Plato's Nemesis

Something I wrote for an elective I took sometime back. And I think, one of the three poems I have written in 18 years.



I cannot write poetry
I cannot feel,
or pretend to
the way you do.
No, I’m not ‘feeling blue’
I just can’t set sensible lines
into a confused skew.
My words aren’t collapsing
into one gigantic volcano
or a particularly warped snake
so don’t look for patterns,
symbols, metaphors , politics
or of the gastric troubles of
Aunt Leo down the road.
My words shan’t tumble
tossed there and there
words which mean the same
words which mean nothing
words which beg for attention
Misery! Tears! Anarchy! Nature!
I can’t write about
how I feel like a used ball of tissue paper
Existential, caught in a world
of hypocrites and poets
how I seek for inner justice
and despair be the drowneth of me
when all I can feel
is my stomach rumbling
in hunger
remembering that blueberry cheesecake
I devoured last night.
I cannot even pretend to ramble about
when my mind is so fixed on order and method
to wander all over, drop political hints
criticize Marxism, espouse Post-modernism
Flaunt a tortured childhood
while all I talk about
are the red peaches
growing in the corner of my garden.
My middle name
is not a convenient melancholy
on my inability to rhyme
and I shan’t write anything happy
for no one likes a merry poet
who writes only nonsense verse.
Ow. Ow. Ow.
I’m pausing at all the wrong places.
I’m punctuating. Emphatically.
Don’t read that as a mirror
of my wretched soul
Because what’s worse than bad poetry
is psychoanalytic hyperbole.