By Akshita
It’s a relief to put everything on paper
And become a character in this tale.
So much easier than actual contemplating,
So less painful than looking in the mirror.
For when I’m on paper,
I can see the beauty in tragedy,
Literature in broken sentences,
A drama in the tear drops.
Perhaps it will help;
Becoming the character
And losing the self.
Forever
It took me to forget
The knives that I threw;
Those double-edged words
Which hurt me and you.
And yet, here I am
After all this time,
Telling myself the same story
One more time.
“You remain as you were,
Making no changes.
You innocent fool!
Thinking you can rectify
The mistakes of your past.
Thinking that it’s the thought
That counts.
Thinking that your words,
New sentences
Will balm the wounds
You inflicted.
But words are not idempotent.
What you said once
May fade over time.
And what you said once
May negate all the rest.
And what you said once
May take hold of the heart…
Forever.”
I like the bright ones;
Pink, blue, maroon.
Sometimes I even go bold
And paint my nails yellow!
Mother hated the black phase;
Dad didn’t really understand the point of the nude one.
My brother still can’t believe
That I spend time and money on elaborate nail art.
But I like the colors;
They make my world bright.
Shiny, matte; I experiment with all of them.
Silver, gold; is there any color left?
I really can’t decide on a favorite.
The man outside the shop was waiting.
As soon as I turned to the empty alleyway,
I heard his footsteps hurrying behind me.
I heard his breath; raspy and uneven.
I smelt his smell; rum and cigarettes.
I felt his arms; strong and unyielding.
The struggle ended soon enough.
I didn’t expect to be this calm.
Stumbling, I reached the main road.
A woman passed by carrying a grocery bag.
She gave me an odd look;
I still had the rock in my hand.
Red, I think. That’s my new favorite color.
Note: An attempt at poetic “turn”.
“You ruined me!” And with that, I demonized the human he thought he was.
His touch on my body felt like he was skinning me, bit by bit, ripping out my soul.
I screamed silently, choked on my own tears, felt trapped in my own body.
“But you belong to me!” He was flummoxed.
For what was his mistake, when all he did was something that was taught to him?
The shape changed again in my mind; I humanized the demon.
It was like breathing to him, wasn’t it? Ruining me, suffocating me, owning me in body and mind.
I couldn’t bear to love him, and yet, for what could I hate him?
Note: An attempt at prose poetry.
You censor my senses.
You tell me to close my eyes,
Hiding your sins in my sight.
You tell me to stop seeing.
You tell me to close my eyes,
And carry on as if nothing happened.
You tell me to stop seeing
The torture that you inflict.
And I carry on as if nothing happened.
I ignore all the warnings.
The torture that you inflict
Has become a part of my life.
I ignore all the warnings;
The suspicion and the questioning.
It has become a part of my life
To lie with ease.
Your suspicions and questions;
They have killed my spirit.
I lie with ease,
Because the truth would destroy me.
My spirit is dead.
I cannot see myself in the mirror.
The truth in my eye torments me.
So I close my eyes; censor my senses.
Note: As I mentioned before, I took an online poetry course called “How Writers Write Poetry 2015”, which finished last week. This poem is in a form that I learnt about, called the pantoum. The structure of a pantoum is as follows: There are four lines in a stanza, and the second and fourth lines of a stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza. The first line of the poem is typically also the last line of the poem. Of all the things that I learnt in this course, this is one of my favourites. 🙂
With crushed hopes,
A wounded heart,
Depleted spirits,
I begin again.
With salty eyes,
A heavy mind,
Cynical thoughts,
I begin again.
There is but one desire;
To be better than today.
With a broken pen,
I begin again.
She had so much spunk,
That she made oceans out of
The beads of perspiration
That formed at her head
When she looked ahead
At the series of lifeless days
That were coming.
As she acknowledged
The reality of what was to come,
She promised herself
That acknowledgement
Was not acceptance,
And that she refused
To passively wait
For days and months and years
For courage to arrive
And turn her life around.
She refused to simply look
Out of the windows
Of her cage-like dwelling
At the long road that led there.
She stopped waiting
To hear the doorbell
That would spring her into activity
And instead
Got to work herself.
Bracing herself for the tough task,
She started shaking the chains
That tied her to the weight
Of imagined obligations
That no one expected anyway.
The chains were hard to break
But at least they rattled
And betrayed the signs
Of inherent weakness.
For her, for now,
That was enough.
There was nothing to be done.
Nothing, except breaking it.
I took a deep breath;
It felt almost acidic.
Breathing hard, still,
I placed it in front of me.
Gathering all my strength,
I lifted that club.
You know the one;
It’s made of words.
The lethality of it is that
Each word is a weapon in itself.
Taking this club, then,
I moved towards it.
It was beating very fast,
Striving to survive.
Holding the club steadily
I inhaled one last time.
The astringent fumes
Nearly caused me to convulse.
But I squared myself
And brought the club down on it.
It broke into a million pieces
But strangely, contained life.
I looked at it in wonder.
The pieces were still moving.
The club slipped from my hands;
I could not do more.
But the acid had crept to my heart.
And there was really nothing to be done.
And there now lay two injured hearts,
One broken and one burnt.
But when I see in the mirror,
All I see is a dark lake, stagnant,
Unchanging; where all paths end.
No new roads, no new adventures.
I see no glimpse of the ocean,
That you assured me you saw in me.
No vastness, no depth, no voyages.
You say you see sunshine in my eyes,
Lighting up everything around.
But when I see in the mirror,
All I see is a fire, harsh,
Burning, destroying everything in its way.
I see no evidence of Life,
That you claim is hidden in my soul.
All I see is a black hole,
Where the whole of you
Would cease to exist.
I’m a writer of variety, she says.
I write everything I see.
But in all her stories,
I see a little bit of me.
With each story that she writes,
She pulls out a thorn.
A small something buried deep,
A long-forgotten pain.
She writes feverishly at times,
Almost like a maniac,
Stopping hardly to breath
As her fingers heal by pen.
Now I am all sore
With open wounds all over,
The writer sits by, satisfied;
A wet smile sits on her face.
The Writer's Nest 