“But, I mean, what’s the point?”

I’m quite accustomed to writing things that fulfill a certain purpose. Essay-type answers to IB questions, formal mails to this or that teacher for xyz reasons – all of it has a goal, an intended recipient, a message, an intended outcome. Even my own personal pieces generally have a particular message they want to convey, a certain impression I want to leave the reader with. I’m a planner first and foremost, and so I want every part of my writing and everything I’m writing to be crafted towards achieving an outcome, with nothing superfluous. And though, of course, I never really reach that standard in my eyes, I try my level best.

However, there come times when I write just to get something out of my chest. Not off my chest, mind. These aren’t things weighing me down, but rather things trying to get out and causing me a weird emotional suffering until they do. When I’m done with these kinds of pieces, I’m often confused as to why on earth it was this, of all things, that I needed to say. Who am I talking to here? What exactly am I trying to say? I know the answers to these questions as well as the next guy.

An example of this is the essay below, which I wrote on the tail end of an existential crisis that took me on a brooding tour of my school’s campus. I wrote it down as soon as I got back to my dormitory in the same document I used to draft my first college essay, and it’s rotted there for months:

A gloomy grey sky greets me as I walk out the door. I pause, look at the lazily flapping leaves above, and turn left. My feet moving as if of their own volition, I walk forward towards the fork in the road.

How do I help him? I don’t know what to do. I wish my mind would budge from its state of bewilderment, that I could just figure out a way. He wasn’t listening to anyone. Self-destruction is a lonely road, and it’s a strange thing watching someone you know turn to dust in front of your eyes. I can’t be near people right now, they’ll just give my thoughts a cursory glance before diving into their own. A few drops of rain hit my face, the early birds disintegrating for their trouble. A turn right, and the road to the swimming pool stretched out before me.

What kind of world does these things to people?

To the right, they’re shouting and running to and fro, hockey and football. A girl walks out of the swimming pool entrance and looks down at her phone. These early monsoon days carry with them a silent pulse of energy, as we pace beneath the heavy clouds and tempt the gods to send their wrath upon us. A song is playing in my head, and it’s beautiful, and I don’t know what it is or why I’m hearing it.

I’ve reached the swimming pool before I know it, and I’m no closer to an answer. A turn left and up the slope. There’s nobody there. The world is so beautiful sometimes. Those pink flowers in the trees look like little cups waiting to be filled by the rain.

Left turn at the mud field, there’s one more person there. He’s walking far to my left, slowly, looking at the ground. I make my way down the small slope and walk across the field, exposed in the open to the gaze of none. Then I stopped, turned, and walked to the person, a boy perhaps a few years younger than me.

“Hey man, what’re you doing here?” I ask, raising my voice for him to hear me.

“I run rounds,” he said, still staring at the ground.

“Not worried about the rain? You might want to go inside soon”

“Nah…” he mutters, turning and drifting away.

Ants scurry around on the ground beneath my feet, the holes into which they disappear transforming a muddy field of grass into a lunarscape. The occasional drops of rain force them to wind back and forth to avoid an early end. I step around them, careful not to inadvertently crush a few – they’re just minding their own business, after all.

The end of the court, a left turn and to a stairway back down to the road from which I came. I walk down, stepping lightly past a guy and a girl with arms around one another, staring into the distance as the raindrops begin to fall more steadily.

I’ll talk to him tomorrow, and I’ll tell him what I’ve seen, what life is and what makes it beautiful. It’s all the small things that pass us by when we go through our lives with our heads down, trying to sprint to the finish line. Humans, with all our insecurities and moods and oddities, are beautiful, and the world is beautiful to match. And I’m a part of this kaleidoscope of emotion and action, of colour and shadow, of flowers and ants and the rain, and so is he, and I’ll help him see that with me.

I feel a passionate love in my heart, a warmth in my chest for life and all of us humans stranded in this beautiful world, a certainty that no matter what happens I will always have this to fall back upon.

And so I smile softly to myself and sprint back to the door of the dormitory as the clouds burst in the heavens above.

I don’t remember which friend this refers to at all, I don’t know what the “thing” was that the world did to that friend, I don’t know if there’s any person this is supposed to appeal to. I’ve showed this to a couple of people to get their opinions on it, but I’m mostly asked what on earth this means in response, and I don’t really have an answer for them. However, I’m putting this piece on the blog because there doesn’t really have to be a point for this kind of thing. I’ll let this essay/descriptive piece/whatever on earth this is speak for itself with its own hazy, faint, confused voice, and maybe anyone who comes across this post will see something in there to take away, something beautiful in its own right.

This piece creates an emotion in me every time I read it, a delicate, faint, joyful, lonely, nostalgic sorrow. What it means to you, the reader, only you can truly know. And that, I think, is the point. Thanks to anyone here for taking the time to read this, and I’ll see you in the next one.

On a Username

Picking a username has always been tricky for me. I breathe a sigh of relief every time I see a website that lets me just put in my email and be on my way, and every time I see a “username” above a blank white box I kinda freak out. I mean, what is a username anyway? Is it supposed to represent me, or something I find quirky, or is it shorthand for people to find something out about me off the bat? Is it a first impression or a formality? If I use the same username here that I did on Steam, will anybody notice and does it matter and does that one translate well to this particular platform?

This may seem like quite a bit of overthinking, and that’s mostly because it is, but it’s a process I have to go through to have any real peace of mind. And so, after my customary freak-out upon seeing that this WordPress account needs a username, I had an idea. This blog’s about a Greek galley, and I’m a part of it, so I’ll just name myself after one of the rowers and that’ll be that. So I popped over to Google, searched for “rowers of a Greek Galley” and picked the first cool Greek-sounding word that caught my eye: zygite. And so @zygites it became, job well done, time to move on.

But then I started digging.

Turns out I had picked one of three types of rowers on a Greek Trireme, i.e. a “galley” with three banks of oars. The guys I chose to adopt as my own were the rowers directly in the middle, sandwiched between the people on top and the poor sods sitting in puddles of water at the bottom. None of the rowers could actually see the water, and so they rowed blindly, but they were coordinated surprisingly well by methods we aren’t quite sure about today – pipes or rhythmic rowing chants seem likely.

As per usual with me, this set me on a path of contemplating the nature of society itself, trying to analogize my random username choice and rationalize some sort of meaning from it. Maybe the zygite could be a representation of the cruelty of class division, with the rowers of each literal strata ostensibly resenting the other while all under the control of the siren song of the elites on the top deck. However, couldn’t he also represent it’s righteousness? The thranites on the top deck, while being “high and mighty” above the rest, had the heaviest load to pull, and hence had to be the strongest. Maybe the zygites were an analogy for the deep state or societal oppression, with humans crammed into a ship’s hold having no control over where they were going, doing back breaking labour “for the glory of their Polis (city-state)” while (again) taking orders from the men on top. Just like that, I had embedded the poor zygites in ideological warfare over two millennia after they sailed the Aegean Sea.

Feeling a bit sheepish after that failed exercise in “clever” metaphor, I sought to connect myself with the zygite. After all, am I not just a cog in the societal machine? I’m expected to pull my weight, do my part to keep the “ship” afloat, keep the oars moving smoothly and without fuss. Is this good or bad? I still can’t really say. The zygite could represent my longing for freedom from societal norms, my desire to fulfill the duties and responsibilities I set for myself, my will and determination to smite the sounding furrows (sneaky Ulysses reference), or any number of things.

Frustrated, I decided that maybe the whole concept of trying to make these poor long-dead Greeks into some grand metaphor or analogy was pointless. You can look at this small snippet of reality in infinite ways, through infinite lenses at infinite angles. Anybody can use the humble zygite to justify what they already believe in, to represent their views in the proxy war of public discourse, as a shield behind which to hide vague, ill-defined beliefs.

But maybe, just maybe, this was the true beauty of the zygite.

Through my over-examination of these rowers, I had accidentally brought their memory back to life millennia after they passed. Any zygite plucked from the hold of a Trireme and dropped into today’s world would feel as alien as I would if someone dropped me into 5th Century (BCE) Athens. Yet we form two small parts of the interconnected chain of human experience. I had just used him – or a generalized version of him, at least – to try and help me understand the world I find myself in today, to act as an excuse to have a meaningful and creative username so that I could just stop overthinking and move on to more important things. But in the grand scheme of things, the motion of his oars and the “important things” on my agenda are equal in their insignificance, as are the zygite and I. The zygite, though a human being with intricacies and complexities, is reduced to a mere generalized character, defined by a mere role he played at a point in his life. In time, I too will be a generalization, and if I’m lucky some future human will remember whatever I am categorized into and use it in their own contemplations and musings.

And so I decided that I wouldn’t break my head over trying to find the real meaning and connection behind the zygite that would justify it being my username, because to choose one interpretation negated all others – but most importantly, it negated the zygite himself, and that I cannot do with a clear conscience. The zygite remains as he was for those who take the time to notice him: a placeholder for human experience, a proxy for a multitude of perspectives, a treasure trove of insight, and a name I am proud to keep at the heart of this blog.

On A Pause

So, this blog hasn’t had much activity in quite a while, it’s kind of just stayed dormant as my life has gotten sucked up into a million distractions. I’ve been meaning to update it with a post, an essay, a musing – but something else would always come up, and that thought I absolutely had to get out there would always slip away.

Well, I’ve found, at last, a time and a place to put up another piece of my thoughts on this page, and in doing so I’ve had to have a bit of a think as to why I’ve procrastinated this for so long. I mean, I honestly love putting stuff up on this page and curating it for anyone who happens to stumble upon it. Hell, I enjoy it over a lot of the other things I do to pass the time when I do reach the eye of the storm that is the IB curriculum (help).

So, why the pause? I honestly don’t know. I guess a possible reason could be that it’s simply easier by definition to choose a pastime that requires 0 creative effort, like video games or watching Youtube. I mean yes, I do learn and gain from these in my own way, but it’s a lot less effort than creating something out of nothing. Another reason could just be essay fatigue – having worked on drafts and redrafts of my own and others’ college essays, it got a bit frustrating trying to continuously frame myself between the margins of a writing section portal, to make endless lists of edits in red text on endless word documents.

But maybe these sorts of things don’t really have an explanation. The waxing and waning of passions and interests is a process that you can either rebel against or ride along with, and I suppose that I chose the latter in this case. Nevertheless, I’m back, and I think I’ve got some of that old zeal back for expressing myself through this medium. Poetry pieces will likely be few and far between henceforth, as I’ll be focusing more on short essays and musings in this kind of form, conversations with myself that I put up for anyone to see.

For those of you who’ve stuck around for so long, I hope the wait’ll be worth it, and I’ll hopefully have some more stuff up soon.

Collection 4: Satire

Not all my poems are quite as brooding and serious as the previous material I’ve posted on this blog might suggest. Occasionally, I find it an interesting exercise to try and have some fun through good ol’ fashioned social satire. Without further ado, here are my satirical takes on life in poem form.

Humanism
Pride
Mannequins
Criminals Anonymous
Dharma

Before I start, a small disclaimer is in order: these poems aren’t meant to offend or ridicule, though it may seem like it. I respect the religions and belief systems of others, and these aren’t criticisms of generalized groups of people. These poems are meant to be incisive and provoke conversation, as well as examination of assumptions that lie unchallenged in society.

Humanism

 My dear children, here’s how you’re supposed to think:
 you’re special, unique, different,
 a gem that has never existed and will never exist again
 when you’re gone.
  
 And we all chant: Yes, yes, we’re different, we’re unique,
 we are the people and we demand individual rights!

Pride

 I’m stupid, and I’m proud of it.
 Got a degree from an online template,
 and my opinions from my neighbours.
 I’m ready to take on the world!
  
 I’m pious, and I’m so proud.
 Got my bible from the dollar store,
 and my beliefs straight from God, baby,
 nothing you say can change my mind.
  
 I’m rich, and I’m damn proud.
 Got half my fortune from my daddy
 and the other half from the fools I do business with.
 I make the world run, so don’t look at me like that.
  
 I’m greedy, and I’m proud as can be.
 Got my acumen from dumpster diving
 and my wealth from the idiots I scammed.
 Gotta put yourself first, am I right?
  
 We’re the public, and we’re really proud.
 We’re all colours of the rainbow.
 Hooray Civic Engagement!

Mannequins

 Slap two letters on a cheap-
 ass shirt and, lo and behold,
 its value has quadrupled in the eyes
 of your friends, the banks, the unnamed teeming masses.
  
 Put a few patterns on a leather bag
 that sheaths your endless supply of artefacts
 when it used to shield the organs
 of a poor sod of an animal, long gone.
  
 Pose in three ways in four places,
 make sure that logo’s in shot
 or people will think you’re just some
 hobo who found a phone and some rags in the dumpster.
  
 And, as you knew deep down,
 it’s all irrelevant in a month,
 so go entreat your mommy
 for funds to replace your dignity.

Criminals Anonymous

 Honour’s my middle name. I’d
 never rat out the big boss or
 my buddies while their guns are pointed
 the other way: over my dead body.
  
 We have no delusions here, bucko,
 it’s every man for himself.
 See a bastard turn his back, we
 pop a Glock in his ass before he knows he’s a goner.
  
 I steal for my family, amigo,
 we got nowhere else to turn! The
 government’s been bleeding us dry
 of green paper, red fluid, and sanity.
  
 They don’t deserve what they’ve got!
 They looted and scammed it from us 
 when we were down and out. Those fat
 cats won’t last for long, count on that!
  
 He looked at me funny. I was walkin’
 down that there alleyway, and he looked
 at me funny. Looked funny too,
 specially after I bashed his brains out. Hehehe…
  
 Society hates us, the government hates us, the law hates us, we hate us,
 and I just can't figure out why.

Dharma

 He walked past the poor beggar
 in resplendent suit with coins
 jingling in both satin pockets.
  
 And he sighed in the contentment
 that arises when one thinks: Ah,
 I have fulfilled my role in this world.

That’s all for now. To reiterate, these poems are meant to be taken lightly, and please don’t consider any of them as attacks on particular groups of people or individuals. If you have any constructive criticism or opinions you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to comment. To me, a comment means more than a like, because it’s an opportunity to engage with someone else, on however small a level. Of course, that’s not to say likes aren’t appreciated…. 🙂

I kid, of course. To any of you reading this, thanks for lending me and my thoughts your time. Time is a valuable commodity these days, and I’m glad you think this blog and this post were wise investments.

Thank you so much for reading, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Collection 3: Images

On occasion, in periods of boredom or anxiety or even at complete random, amorphous, fuzzy images enter the faint recesses of my mind. They lay just out of reach, not tangible enough for me to be able to draw them or describe their features and characteristics. These images exist more as a tumultuous clash of conflicting emotions rather than in any concrete form, and the only way I’ve managed to preserve them before they inevitably fade away is through poetry. It was through reading what I had written that I often understood the lessons these images were trying to teach me, and I hope that you all can take away something from them as well.

A Dell
Gold Leaf
Rapids
Ganga (to non-Indians, the Ganges River, the holiest in Hinduism)
Road Trip

A Dell

 Leaves hang from bowing boughs over
 pathways too perfect and arrow
 straight to be the work of fate.
  
 Flowers fall onto the heads of
 passers-by. A blossom to ignite the
 romance of the loved and lovers, the ire
 of the dejected and rejected.
  
 Wistful men shuffle along under the
 wandering beams of light that find
 their way through the minefield of
 the holes left by forgetful nature.
  
 No, not forgetful: indifferent. Why should 
 it care when it can’t? It 
 cares not whether it is beautiful or 
 ugly: all is illusion.
  
 The forest simply is. The trees and 
 flowers have no purpose or goal, they simply exist.
 Yet the lovers quarrel, the rejected pine,
 and the wistful sob quietly into their shirtsleeves.
  
 And nature sighs, and leaves them be.

Gold Leaf

 Dreamed of a sunken isle, the 
 other day. Filled with ruins and
 ancient treasures. I dove and my
 hands slipped through the heap and
  
 struck the forgotten skulls beneath. A
 surprise: an understatement. For in this
 world, since when is all that
 glitters not Gold? Gold it was,
  
 but a thin sheet laminating the
 mound of the deceased. A strange
 sense of remorse filled my heart,
 enough to make me begin to
  
 sink, ever so slowly, until my
 knees pressed into the doubloons and I
  
 I woke up. Off to Wall Street I go, these suckers ain’t gonna scam themselves!
 Zip-a-dee-doo-dah…….

Rapids

 Happiness. Sadness. Anger. Pictures
 in a children’s book: but what explanation
 can you provide beyond description?
 You feel because you feel.
  
 Every emotion is a flood of 
 chemicals, unpredictably triggered by 
 a thoughtless word, a prick in
 an open wound, the right succession of quavers.
  
 We cling to the raft as it groans
 and strains and tries to keep
 up with the changing tides
 without splintering or striking the rocks.
  
 Why do we then smite these
 torrents, dam the currents, wish to reside
 in a perpetual state of rising swells,
 and try to stay on top forever?
  
 The higher you are, the more pain
 you’ll feel when the wave
 finally crests and crashes down
 and you spiral into the whirlpool.
  
 So don’t combat the swells, my friend, for
 it’ll only cause you pain, grief, and suffering.
 loosen your grip, slacken the reigns,
 and ride the rapids as they come.

Ganga

 As I sat there, submerged
 in the verdant, opaque, cool
 water that flowed past Varanasi’s quay
 a skull lazily drifted by, beside me.
  
 I felt as if the water, 
 so cool and calm only minutes before,
 was a dark, poisonous torrent
 infecting every pore of my skin.
  
 Too late, covered as I was 
 in droplets of that inky liquid
 that is the corporeal body of the force,
 the lifeblood we call our mother Ganga.
  
 The skull stalled and drifted, floated
 towards the bank a few feet yonder,
 gently swaying while nestled within
 the saffron shroud that obscured its occiput.
  
 A child? A faithful pet? An old, weary
 man on his final journey? A mystery.
 We the living share this fate with the dead,
 to be ceaselessly borne towards an uncertain end.
  
 And so I emerged from the Styx,
 cleansed and defiled, as the fires of hell or gates of heaven
 twinkled just beyond the horizon.

Road Trip

 Put the pedal to the metal, hon,
 and don’t lift your foot up. Lean
 on it with all your weight.
 All the better if it snaps.
  
 Cause I’d rather I can’t choose
 to stop or go or slow while
 we careen towards certain death
 as the engine’s roar fills my ears.
  
 Leave the steering wheel, hold my hand,
 there’s not much time left. You see,
 that pedal’s a placebo, so’s the wheel,
 we’re in a Hadron collider headin’ in one direction.
  
 Deep breaths, just observe the pantomime
 they’re all playing. They think they’re driving
 but they don’t see what I see. My dear,
 we’re not on a road, it’s a railway track.
  
 Don’t cry, what would you be crying for?
 If we hit something, when we hit something,
 it helps to remember that we did nothing
 and that it was all gonna happen anyway.
  
 So don’t bother, the brakes don’t work,
 try them all you like. Lean on my shoulder
 as the world becomes a blur, and the
 final stop approaches at its own pace.

Those were some of the weird things that end up in my imagination from time to time. As always, to anyone who might be reading this, please leave a comment below with any constructive criticism you might have.

And if there’s someone reading this besides me, I’m glad that I’ve managed to convey my thoughts to at least one person out there in this noisy world.

Collection 2: Mirages

The world of mankind seems to me to be built upon a foundation of facades and collective fictions. Not all of these are sinister, of course. I have fictions to thank for government, economics, politics, law, all such amorphous castles in the clouds. Yet there exist mirages that lead us into deserts and wastelands where time flies past and meaning get sapped from one’s being. These mirages eventually shatter, leaving their victims alone in barren landscapes.

The following poems are part of a trilogy (at the moment) that seeks to examine these mirages, and how to break free from them. Fair warning, they’re pretty dark and kind of edgy, and I have to thank my periodic existential crises for that. But they each have a glimmer of hope at the end of the road, and I hope that shining light in the mist can help break the mirages that confound us.

Talk (Mirage #1) – among my first poems, and the origin of the Mirage concept
Affection (Mirage #2) – a look at fleeting infatuation
Elysium (Mirage #3) – the world we live in

Talk (Mirage #1)

 They listen, they laugh, they babble
 about sweet nothings they’ll forget in
 a minute or two. I sit and watch 
 the pantomime of unknowing participants.
  
 But at times, I join in, not
 thinking, an automaton lapsed into a 
 catatonic state of contented emptiness,
 of talking without really saying anything.
  
 Other times, it isn’t involuntary, but
 a voluntary suspension of disbelief
 to satisfy a psychological need that
 I crave and I despise and I require.
  
 hows the weather whats the news are they dating?
 Senseless drivel that serves no purpose
 but to prevent their ship from taking on water
 and sinking into the depths of isolation.
  
 Do you feel forsaken, my friend?
 Do you feel stranded in a desert
 with no chance in hell of getting out
 so you run wildly into the mirages?
  
 If you do, at least you’re paying attention.

Affection (Mirage #2)

 Affection begins with delusion, with mutual unconscious
 trickery. We enhance the outward facing
 version of ourselves to entice others
 who are doing the same goddamn thing.
  
 Yet, we all fall for it, taking as gospel
 the image portrayed by others: it’s 
 nothing but a simultaneous ego trip,
 my dear, so beware the quicksand.
  
 But we don’t heed the warning signs,
 we don’t realize that we’re fooling
 ourselves and each other, so we run wildly
 into the tunnel of love and fumble in the darkness.
  
 Furtive glances, happy sighs, most 
 are blossoms on the breeze, yet so
 pleasant in the moment, so important
 and crucial to your life, you imagine.
  
 Push through the barrier, darling, push
 through the illusion that grants nothing
 but momentary happiness and a sense
 of self-pity and longing when it’s over.
  
 Persevere, and you shall fall through what
 seemed solid, but was permeable and unstable
 and find a lasting happiness behind the curtain
 where true love waits.

Elysium (Mirage #3)

 They toil through the day
 and all through the cold, feral 
 night, trudging, slipping, falling on
 the path towards salvation.
  
 Pull one aside and ask,
 “What causes your insanity, friend?”
 and they say the tunnel that confines
 them ends in distant, glorious light.
  
 Their eyes, covered in soot, see
 a distant glimmer, and so they
 put one foot in front of the other
 and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other and the 
 
 A deep rooted, muted pain in the soul
 lubricates the rusty pistons of men
 and spurs them on to drown their lives
 in drudgery, in blind obedience.
  
 Because, you see, they hope and dream
  that the tunnel will open onto the
 sunny fields of Elysium, all they
 gotta do is keep on keepin’ on.
  
 Throw such idle hopes to the 
 wayside, and open your eyes!
 The only way out of this tunnel
 is death, or perhaps insanity.
  
 But keep working, keep pushing
 through the pointless agony, safe
 in the knowledge that your efforts
 are destined to be forgotten.
  
 My friends, you are free men 
 within this tunnel. Look around 
 you: it’s beautiful, precious, it’s
 all you really have.
  
 Relish the struggle, for it is
 in the pains and aches of 
 your beleaguered soul that you know
 that you are truly alive.
  
 Elysium isn’t that shimmering façade, ye
 noble souls:  it is only what you make and do
 where you are with what you have,
 so ignore that light and start buildin’.
  
 And stop heading somewhere when
 All you need is right here.

Those were the Mirages. Once again, constructive criticism is always welcome. This blog has been an interesting exercise for me so far. Knowing that there’s a chance, however slim, that someone will be reading these poems makes me dial my quality control up to 11, and this filter is challenging me to put out the best work I can. Nevertheless, a friend and fellow blogger recently told me that I should pander to nobody but myself, and in the end of the day what matters is that I’m proud of what I’m putting out.

To any of you who read this and made it to the end, thank you so so much, and I’ll see you in the next post.

Standalone: Campo de’ Fiori

Rome is among my favourite cities on earth. It’s a city where the history isn’t just tangible, it thickens the air and even flavours the food you eat. One of my fondest memories of the eternal city was when I gave my poor mother and sister some respite from sprinting around from one landmark to the next. This poem is an ode to the Campo de’ Fiori, and the meal we devoured there as the daylight faded over the rooftops.

Campo De’ Fiori

 An orange-grey hue descends upon
 the labyrinthine streets as the sun falls,
 bringing with it a biting chill. The cure?
 A jacket if lonely, a cuddle if not.
  
 And one would not be remiss to say
 that invisible lamps blink from Navona’s obelisk
 and in the ancient houses flanking the narrow paths
 that have seen pestilence, Triumphs, and Fascists alike.
  
 Murmurs and footsteps echo off the cobbles,
 a gentle percussion lending its services to the
 rhythm of conversation, the gentle clatter of 
 forks, the clinking of wine glasses.
  
 Foccacia and Ragu glisten under the
 gentle lanterns, stars winking in and out
 of existence as you turn your knife.
 Lift gently, place on tongue, a bomb explodes and your eyes water.
  
 Cleaned plates lie like neglected moons,
 the chairs lightly scratch the stone as they are pulled from tables.
 The lovers walk away, arm in arm,
 and the friends cast their dreams into the Tevere.
  
 And inky velvet falls upon the Campo de’ Fiori
 as the tables empty and the murmurs die
 to a faint whisper, and the streets wait patiently
 in the darkness to touch the next strangers’ hearts.

Thank you so much for reading this poem: this one has a special place in my heart. Nevertheless, please leave your comments below with your thoughts and opinions, and constructive criticism is always welcome.

Collection 1: War

As a history buff, War has always been fascinating to me. I mean sure, learning about war is cool and all, and video games from Battlefield to Total War are great platforms to have fun with gameplay and strategy. However, what often passes under the radar is the condition of the fighting man himself. The following are some of my poems about war and the men who fight. This is what I can only imagine War to be like from the comfort of my dorm room, and I hope that the time never comes when I have to experience such horror myself.

Patrie (a Napoleonic setting)
De Vaux (the battle of Fort De Vaux, Verdun, WWI)
GI44 (monologue, American soldier, 1944)
Letter from a Legionnaire (monologue, Roman soldier)

Patrie

 Drums sound like metal, especially the snares 
 when they sing discordant harmony
 with the flintlocks.
  
 The fusils of scared, tired souls
 whose buttons were gleaming that very morning
 whose bayonets glittered in the sunshine
 that broke through the cannon smoke.
  
 Mud and blood have a peculiar
 way of obscuring that deadly shine.
 They cling to the felt and hug the
 iron as if their lives depend upon it.
  
 Other’s lives once depended on it,
 when they existed. But they’ve dissolved
 into the trees, the earth, the sky, the breaths
of comrades. A flash, and they’re gone.
  
 So stand in your lines men, present arms!
 Worry not that you’ll probably be
 fly fodder in two minutes, or
 at best on a stretcher in five.

De Vaux

 Twisted spires of rusted iron claw
 at the heavens above. Displaced, by
 violent thunderous wrath that only
 God can rain down upon mortals.
  
 But we mortals liken ourselves to the movers
 of heaven and earth: and heaven cowered
 as the booming artillery shattered the silence and
 echoed over the Meuse-Argonne.
  
 Earth jumps in clods, you know,
 but concrete shatters like glass and
 fills one’s lungs with murderous dust
 when the fort walls are pummeled.
  
 A breach, a crash, nowhere to run
 for the soldiers or the water. Nothing to
 save them as the guns fall silent
 so the men can begin to scream.
  
 So walk over the battlements, ye mighty
 o’er the cratered hills of Vaux,
 pick up a forlorn piece of concrete 
 to show your friends back home.

GI44

 They shipped us off in metal boxes,
 filled with air, defying gravity through
 buoyancy, across the endless sea
 to the continent of my forefathers.
  
 We fight in their war. The New World
 to the rescue of the Old? Why do we bother.
 My daddy ran away from this god-forsaken
 place for a damn good reason.
  
 Yet we fall in droves, murder in quintals,
 like meat in a slaughterhouse, but we get a discount
 cause we’re fresh, strong, we don’t feel
 like what we’re doin’ is pointless, least not yet.
  
 We scream, we cry, we push, we die,
 to liberate folks that’ll throw flowers 
 at us lovely GIs and blow us a kiss.
 We need those flowers for the graves, sweetheart.
  
 The cigarette’s runnin’ out, the artillery’s gettin’
 loud, ain’t nothin’ we can do about the stench and smoke
 til’ the Sarge tells us to pack up, get up,
 throw our lives back onto the Roulette wheel.
  
 They shipped us off in metal boxes:
 well, half my friends went back in spruce
 or oak, god knows which one of those
 will take me home again…

Letter from a Legionnaire

 They came. A rolling, thunderous wave
 through the Saxon forests. Their feet
 pounding the very earth into submission,
 their shrieks carrying the wrath of Mars himself.
 And as the air pulsated, with my heartbeat in my throat
 I yelled and braced, and thought of warm home…
  
 Whistles blew, the shields closed, 
 the Neptunian deluge of men broke upon the ramparts.
 They swung their blades with hell-wrought fury,
 as our gladii flickered like serpents’ tongues.
 We pushed and pushed until the sea of brutes
 cowed and retreated into the sea of darkness.
  
 Better them than the horsemen, I suppose.
 A target materialises on my back in the Pannonian plain.
 Inhuman speed. My soul screams to charge but
 iron discipline holds me steady. That way is death.
 This way is pain, but a chance at survival.
  
 Some hard tack and rotting meat is all that guards
 civilisation as we know it. Behind me, mother, you
 knead the bread from the grain we eked from
 the barren soil, paltry seeds of fruitless labour.
  
 I shall fall. When I do, they shall swoop
 down and take what is theirs by right of valour.
 I am but glad that I shall fall before I see you in their bloody hands.
  
 For I see premonitions of the Palatine in flames
 and my heart cries out in stubborn anguish.
  
 Before they smite me I shall cry:
Senatus Populusque Romanus!

Those were my four poems on war. Please leave your comments below with your thoughts and opinions, and any constructive criticism is welcome.

Hey!

Hey guys, welcome to the Galley with No Name!

To be quite honest, I’m really new to the whole blogging shabang, and it’ll take me a lil’ bit to get used to it. This blog may look a bit rough around the edges for the time being, but as I learn the ropes and start getting creative with design the page should start taking shape.

Well, I might as well introduce myself: I’m Hari, and I’m a student in high school. I have, for the longest time, been doing some thinking about the nature of life and the world we live in. Existential crises come and go, and it helps to get them out on paper in a way that truly expresses the way these thoughts make me feel. These are reflected in the poems that I’ll be sharing through this blog. Some are old, others recently written, and all a representation of my state of mind on paper.

I haven’t quite decided the direction this blog will take in addition to these poems. Maybe a few essays, or even a short story if I ever feel adventurous enough. But experimentation and creativity is always fun, and if this blog ends up just being a reflective space for me that’s fine. But I’d like to share these thoughts with whomever wants to read them, and take you guys along with me on a journey inside my mind.

A final word on the name of the blog. My favourite poem ever written is Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In it, Ulysses (or Odysseus, titular hero of the Odyssey) returns home to Ithaka after his gruelling journey, yet still wishes:

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses.

He eventually decides to leave Ithaka, to “sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.”

Yet in this journey, as in the journey which carried him back home, the humble galley bore him across the Aegean, the galley that Homer never named. Such are thoughts and poems and literature: they help you to get where you’re going without you even realizing it. I hope this blog can help all of us, myself and my readers alike, to move through life with a little more clarity and thought.

So hop aboard this galley, and let’s see where we all end up.

Signing off,

Hari