I had a million things to think about when I had a half an hour break on campus, and also, it seemed, a gazillion things to do in my mental to do list. Instead, I sat down on a cube on library walk, and sprawled myself out with my ipod and notebook to journal -- I came up with fifteen rap lines. My training in poetry, at least at this school, consisted of consuming works of extinct, white modernists. For that reason, sometimes I’m insecure about producing current, street hip hop rhyme. Funny how both forms are still poetry that pays attention to syllable and meter, just that the delivery and performance of it makes the distinction. Anyway, on that gray granite cube, I realized that I had been neglecting to do the one thing that keeps me sane and at peace with the world. Which is writing.
I’m chillin’ at the school
Where I bend rigid rules
Trippin off my power
Thinking of the trip
When times are hard as steel
I wanna yoke & dip
The dip is like butter
Yet my roads ain’t been smooth
Sometimes I swear if I were a dude
My problems would dissolve
I’d have physical prowess
Like an underground duchess
You don’t wanna know bout me
Reality I can’t rely I rely on trees
The haze is my shit
Confusion is my theme
When I sit and right this shit is serene
Sunday, October 18, 2009
final hour: life time and karma
(I wrote this last month, sometime in late September, just posting it now)
It’s my final year of college, and obsession with time is at its climatic peak. Every event, thought and thing seems like it’s been shooting at me ever so rapidly. Now, some of the most important decisions need to be made, some of the most important relationships need to be established, negotiated and grounded, and unfortunately, some relationships will grow distant and even become non-existing, particularly since everybody’s geographical placement will be uncertain in the next few years.
Life is so deep, multi-faceted and stratified. It’s layers seem like several hundreds of feet into a sea, thus, contradictions and paradoxes are prickled rocks in the water gush and mess.
Lauryn Hill says “you might win some, but you really lost one” and that “hypocrites always wanna play innocent.” I’ve started to reflect on how people claim victim to appear innocent but be very hypocritical, then for one of the few times in my life, I applied it to myself. I swallowed the fact that I have probably conducted myself in such a way to reap some kind of advantage and fake façade. Because I care about what people think of me a little more than I would have like to in the past few years.
And as for you might win some, but you really lost one, I’ve been delving into that quote and realizing that the interpretations are infinite. OF course, it is grounded in karma. It could mean that whenever you win or think you’ve achieved some status you are losing sight of something else. It could also mean that you can have everything you want, but not at the same time.
I have strived hard in this life in attempts to win… god dammit. It is unfortunate that I have been an intense perfectionist, thus, neglectful of ways in which I’ve hurt people in trying to win, all the time.
There was a poem that is memorable from a poetry class, about losing objects, people, places and things and it occurred to me that writing is and may be one of the few ways to “retrieve” lost things, fake stimulation of retrieving it.
I do miss old friends, memories, and in trying to be social I haven’t been the best in keeping in touch and hanging out. Maybe in writing a poem or two I can let go of all past bullshit and drama and find this spiritual, peaceful space that brings me back memories with some of the most wonderful people in my life, past, present, now.
Until I have one of those poems, here one from the anthology of modern poetry:
Elizabeth Bishop
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
To be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something ever day. Accept the fluster
Of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
Places, and names, and where it was you mean
To travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last or,
Next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
Some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
-even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
The art of losing’s not too hard to master
Though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
It’s my final year of college, and obsession with time is at its climatic peak. Every event, thought and thing seems like it’s been shooting at me ever so rapidly. Now, some of the most important decisions need to be made, some of the most important relationships need to be established, negotiated and grounded, and unfortunately, some relationships will grow distant and even become non-existing, particularly since everybody’s geographical placement will be uncertain in the next few years.
Life is so deep, multi-faceted and stratified. It’s layers seem like several hundreds of feet into a sea, thus, contradictions and paradoxes are prickled rocks in the water gush and mess.
Lauryn Hill says “you might win some, but you really lost one” and that “hypocrites always wanna play innocent.” I’ve started to reflect on how people claim victim to appear innocent but be very hypocritical, then for one of the few times in my life, I applied it to myself. I swallowed the fact that I have probably conducted myself in such a way to reap some kind of advantage and fake façade. Because I care about what people think of me a little more than I would have like to in the past few years.
And as for you might win some, but you really lost one, I’ve been delving into that quote and realizing that the interpretations are infinite. OF course, it is grounded in karma. It could mean that whenever you win or think you’ve achieved some status you are losing sight of something else. It could also mean that you can have everything you want, but not at the same time.
I have strived hard in this life in attempts to win… god dammit. It is unfortunate that I have been an intense perfectionist, thus, neglectful of ways in which I’ve hurt people in trying to win, all the time.
There was a poem that is memorable from a poetry class, about losing objects, people, places and things and it occurred to me that writing is and may be one of the few ways to “retrieve” lost things, fake stimulation of retrieving it.
I do miss old friends, memories, and in trying to be social I haven’t been the best in keeping in touch and hanging out. Maybe in writing a poem or two I can let go of all past bullshit and drama and find this spiritual, peaceful space that brings me back memories with some of the most wonderful people in my life, past, present, now.
Until I have one of those poems, here one from the anthology of modern poetry:
Elizabeth Bishop
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
To be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something ever day. Accept the fluster
Of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
Places, and names, and where it was you mean
To travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last or,
Next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
Some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
-even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
The art of losing’s not too hard to master
Though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
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