Yet Another August Poem? – A (Prose) Poem

August is making me oscillate between soft glints of sunlight and dark pits of consternation. I sit in class and try to jot down words, but I feel myself descend into a labyrinth of little and grotesque forests in my mind. Heavy trees, whose seeds were sown long before I was born. The green is dark and brown. Barefoot, I walk and let the sharp grass cut my toes and then let the wetness soothe the wound. I pluck some leaves to read my sower's prophecy, and all I see is patterns. Pathless and meaningless patterns. I look up and the sky is getting eaten by all the green. The thick veins of trees erupt from the depths of the soil to stem around my feet. I keep dragging my body across the muddy and damp floor. The air is laden with age-old trauma and archaic affinity. I sit up and wipe some mud to discover a brand on the back of my palm. Skin is seared to mark the bloodline. I lay on the ground and let the soil swamp over me. I struggled with my breathing and, unlike a common human instinct to throw my hands and legs up in the air, my fingers traced the iron mark, my fingertips trying to decipher the fate of its body. Is it a besmirched death or a glory depart to meet my sower?

- Oizys.

August – A Poem

A nauseating wind hits my face.
Followed by an ill-omened cloudburst
I sit clutching the fingers of one hand.
Strangling my toes with twitches
Trees turning a deep green.
Also, potholes with mud
I take out my phone only to flood the screen.
And blot it on my jeans.
And I imagine myself in someone else's life.
As someone else's rider
As the lane approached
A wave of bile bestired in my mind.
Anxiety erupted like this.
I look at the date.
The first day of August
And I lament the past few months.
I see myself approaching my dwelling.
And I imagine myself in someone else's life.
As someone else's pupil
I knock on the gates and the door to misfortune hails me.
Takes my baggage
She lovingly strokes the bad luck as she wipes the raindrops.
Only to let him lunge and bellow at me.
Shutting off my valve of defense
Barring my lips of vindication
I wail in desperation battling with my words of demurral
And I imagine myself in someone else's life.
As someone else's daughter.
I run as I scream at his profoundly deaf anger.
I separate myself from my being.
I scratch my skin and clamp my eyes shut.
Mulish tears salt my wounded mouth.
I beat myself with shuckling
As I imagine myself in someone else's death
As someone else's misfortune.

- Oizys.

{A structurally inconsistent and irregular ode to my wistful thinking. A woebegone August, lamenting the end of my life's summer at the lack of lambency. I wish I could write down the address of this snakebit's origin. But, I am scared. I am scared that if I write it, I will be banished. My heart will be vagrant. And, as a result of my fugitivity from his tumult, I will forever bear the label of scapegoat. Oh August, the new beginning of an old wound. The new branch from rotten fruit. I stew in this rumination as I imagine myself in someone else's perception, as someone else's loved one.}

The Evil Crevasse – A Poem

"The immanence is not unworldly!" It cried.
The immanence is exceptionally terrestrial.
Deep into the chasm of the immanence,
Swiftly they cascade - the sophisticated, the terrestrial, the mercenary.

These humans,
However hard they try,
Will always be evil.
"Do humans make you shiver? Do they?"
It asks me.
Makes me think...
Think of the eschaton,
Confused is just the thing,
It get me wondering if the eschaton is woolly.
Muddled with misdeed and malice.

Makes me think...
Think of a human,
However hard one tries,
Will always be yellow,
Yellow-bellied and eering,
It shakes before stampeding away,
Says, "Pay attention to the divine Nature",
For the divine is the most ordinary reverend of all.
Deep into the gorge of the divine,
Swiftly it goes - the mundane, the characterless, the mediocre.

- Oizys.

I Am Scared To Write Here - A Poem

I am so scared to write here.
What if they find me?
What if they look into this pile of words?
A heap of rotten emotions,
Nothing but stale angst,
Useless anger,
Faceless rebellion.
What if they chop my words into pieces?
Throw away my putrid seed vessels,
Take away my good flesh,
Sell and eat them.
What if they dump it in the mass of kaput?
Sticker me as noisome,
Dispose me as unculled,
Ending up as manure
Manure full of weedy seeds,
Corrupting the arabilis.

I am scared to write because,
I am scared to blather my noisome concoction,
Dole out my unsavory portions,
Unlade my tanks of insipid versions,
Dangle my flesh blotted with too many horrid snippets,
With no morsel of structure or rhythm,
Because, a bad apple spoils the entire barrel.

- Oizys.

18 July 2022 - "nothing to write home about"

Hello, I received that extra protective jab today.

No matter how protective and secretive I am, a small part of the writer (I hope I can call myself that) in me, has always wanted to reach out to a reader, hand out my words, break open my salted poems, and show my phrases. But, there is something very banal, very vacuous about my opus of writings with shame stitched in its backcloth that becomes prominent when "seen". I see books bounded by soft covers or hardbacks, beautiful art spread over it, engirdled with rates and crits. I see profiles on social platforms, sapid and tactfully stacked pictures and videos that ensnares fingertips, and beneath it is a brick of words with emotions and notions sun-dried together. So ambriosal and so moreish. So potent and so chewy. Such sweetness and hydrating power. Bedewing tears on fresh graves of catastrophes and contretemps. Leaving a considerably bittersweet yearning for more in your head.

Then, I open this site. Search my notes. I scramble with the passlock and I look over my words. Not even a grey wraith of grace or ingenuity. The flow is so sluggish like how I wake up in the morning and rummage through my day to find a trace of my will to live. The meanings are so staggering like how I walk after I unsuccessfully overcome any situation. The blueprint, patched up like how I cover my gaping anxiety with my ego and fear of embarrassment. The ideas are so incoherent like how I speak in front of an audience even with hundred hours of practice and a lucid script in plain sight. And the words, oh the words. Shambolic and draggle-tailed like when I am out in wind and try to fix my hair by running my fingers in them but end up further dishevelling it. Stolen and pinched from here and there, from posters stuck on trams in an unknown city to ancient taglines in broken and forsaken repositories, like a debt-as souvenir.

- Oizys.

17 July 2022

"June, July, August. Every day, we hear their laughter.
I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair.
Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over
his eyes." - Mary Oliver.

16 July 2022

Hello!

Lately, I have been struggling with what to write about. There have been a few fleeting ideas, but I am unable to catch one to nurture it further in my brain.

11:40 PM

It is raining. Heavy raindrops fall freely. Not so urgently, but rolling against the window. The room is closed and cold. Windows are shut and curtains are drawn. I am sleeping under a soft, thin old coverlet. You know, the ones that are overused and have reached the level of cozy comfort that rubs against your skin and makes your eyelids heavy. Scrolling through my phone, I came across some words by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. "You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one. You felt that you were destined for other things, but you had no idea how to achieve them, and in your misery, you began to hate everything around you." 

I eventually settled on a thought to write about. A thought from a not-so-pleasing reverie. Some time ago, I had no path to choose from. Every interest is desensitized. Every skill is debilitated. Every choice is disentitled. I was craving an abrupt and quick end. Confusion and emptiness are strangling my sanity me. Then, I discovered a postgraduate program I got interested in. I suddenly forgot the aches and pains in my mind; the scars of strenuous pondering began to move away from my vision. I started reading. I started talking. I started living... a bit, maybe. I delved deeper into the matter of planning a future that would align with this program. I analyzed and came across some problems. I ticked off some to-dos and what-hows. The more I plumbed into it, the more I got interested. But, sometimes, when you are the most excited, you are the weakest. When you are the happiest, you are also the most unshielded. You are on your knees, looking up to the sky, with tears in your eyes and some self-possession finally in your mind. That's when the rain starts roaring. Then lightning strikes. The drops are no longer lingering around your skin. They are falling knives and blades. Cut through your sweetbreads, steal your voice. Rip open your offals and reduce yourself to a carcass waiting to be scavenged. A disappointingly good carrion for the sleek and well-fed vulture of death.

The clouds won't stop tonight, I guess. But, my heart has been cut too close, the spareribs obtained by trimming too nearly. It hurts. My eyes have started to wrinkle again. No vital ichor and no vim root. This is where you stop writing. It is your body's reflex. Shut it. More like a crying call. To fortify your endangered reservoir of the last vestiges of verve and vigor.

- Oizys.

 

13 July 2022 - Thoughtless

I am lying here awake. Alone today as well, in the room.
I am lying and thinking. I was watching some videos and listening to songs yet I was thinking. Thinking about what to write here. I am just speechless. Thoughts have gone away for a long walk. Leaving me all alone with an empty page and a house full of people to deal with.

Apparently, wearing shorts is a crime. I need to wear longer pants so that I can preserve my culture. Marking this day so I do not repeat it, in God's name.

- Oizys.

12 July 2022 - Private or Peril?

The twelfth day of July.

I do not remember how the entire day went. I guess there was a bit of heavy rain, some spilling of tea on the staircase, and, of course, a huge amount of wool-gathering.

I spent the day browsing through stuff here and there. I came across this bunch of writing inspirations, two of them being, "Will you please leave me alone now so that I can continue to wallow in self-pity." and "Please be quiet, I can't even hear myself losing the will to live." I have a boutade for writing right now. Reminds me of the days when I was a teenager and loved writing in my journals, but unfortunately lived in a house where the concept of privacy never existed. Members of my family would read them and then proceed to use them to make fun of me or against me while arguing. I've never been able to trust them again since that happened. Not even with good news about my life. There is a tick in the back of my mind that the news will be tainted. I have a fear that they will snatch away that feeling of success from me. People will say, "Now you can keep an online diary." It is safe and secure. But, what's done is done. It remains with you, and you have the unduly duty to carry that scar forever. I remember trying to keep a journal after that when I had some space for myself but was never able to. I would end up throwing it away in the garbage dump from the rear balcony. And so I stopped being myself. Around them, and sometimes in the pages too. All I do is pretend, filter, mask, and fake.

I can't remember the last time I felt or was myself around them. They do not know at all. It is a level of discomfort that will make you want to take off your own skin. The agonizing moments of being around them. Always on the edge, walking around on eggshells. There is a block of acute small talks with no space for actual discussions consisting of nuances, understandings, or (dis)agreements, no matter what I do or how hard I try. When I think about it, the act of dismissing whatever I say is what has broken the thread between us. They keep pestering me to share it with them. But those horrific moments of being dismissed keep playing on loop. The fear is there and it's thriving. Sometimes, growing up, they would get annoyed or upset by me very easily and for reasons that were never revealed to me. I can still feel the silent scream "Leave" towards me from them whenever I say or do something. The close-mouthed condemnatory looks shut me up now. And, the fact that I have zero knowledge of what would tick them off pioneered the sack of anxiety, distancing, and over-sensitivity that only sucks the energy out of you. The only possible and accessible way out is to escape. The irony, I know, but it's comparable to being stranded in a foreign country where no one speaks your native tongue while you learn the local traditions. Every social interaction and discussion turns into a menacing maze to be solved. And every time I act authentic and am a little open, it feels like I'm "doing too much" and alienating people. I recently attended a family function. I secretly hope that whenever I am present at a family event or even at the dinner table with them, I do a good job of concealing the enormous feeling of unwantedness. I am always under the distinct feeling that I am a hermit crab doing my best to pass for a human while speaking to them. I have been trying to avoid such functions nowadays. Sometimes I don't even mind them; I simply can't handle the atmosphere of hanging out and conversing with them. I have never been able to be myself in those circumstances. There are too many hurdles for me to be seamless with them.

I don't know how to end this entry. I don't know if anyone is reading this. This is just the unloading of that sack of overthought emotions and unnecessary feelings that many labels as "teeny angst." Here I sit, on a rare day of having this room entirely to myself for a few hours. I try to split open this labyrinth-like drama of grief and solitude.

- Oizys.

11 July 2022 - Discovering Writers: Or, Mourning My Own?

The eleventh day of July.

When I last wrote here on the sixth, I wrote an elaborate entry about a few things, and then my phone died, resulting in the entry getting deleted. I have been in mourning for those words since and have not been able to write anything since. Yesterday, I finished and submitted an article for a competition. And, today... I feel like writing again.

Rarely, does the advice of "Do the thing" work when someone is demotivated and cannot commit to an action. And that rarity is writing. This is probably one of the few scenarios where the advice "just write" actually works! 

I know I will never be able to revive or resurrect those words we all lost on the sixth of July, and hence, I will not try. But, that doesn't mean I will stop writing about that or writing in general. I have come across two writers and have been reading their works, mostly columns and newsletters. One thing I am always envious of and love is capturing the essence of the mundane. Phases like these where I discover such writers are what make me both happy and sad. I am happy because I love reading them. Sad, because... I miss those days when at least I was able to dream of becoming a writer. I just miss being able to plan for a career in writing. Now, it has been reduced to a hobby that disappears when I am too busy with academics or too tired to pick up the pen. It sometimes sits in the background, waiting to be done, and I keep delaying it. I postpone my thoughts and words. When my back rests on the bed, I am exhausted and a realization hits me. I keep taking writing for granted and keep procrastinating. It makes me so sad that once there was a time when I considered this act to be my entire life, and now it is not even properly yoked to my daily life activities. It makes me so, so sad. The idea of starting a newsletter has been running in my mind. But... what do I write? Will anyone read, let alone pay me for these words? I am now constricted to shifting between my side of the bed and this table. Restricted to half of a room shared with another member. Just wandering through life with no desire to experience anything. Settled comfortably into a Pyrrhic life, delusive contentment. I don't feel competent to even write anymore. Words feel empty. A bundle of lies stitched together. An attempt to choke the hollowness. How long do you fake it? Even when you see death approaching, you can only smile until it holds your hands. At one point, you have to give in to the end.

- Oizys.