like to drive away
From these seasons
Release all jokes tired of being laughed at
But I’m trapped!
In white light,
Pink noise,
And purple silence.
I wish she would never stop talking
I’m sick of hearing myself think.
Indecision
The independence of this divine indecision
Bellows it’s way through conurbations dead
Mocking my heart with indiscriminate precision
Like a shamanic siren of the uncertain dread
She hid something deep in mental undercrofts
Apportioned her life in a milestone collection
I heard fate whisper through the arching lofts
Requesting preparation for an aching rejection
My imponderable intentions don’t mean to fiddle
With her impregnable mindset - undeniably astute
But the incorrigible indecision, that stands in the middle
Might never allow me to tell her that she’s really cute
Yet cute she is, all my inarticulacy aside,
She’s a welcome distortion to a dream unseen,
What fool wouldn’t want to make her his bride?
Who wouldn’t fall for the rhapsodizing queen?
I could get on all fours and roll in the muck,
But I realize she’s feeble and fleeting like a vision-
She belongs with the bearer of a better luck
My lovely creator of this divisive indecision.
Laboratory
Under the sublime Tuscan sun,
With wafting whiffs of all that’s citrus -
(Pinot noirs and limestone distemper)
She’s reading Dante,
With precision or with partial purview
Fingertips resonate the call of olives
As I detonate all rhyming crescendos,
(Blow arpeggios in legatos to hell)
We transcend into two desperately living souls -
Prisoners of our heroic imagination
Then raindrops twinkle like shooting stars
Glasses brimming with chardonnay leave
She goes back to her solitary throne -
(Princess practicality in a polka-dotted frock)
I return to my lonely laboratory of dreams.
Calculate
I’ve created you from scratches, love,
Built you up with a keyboard manic,
Have some fear of the one above,
For heaven’s sake, it’s time to panic!
I’m falling faster than you can calculate,
Hoping consequence will cushion my fall,
I’m running out of opulent cliché’s to relate-
I’m running out of escape tunnels to crawl
Every twilight bird chirps in your praise,
To the soldier homebound from a welcome retreat,
Then his thoughts belong in that haze -
Where shadows with shadows meet
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Fabulous Disaster
Would she be wearing a fuchsia hued sin?
Now that he's wearing out and thin -
All stretched out on a hopeful horizon,
Balancing the scales within
He'd rather confabulate a fabulous disaster-
Murder his imbecile yet celibate master-
For desires as delicate as gatling guns,
Were sinking his sanity and a heart cast in plaster
Therefore, his positively potential bride,
Obviously oblivious in her Bengali pride,
Lit his freedom's pyre and watched his soul escape,
Before deciding to let his fate decide.
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The Brownian Lark - Revisited
With the perfidy of a mildly charmed quark,
On a journey for answers I did not embark,
Nothing did the stars tell, nor the moon did hark,
Yet I gallantly gaited towards The Brownian lark
It wasn’t the clairvoyant that I sought to explain,
The explicit supernatural is lighter when it’s slain
But amongst somber skies, one crooked wind vane,
Was being a whirling dervish in excruciating pain
Coincidence was ever so gently humiliating,
When for the patient eleven-thirty I stood waiting,
A canine couple in distance shook facilitating -
Every pleasure afforded by their frivolous fornicating
The thunderous nimbi then moaned like a whore,
Our trio was soon caught in an orgasmic downpour,
Nature seemed hell-bent on revising the lore,
Of ill fate I could’ve asked but nothing more
For more than one dry reason I sought refuge,
From my unabashed audacity and from the deluge,
I pressed on for aridity with a saunter of a stooge,
Towards the only shelter of hope looming huge
I retraced my steps, never retrenched them back,
Though humidity before me was all drenched in black,
Though that time had lost me, I had found it’s track,
As I was awakened by an urge for a midnight snack.
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Notes:
This is a spoof (sort of) on my trilogy of poems titled "The Brownian Lark". I have changed the pattern from AABB to AAAA just to make it a little more challenging. This is no way, however, related to the story of the trilogy, neither is it a sequel nor a prequel, it's just a spin off. The object of writing this poem was to ascertain the growth of my so called "skill" between the time that I wrote the other poems and now. In my personal opinion, I think I have decidedly shown some improvement, YMMV.
The Brownian Lark: Part One, Part Two, Parth Three
Stuntman
Me and my futile love affairs,
Unfruitful and damaging beyond all repairs
None conceived, and no one compares,
Though I cherish mine and envy theirs
Indeed these petulant love affairs,
Are like the stunts the stuntman dares,
For his insatiable addiction of shifting gears
They’re reminiscent adages that memory shares,
With reclining old men in rocking chairs
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Secondhand Karma
Twilight came knocking like the highwayman,
Fell over my shoulders like a sudden burden of freedom,
It must have been the struggles of the day,
That rendered me so
Ashamed.
For in the day I struggled for night,
At night I stood listening,
The sounds of the approaching day,
The omnipresent danger of daylight,
Squeezing my guts out my mouth
All this for the worth of a few stars,
Sprinkled about my illuminated Luna,
On a palpating platter, caressing our skin and feeding us -
Secondhand karma at subsidized rates,
For the glory hidden in our denial of it’s true color
Modern times saw the retail chain of stores selling ignorance,
Mediocrity stood at the receiving end of our altars,
Masters became snow-smugglers in cowboy hats,
Disentangled, yet not absconding -
From the balance sheet of the universe.
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This
This is my keyboard - formatting electrons,
Like a barber sweeping the shop floor,
Collecting all black strands of discarded meaning -
Both earning their livelihood,
With clicks here,
Hair clips there.
Over pages that don’t curl like they used to,
Behind a smooth glass window,
Words waving at me,
With a childlike demeanor,
They parade forwards,
Then disappear into a back-spaced nothingness,
Deleted from existence.
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Dial-tone
Softly triggered the dial-tone,
Told me why I was alone,
Beeping grains of sadness static,
Electronic erotica being erratic
Before the skeletons of athletes,
The martyr rinses and repeats,
As her voice like a tsunami breaks,
Breaking mine into gasping flakes
That heaven dweller must be a clown,
His blue umbrella held upside down,
Drown with me so I’m never alone -
Give me death or dial-tone.
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