Have you ever intentionally crossed a street or road because a group of men were walking down in your direction? Because the possibility of being run down by a car is more favourable than being touched by a stranger.
Have you ever subconsciously counted the number of women around you? Because I automatically feel safe when I see another woman but she doesn’t help, though, because most often these women judge me for wearing short shorts and crop tops.
Ever since I heard my mum and dad fighting, I knew.
Marriages are a gift but they don’t come with an exchange offer.
Ever since I watched my first porn, I knew.
I almost gagged at blowjobs and penises.
three years my senior in college
and her girlfriend, two. You know
how important it is to try to save
someone every day, in a small
way in a big way; save them from
heartbreak or a bad hair day, save
them when they say they haven’t
done their homework, save them
from that dick of a boyfriend or
that jealous best friend. Save their
pencil from falling, save them a
seat at the cafeteria, save them
the last bite of your sandwich, the
last sip of your coffee. Wait, I feel
myself digressing. Yes, my senior
with a girlfriend. I look up to her
and her girlfriend; she is my hero.
Once back in freshman year, she
showed me that I don’t have to be
what they want me to be. I don’t
have to like boys or fall in love
the minute that guy pays me the
slightest attention. I can be, can
love any body I want to, a Susan
or a Bradbury. Yes, my senior is
a superhero. She saved the day;
she saved me.
How do you put such feelings into words or words into feelings?
I’ve watched a hundred movies and read as many books
I’ve read poetry from far and wide that tell you that you
should learn to love yourself before you love someone else
But I think, and it’s probably just me, that you know
when you miss that person when they are not around.
Not when you are not around, when they are not around.
You get it, don’t you? It matters which one of you isn’t around.
Yes, that is when you know.
When you miss someone when they aren’t around.
smiling back at me with a crooked smile but
I realised that smile was just a show to cover
the hurt, the dark and the rust.
ever since I was little the normal I saw was
not the normal I wanted. then I grew up and
realised that twenty years had not numbed
the pain, it had just numbed me so I could
not feel it. what I felt was dark and hollow.
all the light around me failed to pierce my
soul that was a black rainbow and my heart
that was dark and opaque
You know, it’s just been a few months.
It deserves to stay on for longer, right?
you can call it that
an apology for me being me
pop–popping of bubble wrap, strewn papers and folders,
labels on cardboard boxes: fragile
one word, that’s all it took to label my life
fragile: never sure if I’d wake up on the same bed
(or even the same city)
i was scared to call any place my home;
storing photo albums in cardboard boxes,
devouring moments from plastic plates
this constant change, constant shifting, constant instability
helped me in a way
I adapted quickly to new faces, new uniforms and new beds
new postal codes and new post offices
but I never gave others a chance to adjust to me;
a couple steps away from each other one day
a couple thousand miles the other
no i don’t mean your girlfriend, your boyfriend
your husband or wife
or even your children or your parents
between that of a husband and a husband
a wife and her wife
between a mother and father
that is taken for granted where i am from
between the flowers and the bees
between winter and the trees
between summer and spring
between humans and things
to a blind man it is the wet nose of their dog
to the deaf it is a rainy day’s wet morning fog
to the bored it is their character coming alive in dreams
to the lonely it is the words that keep him company
to the poor it is the hope of a better unknown
to me, it is the songs that make me want to write ballads
where did those days of playing, screaming, crying and laughing go?
Take me back
to those days of hand-fed meals
to pokemon, digimon and power rangers
to monsters under the bed, not in my head.
I grew up too soon
where did the magic go?
I miss the magic that made the fridge light up,
that brought the sun out of the clouds
that made the rain splash all over my face.
I grew up too soon
where did the innocence go?
when did I become an object of desire
when did my looks and body take precedence
Love, devotion, purity,
love, poetry,
love, unfortunate, forbidden,
love, never to be
Lavender
family? A feeling of nostalgia, that of sunny skies and rainbows,
or that of nausea: like thunder rumbling in the pit of your stomach
or like mistrust boiling down your windpipe. No matter where we
are, who we are, family renders us weak. I see shades of sweetness
and anguish, whirling and mixing into a thing people call family.
Once again, I am in my frocks, ribbons and pink ballerinas. Once
again, I am a child. Once again I am at the mercy of my parents.
Once again, I am taught that elders are to be respected. The same
elders, who gaze at me like prey.
Family. They play your heart like a violin. Each twang teaching
you something new. You are a failure. You will never be successful.
You should marry someone soon, that’s all you are good for.
Family. They force you to live two lives: one half of you muted
by habit, the other half brought to life by the absence of it.
Interactions, distractions,
protractions of gross companionship:
hugs and cuddles, holding hands,
an innocuous peck of affection
on the cheek of sober society
Am I an outlier?
Forever meant to be an onlooker
and not a partaker
of the tactile world around me
Am I selfish?
If I don’t want friends
for emotional purposes
but just for recreation
Am I asocial?
If I avoid social contact but not social strife
my actions, my words
tweaked and adjusted
to fit the conventional rules
without the Dickinson-ian world in my head
Am I arrogant?
If I don’t greet every soul I pass
in fleeting salutations
dictated by social order
that are never meant to last
Am I weird?
If I keep to myself
and forge friendships for
bare subsistence
not companionship
Am I an introvert?
If I prefer my company
to that of others’
solely because the thought of
being friendly is just an imitation
without the complementary flattery
his mind wandered the forbidden path.
His mind wandered the halls,
the Quidditch matches,
the detentions
and the squabbles.
Those fights seem so petty now
compared to the fight raging between his mind and heart.
The longing in his heart
burned and pumped.
It doesn’t matter if his love is unrequited
all that matters is Courage and Confession.
He gulped it down
and made his way to the Burrow
where holiday cheer stood in
stark contrast to the drab dark Manor.
He saw him
and the nefarious bunch of red-heads.
not paying any attention to her mother’s words
“Watch out for the big bad wolf.” She breathed in
the air, she let the morning sun wash her anew. The
leaves spoke to her, warned her of ominous times.
On she trudged, her shoes broken not her spirit.
She reached her grandmother’s cottage and could
barely recognize her.
A ruffle, a shuffle, a kerfuffle. She saw a flash of
silver, heard a thud and there was the woodcutter
and her grandmother’s head. Only, it wasn’t her
grandmother. Her mother’s portentous words rang
in her head. It’s true. It’s all true. She thanked Him
for saving her from the Big Bad Wolf.
He offered to escort her out of the woods and she
acquiesced. She felt protected. He had saved her
life. But sometimes, what you run from and what
you run into are the same.
Yet no competition, money or genie can grant me this wish.
I take it up on my own.
Determined, I call everyone.
Anubis, more amenable than legend would have you believe, agreed to wrap my body up
but Nephthys refused to escort me to Osiris.
O, Osiris, hear me. Take me inside your necropolis, let me feast my eyes on your realm.
Alas, the sandy shores of Egypt turn a blind eye to my wishes; where do I go next?
Hades won’t take my calls and Hecate won’t return my incantations.
Thanatos, I remember, corresponds with mortals like me.
He heard me out, he laughed and cried with me
But he ended it with a
“Sorry, we can’t insure you for a journey like that”
Neither Greece nor Rome is my salvation.
like it’s all mechanical.
To be told what to do, to be told what to become, to be told how to behave.
She painted a tree, they found a fault in its branches
she painted a bird, they found a fault in her wings
she wrote a story, they found a fault in the characters
she wrote a poem, they found a fault in the words
she lost her motivation.
Looks don’t matter, your personality does
marks are not important, follow your passion
yet the prettier, more “intelligent” ones
got booked, got hooked.
She lost her self-confidence.
I stopped being a wife
and became a mother instead.
Life spewed out of me: crying, choking, blinking, squealing.
The cord connecting us was cut, but we could never be separated, not really.
Feeding, cleaning, feeding, cleaning, the cycle went on and on
a never ending abyss of parenthood.
Thus started the voyage of happiness and misery, vanity and hurt.
The child grew.
Student. Adolescent.
Independent. Employment.
Red Valentine’s Day, red blood.
Faces flushed with happiness, faces flushed with stress.
Eyes sparkling with joy, eyes sparkling with tears.
“Solitude is who he was. This caused those in his life to view him with a barely veiled contempt. [He] was certain that he was not liked. Which is hard on a man. Maybe it was because he gave nothing, that he received nothing in return.”
– Paper Man (2009)
Do you have those days when you just cannot study?
But you need to stretch yourself to your thinnest for the most meagre of reasons: marks? Instead, put on music, do whatever you want to. Dance. Listen to music. Sing along. Write a book. Read a book. Go for a walk. Do anything. Do what you want to. You deserve a break.
Do you have those days where nothing seems to lighten your mood?
Caged and boxed no more,
Her soul took on the shape
Of that white chalk outline
I recently read an article which states that Gen Y is essentially an unhappy lot. My initial reaction was WHAT! But we have everything human civilization could’ve ever dreamt of. Internet, television, iPhone, modern plumbing, Henry Cavill. How are we unhappy? When I read the article, it made complete and utter sense. The article mentions how Gen Y Yuppies (for example, a girl named Lucy) are over-reaching, over-ambitious and over-rated (more so in their own eyes). You can read about the WHY in the article (links at the end) but I want to show you two real life examples of Lucys and how they are hurting this generation.
I just realized that Lucys are common throughout the world, most of all in my university. The elite colleges have hundreds or maybe thousands of such Lucys who believe that they are the best at everything, their careers will take off first, and similar high-handed, over-ambitious misconceptions.
There’s a classmate of mine, let’s assume his name is Donovan. Donovon’s expression when someone asks a question (it may or may not be stupid) is: THAT’s her doubt? I mean, come on, at least TRY to make class worth our while. He’s patronizing, he treats people like they were the dirt under Umbridge’s toenail and he believes his time can be better spent elsewhere (maybe with Sauron?).
Let’s get lost tonight.
Let’s drown in indulgence.
Let’s swim in ecstasy.
Let’s get lost tonight.
That trip to that place you love?
Do it now.
That extra piece of cake you want?
Gorge on it.
Inky-pinky, akkad-bakkad,
We leave life to chance.
O dank, obfuscated path,
do I choose thee?
Or is vibrancy and grandiosity
the life for me?
What is my destination?
Happiness and peace.
Engulfing me, swallowing me,
into the depths of warm sanity.
Ambition and fame.
Applause, a veritable bedlum of noise,
as deep as the ocean,
as thunderous as the gale.
Chastity and virtue.
Whiter than the snow-capped peaks,
more chaste than Artemis herself.
Sobriety and sophistication.
Not a hair out of place,
not a button unbuttoned,
not a pin unpinned.
Disclaimer: This had happened to a friend of mine and the ‘I’ in the following write-y thing refers to her. This story goes to show how skewed a definition most people have of feminism.
It was a group discussion. There were six people. Three minutes to talk. The topic: ‘Do you agree that there should be a 50% quota for women in the Board of Directors of any company?’ That’s when I realized how problematic (to me; you can completely differ from my view, of course) the entire question and the outlook of the people in the GD were.
What everyone, and by everyone I mean all the five other worthy competitors (four were men, since we are talking gender), said was that the process of selecting a BoD should be based on merit and not gender (A+, guys). Then they went on to enlist their reasons: adding a woman to the Board would actually make the Board inefficient, ineffective, etc. Women in the Board will be meeker, more gullible to the suggestions of the men on the Board, would not be acquainted with the policies of the company and I could go on and on. They said that women empowerment is necessary; it’s even more important than an impending recession. Hell, terrorism isn’t as important. Then they go on to say that look, women should be empowered and I believe in this feminism shit, but women just can’t handle the responsibilities and she will be overpowered by the men. Well, yes, reserving Board seats might not be the way to empower women but neither is calling them underqualified helping.
