Ink Idle

So, today my niece told me that she writes poetry. She even narrated me three poems straight from memory. Surprised by no little means, remembering the poems I write by word is a feat that I have never managed to achieve. I do admit that I have written complex poems and simple, but for her age, I am surprised she remembers it all. She even mentioned the phenomenon of wanting to write on a subject but unable to find the words. I am familiar with the phenomenon.

I remember when I started writing poetry. Arranging my words in a pattern indiscernible to the prosaic eye, lofted by form to land inside the prized world of poetry, I felt happiness and pride during a time I was beginning to believe in my own mediocrity and disappointments. The evenings spent shut away from the phone, listening to a track in a loop and painting a picture with words seemed such a reprieve. The nights when I would stay awake, unable to retire to bed, high on the nectar of my words, I would write more and more and more. And if I felt the pain in my heart seeping out, i would dip my pen in its seepage and write away my sorrow. But then I grew up and i faced more disappointments. The fantasies, one by one, the foundation of my poetry began to dissipate. Instead of imagination, there was now observation and the tone of my poetry changed. Then came a time when poetry was no longer my mode of expression. I discovered the joy of prose. And I accepted the poetry of the modern world. 

The forms gave way to disorder and rhyme gave way to discord. No longer does poetry need to sound exciting, it needed to sting. Poetry ceased to be a complex composition of music, story and human feelings. It became a mode of writing prose in broke lines. The poetry of the modern world has no time for romanticism, no time for enjoyment. It must charge the mind, it must support a propaganda, it must speak the minds of the generation. People instead of feeling poetry wanted to find their own voice in others’ poems. And their own voices were crass and the poetry that shone for the world also became crass. So, I stopped. I could not speak their voices. I began to feel like an outcast in my own love story. I packed my bags and walked away. I lodged myself in the arms of prose and I began to write again. Short stories, brief opinionated prose filtered out of me, while meeting my varying standards depending on the stage of the presentation. I found the order in prose that I once commanded so confidently in verse. I found my love hidden in prose that I had once lost in fleeting verse. But all said and done, the joy of poetry is second to none. My search for that lost voice goes on albeit for now, my words flow only in sentences. Sometimes, I do look back and write a few verses but I am still in search of my muse, my poetic muse.