March Thirty-First: NaPoWriMo: Cage — Behind the Bars of Time

We’ll be back tomorrow with our first daily featured participant and resource, along with a prompt. But for now, and to help out all of you for whom April 1 comes a bit earlier than it does to Na/GloPoWriMo’s secret headquarters (yes, our lair is built into a volcano), here’s an early-bird prompt: Pick a word from the list below. Then write a poem titled either “A [your word]” or “The [your word]” in which you explore the meaning of the word, or some memory you have of it, as if you were writing an illustrative/alternative definition.

Cage, Ocean, Time, Cedar, Window, Sword, Flute.

I cannot believe I am doing this again this year. After last year's miserable attempt and getting my site removed from the Participants’ Sites due to sheer embarrassment, and then getting it added again this year moments before starting the response for this early-bird prompt for reasons I cannot psychologically concoct right now:

I will probably not post this link in the comments. So, I am choosing the word "Cage." Could it be any more obvious? (I mean, I highlighted it above; that's why...)

In a world where time dances with shadows.
There dwells a bird in a cage of illusion.
Trapped in a cycle of self-doubt's spell within the bars of fate.
Marinated in procrastination's fear,
Its wings, once vibrant with the colors of dawn,
Now wilted, tangled by the ego's sneer.

Each day, the sun rises in a golden blaze.
But for this bird, the dawn is but a distant memory.
It believes it has all the time to spare,
Confident it can step out whenever it dare.
Its cage a prison of perpetual lateness,
A cruel symphony of missed opportunities and regret.

Crispy wind blurries the day into evenings.
Oh, how the bird longs to soar through the skies.
To feel the wind beneath its weary wings,
To embrace the freedom that beckons from beyond.
As it finally moves to take flight,
Reality's wind slaps with all its might.

The world outside moves with purpose and grace.
For time waits for no feathered friend,
While the bird languishes in the sauce of its own making.
Its cage, a silent witness to the passage of time,
a reminder of all that could have been, but never was.
And the moment of freedom finds its end.

The world spins on without it.
Late to emerge from its self-made prison,
The bird learns the hard lesson of time's precision.
As it mourns what could have been fair,
A symphony of regret fills the air.
Soaring dreams now shattered on the ground.

Forever late to the dance of life,
In the cage of hindsight, the bird is bound.

- Oizys.

April 8th, UPDATE: After marinating this piece with self-doubt, procrastination and ego of having all the time in the world, I am posting the link to my response to this early (but, actually, super late..) prompt hoping no one will discover this humiliating chronicle of tardiness.

January 2nd - March 25th — Demon of Regret

From January 2nd till March 25th.

As I reflect upon these past few months, it feels like nothing has changed, yet everything has unfolded in such a way that it's hard to believe. So many unfortunate events have occurred, each one seemingly worse than the last, pushing me to what feels like rolling down the rock bottom. These past months have been filled with rollercoasters and somersaults that have made me question my existence in ways I never imagined. It's as if life has thrown me into a whirlwind of chaos, leaving me disoriented and unsure of how to navigate through it all. Despite it all, I find myself here, still standing, though perhaps a bit shaken. So confused. Why am I still here? Why is everything still continuing? How is this still working? How has everything not crashed into non-existence yet? I've been struggling to find the words to express this throat-churning turmoil within me. It's as if my thoughts have become tangled in a web of confusion, making it difficult to articulate even the simplest of emotions. Writing used to be my refuge, my solace in times of trouble, but now, even the act of putting pen to paper feels foreign and unfamiliar. I had to physically force myself to sit down and write. Just like that, the desire to read, to escape into the world of literature, still lingers within me. Yet, it's as if I've forgotten the language of my own mother tongue, stumbling over words that once flowed effortlessly from my lips.

It is a frustrating sensation, feeling disconnected from something that was once so integral to my being. The only question that lingers in my head is, for how long? What will it finally take to just stop? It is a question, one that echoes through the depths of uncertainty. For how long will this feeling of disconnection persist? What will it take for it to finally come to an end? I feel as if I do not know anything anymore. I feel anciently... new. Like, when a person from a faraway past steps into the present, everything seems both familiar and foreign. There's a sense of recognition, a whisper of memory, yet it's juxtaposed with the overwhelming strangeness of the world around me. Each day blends into the next, a seamless tapestry of moments that blur together in a haze of uncertainty. Time stretches and contracts, twisting and turning in unpredictable ways, leaving me feeling untethered from the rhythms of life that once grounded me. I feel like life is the shepherd and I am just a sheep moving blindly in the herd.

I have gotten used to such levels of discomfort that they have become almost familiar, like old friends that I reluctantly tolerate. The weight of uncertainty, the burden of expectations, the echoes of doubt—they linger like unwelcome guests in the corners of my mind, their presence a constant reminder of the fragility of my existence. This repulsive survival mechanism is honed through years of weathering life's storms that just keep on going against my will. I sit and watch my instinctual desire to survive and persevere push my rising bile of disdain down. No matter what I try, how many times I try to undo everything to put a stop to everything, it just does not stop. So desperately, I have latched onto austere indifference in a hope that will probably erase my existence. I have built this steel sheet that separates me and the world around me. I cocoon myself in a cloak of detachment, somehow convinced, that it's better to feel nothing at all than to risk the pain of living. Yet, even as I wrap myself in the comfort of indifference, there is one feeling that never stops piercing into me.

I am lying on my bed, squirming in prolonged agony. There is a small demon that has pinned my frail body. Regret is the relentless intruder that refuses to be silenced. It pokes me and passes through the steel sheets of indifference.  It whispers in the quiet moments, reminding me of the chances I didn't seize, the words left unspoken, the paths left unexplored. I try to make it succumb to my hefty layers of wool-gathering yet it pierces into them and entangles the echo of missed opportunities and roads not taken into the very fabric of my being. It's as though each thread of remorse weaves itself into the fibres of my existence, creating a tapestry of what-ifs and should-haves that I cannot escape. As I lie here, wrestling with the weight of regret, as though I am locked in a battle with this insidious demon, struggling to break free from its suffocating grip. But no matter how hard I fight, it persists, its whispers growing louder with each passing moment. I try to drown out the echoes of the past with distractions and diversions, seeking solace in the superficial busyness of daily life or building castles in Spain. Yet, in the quiet moments when the noise fades away, regret rears its head once more, reminding me of all that could have been. It's a torment that knows no bounds, a relentless onslaught that leaves me feeling battered and bruised.

- Oizys.

January 2, 2024 - The Taboo Tango of Veiled Realities

The second day of the new year is when the new year turns into another year. The second day of the new year feels like flipping the calendar only to find the same chapter as if the fresh start is just a rewind button to the familiar pages of yesteryear. The 31st midnight is a trip outside to look at the sun with a glimmer of hope that maybe it has turned Pentagon or is diminishing, but the rays of light chomp on the glimmer of change. And the first day is just the hangover from the light's voracious appetite. The second day—back to square one!

The second day's dawn mirrors the unvaried routine of the days before, each tick of the clock underscoring the stubborn persistence of the status quo. It's as if time itself has chosen not to partake in the newness promised by the calendar. The resolutions made just 48 hours ago seem like distant echoes, drowned out by the monotony that has crept back in. On this day, aspirations collide with the reality that change is an elusive quarry. The second sunrise of the year casts a stark light on the challenges ahead, with the shadows of yesterday refusing to dissipate. It's a peculiar dance between anticipation and disillusionment as if the universe has conspired to test the resolve declared amidst the cheers and confetti of New Year's Eve.

Remember my last entry's ending? The pretentious bollocks of me and my droplet against the ropey fabric of society? And I went to sleep, thinking I would turn my droplet into a rebellious ripple tomorrow morning. It's not just about navigating the same mundane script; it's about injecting defiance into the routine. Each task, no matter how trivial, has to be a subtle act of resistance. The meetings, the chores, the predictable rhythms—you have to consistently and performatively morph into opportunities to defy the gravitational pull of conformity. So, I wake up thirty minutes late to work; my blisters are all gone, and my uterus has gone on a monthly riot. So, yeah. If not a shift from square one to square two, surely an elevation of it. As the day unfolds, the rope frays your edges, testing your collective insistence that you need to do something until your ordinary is no longer synonymous with the predictable. The ordinary is no longer a passive landscape; it's an active battleground, and you have to conquer the change. Every minute becomes a minute. And, even if you are putting on your best fight, it feels as if you are just waiting. Doing nothing. I was just waiting for the minute to pass. Just to pass the elevation from square one to square two, so it at the very least feels palpable. Laden with conformities, and defiance against the mundane becomes a shameful rebellion. You do it secretly. Quietly. Shamefully. You close your door, detach the plugs of reality, separate yourself from the fabric of a collective entity, and try to bring about change. But the change is supposed to be etched into the fabric. Fought and inked with the reds of shameful floundering and blues of under one's own steam.

I took a few hours to entirely detach myself and, most humanely, pluck the tendrils of conformity one by one. In the privacy of my sanctuary, I unravel the threads of conformity. The shame is not born from the act itself but from the realization that this defiance is deemed subversive. It's an acknowledgement that society frowns upon those who dare to question the predictable and who choose to colour outside the lines of conformity. And the constant fear of taking your secret colours outside sets a nest in the back of your mind. I come here, and I think about what to write. And, whenever the door creaks open and reality's plugs are reattached, I drop the act somewhere in the corners of the web, but the shame lingers. It grows out of you as if it were your own motherly creation, not chopped out and laid bare open by the hands of a morality sheepdog. The rebellion may be quiet, but its impact is loud, and it sometimes drops down your cheeks or climbs up your throat. And you either let the shame do its job while you continue your silent defiance or you give in and etch the fabric with the bile of atavistic instincts.

Either way, you never know what additional features of the struggling game get released and added to your character every morning, so don't make categorical statements a couple of hours before to the public (not that anybody actually witnesses this gory act of textually-induced logorrhea) that you are on the verge of changing the mattress of your long pedigree.

- Oizys. 

January 1, 2024 - Stale Resolutions, Fresh Trauma

Welcome to 2024, where nothing has changed. The world is still the same. Bullets are still being fired. Kids are still starving. I am still in the same clothes as last year. I spent the whole day in the same cot I was rotting the entirety of last year, wondering what my resolution for this year should be. I know it sounds like a joke, but it is not. It is probably an age-old habit that has set in inertia, and no matter how much we fail to keep up with the resolutions, we always fence off December and January with a hopeful view, thinking that whatever happened, has happened; let's try and get better starting this year. Nothing changes. You might start a new diary page with some fresh ideas, but society's script is still the (stale-)same. We go for therapy and try to heal ourselves, but the newspaper guy every morning slaps us with freshly baked trauma. We tend our garden in the winter so we can see the flowers bloom when spring comes, and we peek up to the streets to see the epoch enthusiasts chopping off our ability for personal transformation.

You say it's the quiet decisions, the daily choices that accumulate like droplets forming a mighty river. Then why are our hard-earned droplets licked and sucked by the royal pond of stagnation sentinels? You say, after all, change begins within the confines of our hearts. Then why are the custodians hell-bent on stomping on our resilience to try something new with their boots of conformity? You say it's not about grand gestures or sweeping transformations but about embracing the power of incremental change. Then why are the routine rulers throttling our personal evolution with the coded habits entrenched deep in our amalgam that wallop any kind of deviation? For how long do you think you will attribute individual drawbacks and wellness pieces of advice to the problems that require a grotesque transmogrification of intricately woven unequal threads of the conglomerate tapestry, where somewhere some are stretched thin to their ancestral cores and others suffocate under the weight of uniformity, casting shadows over the once "vibrant diversity"?

We sit in our fields of labour, yearning for a beacon of change. Some days, we succumb to weariness, letting the weight of the world convince us that our small, quiet acts of defiance are insignificant. Staring at this sea of monotony, we awaken our quiescent competence somewhere within us. Because if we don't propel ourselves forward, the suffocating grip of the corporate matrix outsources its job to the relentless assault of hunger and begar. Our pale legs and parched throats reek from waiting for freedom since forever. Can we collect all the droplets into a raging river that sweeps away the barriers to progress? Or is it just everyone for themselves, each with their own droplet, attempting to win the fight?

I begin my new year, hopefully, with a new thought, if not a new life, a clean slate, or a new page. Just me and my droplet.

- Oizys.