Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Digression Session

As usual, my utterly brilliant thoughts and philosophies drift through the windows of my mind in the five seconds before sleep or the five seconds before the red light changes to green.
It's not that I have become uncreative or suffer from lack of information. My academic pursuits stress on newspaper reading (even if, currently that is restricted to reading Klose's statement about Villa or the latest Sudhish Kamath movie review-always an addiction) and more. I suppose the inner rebel in me baulks at any compulsory reading right now. (this phase probably explains why I end up reading sodium content on the back of Hippo Chips packets and why EAT HIPPO, NO FIGHT. All this and I don't even eat or like chips.)

Bad, bad attitude since that's most certainly not gonna help me through the last and maybe final year of school. Ever.

In all seriousness, I did read a really really good book recently. Less of a book, more of a reliving. It was Wangari Maathai's 'Unbowed', and it has like a lot of other autobiographies, become an inspiration to me. Her immense strength of character and unyielding spirit that enabled her to take on the entire Kenyan government is amazing to read about. Makes me think about how insignificant my own inner ghosts are and how much easier to override. Such a long, long way to go.

Anyway, I digress (just read an email forward on age-related attention deficit disorder which sounded disturbingly familiar). The purpose of this post is to reminisce about my fruitful youth. Ah, the days of totally incomprehensible physics classes where I would sit in the backbench, sketching storyboards and scribbling 'movie' scripts, writing songs for 'musicals' starring my own imaginary star cast (this is the origin of Kingdom of Estarra. More on that later). This was the creative explosion. Years of guitar classes, nights of songwriting (my guitar, Dominic still bears the pen marks), 2 am story inspirations. (I actually miss school days where I could hate the subject and thus, rebel in my own geeky way. What I've been studying since have been purely my decisions and hence I have no choice but to like it. Aargh, the tragedy of getting what you want in life...)

In college, I got lazy. My friends and their lives were highly inspiring in terms of story fodder but I somehow couldn't translate that into fictitional material. What a waste. My only expression was when first-year-college-turbulence showed up in the form of poetry. And that remains my saving grace when it comes to writing even now. Scribbles on the back of my Entrepreneurial Development or Globalisation notebooks (but never EVER during Ethnicity, Culture and IR) . Poetic license abused to the nth point. Romantic, free-flowing verse inspired by the evening (usually cloudy) sky, the fluorescent green, erm, greenery outside. No John Mayer lyrics coming to mind, nothing interesting to sketch. Twenty boring minutes to the bell.

The point of this rambling (yes, there is one!) is an official declaration of my commitment to writerhood. No, not as a recreational activity on this blog during internship (blogging has always been a staple feature of all my internships since they have all been desk-bound) This is the statement: I'm going back to my creativity-fueled fourteen year old self (and only THAT aspect of my fourteen year old self) because creation is the only proof of existence. Truly. And thought-generation doesn't really count. What's the use of these great, fabulous ( I'm assuming) thoughts if they're withering away in the recesses of my mind?

And by writing, I mean consistency. Not this two voluble blog posts in one night thing. Steadfastedness. Regimenal. Creative cardio.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Hug

Bursting at the seams! Gimme more, more, more! Life and within it, love, beauty, truth, freedom, colour, laughter, sunshine, rain, song, dance, word, sound, rhythm, stillness, exclamation marks! Let me dance on my imaginary stage, let me jive to the beat in my car, alone, in a sea of unknown vehicles and unknown passersby. Let me be. Let me not choose, let me have it all. Let me sing at the top of my lungs, let me smile at strangers, let me share in their family stories, let me adore them, let them adore me, let us play with children, let us give a ear to those older. Let me cry for you, let me save the world from my deskchair. Let me love my favourite song du jour and let yourself love it with me. Let me be all that I can be, let there be space in this jostling madness for all the me. Let me wander, let me be lost. Let me not worry about what's going to happen to me; let it happen anyway. Let me be young for as long as I like. Let me fall in love with you, then me, then you, then myself all over again. Let me stare at the mirror in wonder. Let me run, please! Let me free, free, free. Let me embrace this maddening and infuriating world in all its candy-coloured, sweltering and freezing, multi-sensory glory, let me grin with dazzling brightness, let me rival the sun. Let me explode before I implode.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Time is living me

In an attempt to fuel the brain, I am taking a break from Meg Cabot (not much of a choice since I finished all the Mediator books and the Princess Diaries and don't really like her novels). So, besides picking up (and ravenously finishing) Carmen Bin Ladin's story, I also reluctantly surrendered myself to 'The Inheritance of Loss'. I really hoped there wouldn't be too much of description and more conversation, more about people. I think Jhumpa Lahiri's descriptions are the only ones I don't skip.

But I found this poem prefacing the actual story...and I feel like I finally found something that sums up my state of mind. And voila! It's a poem I can understand!

(I love the last line in particular)

Boast of Quietness

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.

The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.

Sure of my life and my death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.

Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.

Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.

They speak of humanity.

My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.

They speak of homeland.

My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.

Time is living me.

More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.

They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.

My name is someone and anyone.

I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.

Jorge Luis Borges

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

A miniature vent

Tomorrow's curse or tomorrow's promise?
Today's indecision is pure bliss
Taking each day one step at a time
Is confusion really such a crime?
Leave me to my drifting ways
Let go of what's meant to go, let it stay if it's supposed to stay!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Ode to a Hanging iPod

Your beautiful face
Blank, expressionless
As if we were strangers
You gaze back at me
As if in a trance
Our eyes meet
But what of our souls?

I want to take you in my arms
Hear you whisper sweet things in my ear
Feel my heart race
I want to take you in my arms
And beg your heart to be mine again

But you look at me
Frozen, thoughtless
Leaving me alone in silence

Wake up, fill me up
Do not leave me thus
My naked ears cry for coverage
My fingers ache for your menu
Wake up!
Come fill me up againnnnnnnnnnnn.............

Monday, September 15, 2008

A sad but true piece of poetry to amuse myself

Waking up still seems like fun

But not when every night goes undone

There's so much sky, so much to grasp

Yet there's nothing I feel I can clasp

The days pass by in a blur of fear

Fear of everything being so unclear

I wish I could fly away on a cloud

Yet I don't have the guts to dream out loud

Wah wah!!!

I see the mood hasn't lifted since the last post. K did get back and we did go out (Mum included). Got some books from the library too. But I feel so tired. The sudden holiday today was great but I feel no more rested and I'm afraid I'm not missing college at all.

I know all that jazz about not expecting so much out of people and that your happiness depends on you alone. That is SO true. But college revolves so much around people and what they do and what they say. We take these 'issues' so seriously. There is so much to be lived! I was sitting in the backyard behind my kitchen and staring up at the vast sky. I felt so damn good I can't tell you. It was like there was so much beyond all the petty nonsense that happens. I wanted that. I wanted to reach out and hug the sky. I wanted to be above and beyond and also to belong to that great, big everything. Enough of non existence.

Did I ever feel this way in school? I had the energy and passion for a million different things. Not to mention the confidence. It's a good thing that I don't feel the need to prove myself and that I kinda know what I really enjoy and don't. It's good that I've learnt to relax and not participate in every single thing. But have I lost some of my identity? I don't know. Are you identified by the things you do, the people you hang out with? How you look? What you say? Who you know? Do you HAVE to be identified at all?

These are questions that arise now, when I'm just out of teenagehood. I wonder if there exists an answer.

My Mum keeps saying that one's duty is to do whatever's been given to you to do and to do it well. So, right now, all I have to do is go to college and do whatever comes my way that I can do. That's the only thing that keeps me going.

I hope the next post can be a lot more uplifting. Maybe I won't find the purpose of my life. Maybe I'll still be meandering around. Maybe I'll still be lost. But I hope I'll be happy about it.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Nothingness

Silence is a safer bet than tears.
Detachment a better anchor than fears.
I sing my song to deaf ears.

Staring straight into an empty reflection
Numbness replaces confusion
Enough of questioning creation


Drowning in a sea so shallow.
Give me an angel today, tomorrow,
To blindly, unswervingly follow.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Surrender to apathy

Empty water bottle.
Cell phone devoid of new messages.
Printer doesn’t work.
Ear hurts due to overdose of walkman.
Cuticles bitten.
Run out of printing paper.
Hungry.
Need to go to the bathroom.
Need to sleep.
Too lazy to get to bed.