D - Dickinson Emily (Inspirational Writers) #AtoZChallenge2017

"This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me" 

— Emily Dickinson

We write about nobodies

in a world obsessed

with wannabes

they call it

mad rambling

We call it poetry.

Here is a link to all my #AtoZChallenge Posts.

Footprints

 

Derek was brought up by his American foster parents with a lot of love and care. As soon as he was old enough to understand that he was from a different race and not their biological offspring both John & Dina had told him the entire story about their long stay in India and how they came about adopting him from an orphanage in Delhi.

They had two younger children too who loved Derek just like an elder brother should be loved. He had no complaints from life and never wanted to dig his history in India.

Dina & John were into organic farming and were not book people at all, the only reading material their house had was the Bible and the newspaper but Derek grew up as a sensitive boy who had his way with words.

He was now an award-winning writer, but even then had no interest in his own background story. John had passed away a few years ago and two months ago Dina too had breathed her last.

In her will she had left him a locker that he had opened a week ago. It had a few family heirlooms and a parcel from Sister Bridgette from the Orphanage in Delhi. The parcel had a journal in which were scribbled a few English poems in a rough hand.

All the pages were signed Sarla and were dated just a few months before his birth date. It had a small note from Dina & John about why they wanted him to get this only after they were gone and why they would want him to find this only connect with his biological mother.

Derek read the poems again and again, the strong language, the stark imagery, the stunning poetry…

He now knew where his writing skills came from, he was finally walking in his mother's footprints.

 

 

This post was written for Wordy Wednesday at B-A-R.

 

 

pilgrimage inside

Each one waiting
someone to confirm
that they are special
the only one

at the core
each one has
laid down their arms
at the feet of
their ordinariness

on the same pilgrimage
sans religion or belief
all of us
oblivious of
our individual purpose

searching,finding
giving up
back to searching

too many drafts
on my mind
"-so you write?
what exactly do you do?"
People ask while thinking
of something else


I go back to
Eliot in a mental asylum\
Bukowski in a drunk stupor
and sit by Hemingway
watching the sea
waiting for a road trip
with Kerouac

the last image
on the mind's eye
is where the heart is.

The writer's block

Life's question hour
goes on
a writer's block is
no valid excuse

the vast desert inside
cactus horizons
meaningless dust storms
of thoughts
no respite

the rituals of living
and the long commas
where did life learn
its punctuation?

love, anger, joy
all dust
dark circles of
long sleepless nights

and the oasis
of a memory
shimmers
in the pupil of the eye.

This isn't a post- 3 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SERIES

Like toddlers of all generations singing the same or similar nursery rhymes without actually even understanding what most of them mean, we go through the motions of life generation after generation. Women grow up to believe love is selfless service like the legendary mother India and men grow up with the entitlement to that service as fathers, brothers, husbands, sons and lovers.

When I read DAFFODILS by Wordsworth as a student and much later when taught the same ( how can we ever TEACH poetry?) to my students on my first job in a college I realised I had never ever seen a real daffodil and yet here I was propagating the farce. Why can't we instead/also talk about the flowers that are more close to us like the humble Delia or the sunflower?

The ghazal on a loop in my mind has a line " जो बीत गया है वो गुज़र क्यूँ नहीं जाता " ( what has passed why doesn't it pass ". If all that has passed was really past us none of us would be burdened by the invisible baggage and the tinted glasses with which we see the world and others.

Fault finding the easiest of activities of  being "holier than thou", none of us let go of that wonderful opportunity of mud slinging without realising its our hands that get muddy even before the mud reaches the other's reputation. Sometimes letting out the venom helps but write it down and hit delete or better still write it down on a real paper and flush it down. breathe and without doing any damage LET IT ALL JUST GO.

Kerouac's soup for the writer's soul

Jack Kerouac's "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" is one of my personal favorites in all of modern literature for its fresh insights into the writer's mind.Here are some of my connects/comments/reactions to a few of these essentials(in brackets).The original text is in italics.

• Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy (the most important word in writing is joy,your writing should be your joy,if it isn't that forget about it.
• Submissive to everything, open, listening (erasing your slates often to make space for new words,experiences and writing.)
• Be in love with yr life ( life is the canvas,the blank space and the mosaic its both,love this amazing thing.)
• Something that you feel will find its own form (form is incidental to content,it will come if you have the content to fill the shoes of form)
• Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind (let the thoughts flow from where they are coming,don't put check posts,they dilute the essence.)
• The unspeakable visions of the individual (if you are a writer worth your salt,find a word,make a word for the unspeakable and ensure it fits and conveys.)
• Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition (the world will not end with a spelling error but it might be less meaningful without a worthy thought expressed,so let the technical loose,if not all,a few.)
• Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind (the poems,novels and plays are all there,you have to strive to make them tangible on paper and screens)
• No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge ( every context you bring to your work deserves due respect,your craft would be lesser without it.) 

Original extracts from the text - Jack Kerouac. "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, 1958, 1977, 1983.]