Every night
I juggle between conviction
And indecision
With the precision of a watch
About what exactly does bother me
And why poetry smothers me
With its all consuming consumerism.
These days. These days,
I wake up
To paeans
That I am at pain
To explain;
To the unending barrage
Of overly sensitive identities
That, alas, have little time
For the joys of rhyme.
The poem has changed
With words being arranged
In phrases that lack mirth,
And for what it's worth,
The poems now are much louder.
Just like the 'screaming silence'
They fantasize
In reaching out for the prize
That the sound of a few snapping fingers is.
We talk about vaginas meant to be fucked
And breasts meant to be sucked
And voices that make, well, strange sounds in stranger accents.
We release cheat codes to beauty and gender
And do a 101 on love and its splendour,
Par dost, agar tum
Kisi bhashan ko kavita ka naam de kar,
Taaliyaan batorte ho,
To shayad wo kavita nahi!
Main bhi kavitaayein likhna chahta hoon
Kyonki main waaqif hoon
Us audience se, jo kavita sunne to ghar se nikali thhi
Par shayad is shehar ki bhagam bhag mein
Waqt rehtey venue par pahunch paane ko hi
Apna lakshya bana chali
Train ke safar aur venue par scoialisation ke beech
Bhool gayi ki wo kavtia sun-ne aati hai
Aur kavtia
Kaafi elusive kisam ki cheez hai
Kavita thahraav hai, thoughtful hai,
Kavita activism nahi,
Kyonki activism ke maayne
Uske sahi target tak pahuchne mein hain
Bombay ke fancy cafes mein, not so much!
And you see, Poetry,
Has evolved, as it should,
Over time, with reason and rhyme.
But the quietest corners of our mind,
Are not unkind to let in
A cocktail of reason, and magic,
And joy,
Stirred in some tragic heartbreak.
As tech shrinks the clock
And poets tackle the "block",
There is a growing assumption
That the mode of poetry consumption
Increasingly dictates the choices we make
And identities we fake
In the wake
Of a new dawn,
Wherein lumpy phrases
Wrapped in absurd imagery
Celebrate the majesty of language
Using an adjective for every noun
And an adverb for every verb
In a never ending soliloquy
From a poet
Who becomes more important that its poem,
Of course, I can't complain
For if I do, I don't have
A Youtube channel to lend credence to
My ability to separate wheat from the chaff
I can, but motor on
With a few words of my own
As long as I still enjoy poetry -
For time truly does fail everyone.
I juggle between conviction
And indecision
With the precision of a watch
About what exactly does bother me
And why poetry smothers me
With its all consuming consumerism.
These days. These days,
I wake up
To paeans
That I am at pain
To explain;
To the unending barrage
Of overly sensitive identities
That, alas, have little time
For the joys of rhyme.
The poem has changed
With words being arranged
In phrases that lack mirth,
And for what it's worth,
The poems now are much louder.
Just like the 'screaming silence'
They fantasize
In reaching out for the prize
That the sound of a few snapping fingers is.
We talk about vaginas meant to be fucked
And breasts meant to be sucked
And voices that make, well, strange sounds in stranger accents.
We release cheat codes to beauty and gender
And do a 101 on love and its splendour,
Par dost, agar tum
Kisi bhashan ko kavita ka naam de kar,
Taaliyaan batorte ho,
To shayad wo kavita nahi!
Main bhi kavitaayein likhna chahta hoon
Kyonki main waaqif hoon
Us audience se, jo kavita sunne to ghar se nikali thhi
Par shayad is shehar ki bhagam bhag mein
Waqt rehtey venue par pahunch paane ko hi
Apna lakshya bana chali
Train ke safar aur venue par scoialisation ke beech
Bhool gayi ki wo kavtia sun-ne aati hai
Aur kavtia
Kaafi elusive kisam ki cheez hai
Kavita thahraav hai, thoughtful hai,
Kavita activism nahi,
Kyonki activism ke maayne
Uske sahi target tak pahuchne mein hain
Bombay ke fancy cafes mein, not so much!
And you see, Poetry,
Has evolved, as it should,
Over time, with reason and rhyme.
But the quietest corners of our mind,
Are not unkind to let in
A cocktail of reason, and magic,
And joy,
Stirred in some tragic heartbreak.
As tech shrinks the clock
And poets tackle the "block",
There is a growing assumption
That the mode of poetry consumption
Increasingly dictates the choices we make
And identities we fake
In the wake
Of a new dawn,
Wherein lumpy phrases
Wrapped in absurd imagery
Celebrate the majesty of language
Using an adjective for every noun
And an adverb for every verb
In a never ending soliloquy
From a poet
Who becomes more important that its poem,
Of course, I can't complain
For if I do, I don't have
A Youtube channel to lend credence to
My ability to separate wheat from the chaff
I can, but motor on
With a few words of my own
As long as I still enjoy poetry -
For time truly does fail everyone.
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