Controversy

Controversy.
It is the sordid taboo which we avoid undeniably.
Like a hot potato, it is tossed to and fro
Between hands which burn with fear of it.

Controversy.
For we are aware of it and controlled by it.
A hot potato passed around, yet
Unwanted by the hungry guests of life.

Controversy.
We despise and ignore it.
A hot potato wrapped in euphamism's napkin
We disguise its sting of pain.

But controversy.
It is the only thing which can nourish our minds.
For a mouthful of burning starch is the only bite which sustains us and
Only controversy's full brunt can enrich us.

Challenge not that which I say,
For it is the only earnest thing
Any man could.

Eleven-Nine

“Today is nine / eleven.”

“I know.”

“What should I make my Facebook status?”

“What?”

“Should I use a bible verse or something? About the people who died?”

He sighed. 

“Are you really asking me that?”

“Yes.”

“Well you’re an ignorant fool who fails to recognise that a brief public statement is neither relevant nor of any value. You bear no humanitarian connection to the terrorist attacks of the 11th of September: it wasn’t you that lost a relation or friend, it wasn’t your city that descended into chaos, and it wasn’t your president that sent you to war.

What entitles you to mourn the lives of people so incredibly disassociated from you? That day saw its own victims and they have been iconized by cell-phone footage and the snowballing momentum of the American patriotic-propaganda machine. But the real victims are the people who suffer oppression and the unending conflict of religion. 

Bush declared war on Iraq and invaded them as an act of vengeance. It was justifiable retaliation in the eyes of the world, and the west felt good to be hurling an inexhaustible military might at a small Arab nation which was deemed responsible. America was painted as the undeserving victim and granted every right to hate Muslims. 

A lunch line extrospection

“To observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th’ observer's sake.”

-Alexander Pope

When I arrived here as a preppy, pre-pubescent child, I knew nothing of true camaraderie and love. I also knew nothing of the ineptitude of reality’s institutions. One thing I did have, however, was a great mentor in the form of a towering, blonde-haired prefect who would go on to teach me all that is valuable in life; from appreciating good spirits to experiencing spirituality through a Hendrix solo. At the very least, I expected a friendship to form. Instead, I learned the beauty of observation.

Subsequently, there was something which I noticed on my first day that I still notice every single day, even four years later: the toils which five hundred boys endure thrice daily in the servery are, in fact, a perfect metaphor for their lives, indeed all life. 

Universal Symmetry

I thirst for the sweet sap of a Universal symmetry
The convergence zone of analytical and poetic
Spawning a devine no-man's-land
Which I tread
Shoulders brushing with those of
The other few

I hunger for unity and precision in my prefrontal chaos
Seasoned with the drugs of love, lust and manic euphoria

I must dine upon a feast of language, lyric and melody
Interspersed with courses of reason, rationality and recursion

And then cleanse my palate with the sorbet of a succulent end

Insignificance

Conceived as insignificant specs only to grow into insignificant people only to die an insignificant death. 

What reason is there if there is not love and lust and mother and sister, brother, schoolroom, first kiss, rebellion, first smoke, failure, defeat, misery and repeat?

Live our lives we must and poems we must write and songs we must sing because soon it will be over and the sting of insignificance will sting!

Just as we are born into life, so too do we rise merely to perpetuate our species, like a Darwinian clusterfuck of futile inevitabilities. Born. Shall live. Shall die. Was born. Lives. Shall die. Was born. Did live. Dying...

And for what reason but passion do we live? For a full life is no less empty than one of suffering when compared at the knelling of death bells. There is nothing in this life.

Nothing but us

And that which is of us.

I, the educated

I sit in class, biding my time.

Wishing time were more relative than it is.

I wish it would move faster. I wish I could be free of this 

Pestilential putridty -

Which we misname education.

Then I realize I'm wishing my life away. For life is moving too quickly and soon I will be dead and gone.

In that moment, I realize just how much I hate this place.