[Meme]: Untitled

My blogger friend, Himanshu Koshe tagged me to this extremely interesting meme, in which you are supposed to write an untitled abstract poem.

Before I write the poem, maybe I could use this opportunity to talk a little about poetry and what it means to me. I don't even know if I should call myself a poet, as I hardly read poetry myself. I would assume that a painter does not just paint, but also finds pleasure in appreciating other painters, and likewise in other forms of art. In that case I will call myself a dabbler in poetry and hence humbly acknowledge that I am no master on the subject. That said I do take great pleasure in reading the works of other poets and/or dabblers like me on the blogosphere.

In the words of Robert Frost, "A poem is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness. It finds its thought and succeeds or it doesn't find it and comes to nothing". Hence abstraction, is at the heart of poetry. My own belief about poetry is that, poetry is not written, all poems exist in the cosmos, they just need to be discovered. It might sound a little romantic and far fetched. But I am sure a few people would agree with me. That of course does not mean that poetry comes as a divination and you have no voluntary contribution to writing a poem. A poetry as Frost said tries to find the thought in a "tantalizing vagueness". And language is just a trickster's tool to find that thought, which has to be used skillfully.

As far as titles are concerned, I often find it extremely difficult to title my poems, so the titles end up being rather bizarre, I stick to using a single word as a title in most cases. I recently started reading Emily Dickinson, courtesy Cosma, and found that most of her poems were untitled. My own thoughts about titles are that, it is as much an art as writing poetry itself, unfortunately an art I don't consider myself possessing.

So I guess this meme is perfect for me, and also for other aspiring/amateur/accomplished poets.

I wonder what would be my abstract poetry ? Will it be a vagueness that does not find a thought ? Let's see :)

Trees on the side walk,

Electric posts,

Traffic signals,

Christmas lights past their time,

Aligned.

Do you think they will laugh,

At the jaggedness of my rhyme ?

Clock ticking,

Water flowing,

Clouds floating,

Cars snaking down the road,

Moving.

Motion gives a false sense of rhythm,

It can fool the heart that it's beating.

An echo from the other side,

Is what I need, to not slip away,
Gravity is not enough to be rooted.
An echo,

A voice not mine, I can call my own,

A vice not mine, I cannot disown,

A specter of myself, but alive.

You keep saying it's hard to die.

I would say, it's harder to stay dead.

Wait a little longer before you go,

But only if you have the time,

Burnish,

The jaggedness of my rhyme.

It's quite predictable, who I will tag. It will be blasphemous to not tag Senor Ramirez, not just because we are blogging partners, but also because he is a veritable master of abstraction :).

I would also want to tag Agila. (Don't give me any bu****** excuses), and Meenu.

And rest, please feel free to take this up and spread the meme.