Merely A Poet

I am merely a poet,

I can only make the numbness in my eyes, the redness on my nose and the thundering power of my inner welkin look like prose.

I can only feel what you don’t see,

Write what you don’t say, and shabbily gift wrap the truth in the robe of poetry.

I am merely a poet,

I only ramble about the past and the future, while today is the fragrance I inhale,

I can only play magic with feelings, words and metaphors,

And as I take a puff of the world, poetry is all I exhale.

I am merely a poet,

I have got slippery fingers that work well only with ink.

The world is moving in laps; chasing, leaping, and trying to swim through,

All I can do is go deep, deeper, and think.

I am merely a poet,

I can only make dents in this paper when my soul looks like origami.

Some too light, some too deep,

Some like rocks, some like rivers,

And some… some tearing through the paper and me.

I am merely a poet,

I can only sleep with poems dressing-undressing themselves in my dreams,

Dreams that shake me but I don’t remember them, like it’s a lie;

But then, at dusk when my thoughts crumble with pen and paper, I finally know the reason why.

I am merely a poet,

My marrow is a rhyme, my blood a free verse,

My rants can be the nonsensical in your syllabi for better or for worse.

And then, my soul is a sonnet that barely fits in 14 lines,

My words, my diaries collect all of its glitter and make smileys out of them, at times.

I am merely a poet,

I am no orator, no speaker, no leader.

They say, I am a poet and I must recite my words the way I feel them,

But I don’t know how to do that.

I don’t know how to voice my fears or how to yell my pride,

I don’t know how to modulate my feelings or yell my life into a mic.

I don’t know how to recite my words the way I feel them because they make me feel everything and nothing all at once....

How do I tell you?!? I am only a poet, caged in letters; no stage, no stunts,

I am merely a poet and is it enough? That I am raw, rooted and metaphorically tough?

You believe life and death to be monotony, you’ve discovered everything or so you know it,

And then, then comes liberation which for me is merely being a poet.

-Hritika Ahuja

---