A hiccup, unyielding.
A nuisance, ungiving.
I feel my mere enthuse
Bereaved and befuddled.
Yet, I rise
To the iridescence
Of the days.
In an utter hope
Of moments, without the interim.
Nuisance
Wonder
We know not ourselves, do we?
For every moment we think of
To have known ourselves,
To have it all figured out,
We meet the un-luminated abstract,
Unexplored fright,
Untamed rage,
Unconquered wit,
And sometimes unrealized fact.
For every moment we dared to have known,
We subdue and retreat,
All the way back to the start!
Incandescent
When the music thumps in my head,
The wind blows across my face,
And for once,
I forget the world that bickers,
And I rise to iridescence.
That’s exactly when
I – feel – incandescent.
Unyielding to the magnitude,
Emboldened to press through,
To reach of the infinitude,
And erase the feels of the blue!
Not Not Writing
If I swore an oath not to write,
If, by any chance, I consent,
To no longer inscribe,
I must have found a way to my heart.
A key to my chaotic head.
Or maybe,
I had just forfeited
To the wages against myself,
The battles roaming in my mind,
And the wars of my everyday strifes.
I’m agitated to write,
Yet in solicitude by not.
Rushed to spell it all.
At once, to say it all,
Yet contended to hide it
Altogether beneath the shawl.
The Other Form of Vanity
Know Thyself! This is, perhaps, the most often-heard quote when it comes to self-development and growth. Not that I am against these ideas. For one, these are inevitable fates one must endure as long as he lives. And, more importantly, what doesn’t grow, rot.
I, in any accord, do not wish to rot. So, I would like to configure this path to whatever is there for growth. As fancy as it sounds, the quote “Know thyself” makes it hard to believe whether it guides us to the complete enlightenment we all seek rather than an ulterior form of vanity. Before exploring this perspective on vanity, let us consider how we can know ourselves for one moment.
For starters, what are we really? I am here asking a metaphysical question to understand what my fibers are built of. I am not at all curious about how my physical body took its current form. How would that help me anyway? I am here. Now. And unless my desire to destroy my being get the best of me, it would be in vain to try to advance that research. Yet, my question is not an easy argument to settle. How on earth would I know myself? The abstract build of my being? The realm of my reality? How can I identify the constituents I sacrificed for the sake of conformity from the ones I chose to adhere to with audacity? Is there any authentic side of mine left? Or am I the result of the builds and constructs of my surrounding?
Given the hardship of my questions, I hope my reader would forgive my shortcomings in answering them. I am even wondering which part of me was inquiring about all these questions. (Because I am as well trying to avoid vanity of my own).
I have been told, as inevitable as growth and change are, vanity is also the risk waiting at every corner. And knowing thyself is a virtue, while vanity is a curse. Now, this does not help to make the quest any simple. At any moment I am unlocking this box of my unknown and unexplored self, it is more than probable to find something of use. I sincerely hope that all I would find is not rubbish. Yet, if I found that one valuable thing in me, would not I be closing the gap between me and my vanity? While becoming awake and more conscious of oneself, how can one utterly avoid the ultimate vanity?
For me, the two are faces of a single coin; Enlightenment and Vanity. Every day is everybody’s first day in life after all. Despite the mundane repetitions and cycles, the newness of the day poses a great challenge when it comes to enlightenment. That is a little relief, honestly. The unending quest for enlightenment will, perhaps, impede us from falling from vanity. But tiny bits of ourselves we get to learn from the days are still the mothers of vanity we conceive in every moment. Try to keep the virtue while fighting the vice. Or just wait on the edge of the coin protecting thyself from befalling on either of the sides. In any case, know thyself. At least, sometimes.
The Telltale
My mind reeks
Of the unprecedented thoughts,
And accumulated resentments and regrets.
I do not recall the blemishes,
I have scrounged all over the surface.
I do not repress,
Every inch of my fiber,
To squeeze all the goods,
And to banish all the bads.
All I know is,
All I can smell is,
How my mind reeks!
On the brink of existence,
I embrace.
In the bane trial of survival,
I pry and follow the trail.
In a mere coincidence,
I wish to see consistence.
And then I realize,
It is a tell-tale
I impose on myself.
A story I wish to tell,
But not a life I care to have.
The Raw Confusion of the Young
Young and restless, they say. Reckless, at times. I do not think anyone would argue otherwise about this label. Whether young or old. In my recent read, I indulged one of the literary masterpieces of Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises. As a member of a generation of post World War 1, Hemingway calls that generation “The Lost Generation”. His label was to suffice the fall of the societal structure, the spread of brokenness amidst the community, and the dire trial of escaping pain due to the impact of the war. Escapism was governing the realm of the people to erase the horrors or at least to fade the bold carves. Alcohol, literature, jazz, and even sex were not enough shields to sustain the escape. Here is the wonder then: if “The Lost Generation” was born a century ago, what would be the best description of this generation? A generation that has suffered two grand wars and so many follow-ups? A generation born of a cracking structure? Deeply broken and wounded. A generation living at the edge of despair. And above all, keenly talented in denying the existence of anything. What would be the best title for us, then?
The angst is not a mere fantasy. Nor a made-up thrill to justify some acts. The angst buried beneath all the young is the undeniable reality. So much so, it is usually reflected in a premature reaction toward everything. Too much rage. Unbalanced concern when not required. Unyielding stubbornness for partially understood matters. The unnecessary responses sought into the unrelated causes are the sole reason why we might be an enigma as a generation.
There is also the ungiving quest for freedom, societal structure, customs, principles, and values. Not everyone might inquire about these questions in a similar way. But, one way or the other, the quests are the weeds we cannot avoid nor destroy. This, in the biggest sense, leads us straight to the depth of confusion. It makes us second guess and question every single move we make. Is this proper? Should I be happy about this? How should I feel? Can anyone tell me what to do or how to feel? Why should anyone be entitled, though? Am I in trouble/in the wrong here? And then, all these questions accumulate to form a fine line of denial. The closing statement becomes everything[my life] is off the record [as if we have spent many years living in this world]. The ultimate destination is, then, a raw confusion: What am I supposed to do now?
What am I up to? What should I do next? What should I believe? Should I even believe? Am I dreaming? Am I conscious? Have I started living? Or am I yet to start to live? Why am I like this? How did I get here? And when?… And so much more questions firmly establish the raw confusion of the young along with the narcissism borne out of individualism. After all, what would a lost generation produce if not this?
Sooner or later, the raw matures. And this raw confusion illuminates that being young is not equivalent to being invincible. The recklessness will see to the end of its indestructibility, anyway. Life breaks us apart. Time, along with life itself, mends us as well. As the days keep piling up like trash paper, we are forced to realize life moves on even if we don’t. And the confusion clears up as we move along. Or so it tries to fade away.
I Just Let Go
I let my mind sleep,
-Breath,
At least sometimes.
Whenever encountered
With feigned minds.
The gullible and the cowards.
I let my body float,
Harness, at least.
Not by arguing for sophistication,
Not by giving in
For the collectively programmed wants,
And desires.
I. Just. Let. Go.
Roam through the minutes. Hours.
And I caress my enraged soul
And tell my heart
That time is not passing me by,
‘Cause I fly
While I pry.
And I do not cry.
Nor fry
I choose to entreat,
From that brain of mine
And I let the moment sly
For my soul to get by.
Desolate Expedition
In the desolate expedition
Of trying to find oneself,
The meaning of life,
One could not help to feel the knife,
Of the incessant grief,
Of all the losses sustained,
And the inept to fully recover,
To recede from the cliff of sadness,
Only to settle
In the island of fragilities!
To the Sordid Reality!
When taken aback
From the journey through
The strata of oblivions.
Here and there,
When awakened back
To this sordid reality,
To this absurdity,
Only then,
Let’s disappear into the horizon,
Into the light,
And write poetry,
In utter darkness,
In perfect solace.
Solitude/ Loneliness
Solitude is a friend.
But, loneliness is a foe.
For one who dreads,
The company of a mind,
Is surely mad.
Yet,
For the man who felt abandoned,
Left aside from the entire world,
Then,
Lonesome is a nemesis,
And the void is fierce.
For loneliness is sadness,
But solitude is a comrade.
omnes moriendum
All, made of bone and blood,
Yet, try to comprehend
This life they succumbed.
Those who knew and understand, dread.
The others, deny and pry
While the rest, comply.
All die.
Yet, they live.
Or survive.
Even, love.
In the infinitude bits of tropes,
They thrive.
Live, survive, and love.
But one should never forget,
All, made of bone and blood,
And all will be dead.
Ashes of Now
It’s quicker than you think.
Faster than a click,
How the now becomes,
Part of the then.
With every step you take,
The present vanish,
Into the realm of the gone.
With every breath you sip,
You burn today down
To the ashes of the faded,
Only to ignite the birth
Of a new dawn.
It happens in a blink,
When here regress,
The bygone thrives.
And just like that,
Comes another chapter,
Another hereafter.
We don’t live for the thrill,
We barely live at all.
But we don’t live for the rush,
Nor for how the ashes stash.
We happened to be there,
When the present disappear,
And become another.
And then another.
Beyond
This is the beyond.
Beyond doubt.
All the pieces falling apart.
Nothing standing straight.
Nor falling right.
Beyond death.
Beyond the instant kills
Or the daily annihilation.
And this is the beyond remains.
But also.
This is beyond life.
The usual strive.
To be or not to be.
To live or to survive.
Or to rot in the lively strife.
Perhaps, all is beyond repair.
Beyond the great powers
Of death or life.
Or doubt. Even denial
Can no longer conquer
Whatever is out there.
For this is the real beyond.
Dissolve
There it is.
All the angst and the urge,
Floating, fiercely.
Boiling, intensely.
Only to burst unto
The extends of the heavens.
For I’m in the mood,
To dissolve in the sky.
Unabridged Manuscripts 