The Feline and the Rodent

There exists a multitude of sides to every story,
whether it’s a fairy tale or exceptionally gory.
Let me tell you all about a predator and prey —
the Feline and the Rodent, more specifically to say.

Aimless does the little Rodent wander, small and grey;
it’s too dumb and self-concerned to know itself as prey.
Thanks to this it gives the Feline plenty time and slack
to come out like a shadow but then make its grand attack.

From the Feline’s cavity does the Rat blood come a-pouring —
those shiny, spiky teeth of its can surely do a goring!
The bloodied Rat — a pity — lies between the Feline’s teeth;
as the Cat prepares the Rodent for a sad life underneath.

The Cat, however, tires and grows bored with its new kill;
it decides to walk the streets to find another fill.
The Cat in all its hunting prowess finds another prey,
which this time turns to look at it and damn itself to say:

“Why do you, the Felines, dare to persecute my kind?
Are you sadistic animals or simply off your minds?”
The Feline hardly heard those words and what the Rodent said;
it pounced upon the Rodent and then left it there for dead.

Rapping of the drum

Da dum da dum da dum —
The rapping of a drum.

Lying in my chamber bed,
between the wake and dream
I heard what I perceived to be
the rapping of a drum.

I could hear the women sing,
men and angels too;
in my head flashed colors new
as if in Heaven's ring.

The women sang with banshee cries,
according to the drum;
perhaps they cried aloud to some
to comfort as they died.

Da dum da dum da dum —
The rapping of a drum.

The banging of the drum that night
coaxed my eyes to close
and dragged me from the world I know
to magic, awe, and fright.

The town was oddly empty
yet its streets were oddly clean.
The windows had the certain sheen
of water in the stream.

I wandered to the hours pass —
the houses stone and clay
that called me back to bygone days —
to make the slumber last.

The morning called for me to wake
and for my nightly fast to break,
although the drum had stopped its beat
and quiet reigned vicinity.

I checked up on my sister's bed
and to my sorrow found her dead.
A bullet had been through her head —
the banging of a gun.

I walked outside to see the town;
men and boys — soldiers — lay down.
Beside them lay their rifles too,
and also gals and girls in blue.

Hesperiidae

Onto flowers skippers fly

with spheres of black and beady eyes
that have seen a thousand years
and yet have shed no poignant tear.
Fiery wings with chipper flight
win against the jet and kite;
for no creature of man compares
to fabric weaved from Nature’s hair.

A horseman and his steed

With his steed the horseman comes
up the craggy hills —
up those grassy hills.

With the man the steed does run fast
to the forest land —
to the unknown land.

But man and horse, they hardly know
where the hills will lead them to.

The horseman sees a dog on foot
and shoots it in the head —
in the dog’s angry head.

The dog, unfazed, kept its pursuit
to bite the horseman’s leg —
the horseman’s bony leg.

The horseman, still, refused to fall
onto the dirty ground —
the taken, well-tread ground.

He and his steed sleep well tonight
atop their makeshift beds —
their crooked, straw-made beds.

The dog does keep itself in wait
with hunger in its eyes —
the beady, vicious eyes.

The horseman, who could not have known
that he and horse were not alone.

The sun, bright white, on land does shine
its rays onto the sea —
the abyss of the sea.

The horseman rose as did the sun
though blood poured from his leg —
his burden of a leg.

Horseman went to mount his steed;
beside them walked the dog —
the greedy, ragged dog.

Horseman fell onto the rocks
when the dog attacked the steed —
the faithful, fragile steed.

The steed did fall below the man
onto the jagged rocks —
the steep fall of the rocks.

The dog reflects, its face content,
on what it had just done —
what it’d again done.

Man and steed, a long way down
go underneath the sea —
the abyss of the sea.

The forest to which they tried to go
does remain untouched —
eternally untouched.

Less than human beings

Soldiers raped the Vietnamese

and left them on the road;
they weren’t women, weren’t children,
but products of their foe.

They fired at the babies’ heads
and mangled girls’ remains;
senselessly they raped and killed
the souls without restraint.

To you and I this seems far-fetched:
what man could do such things?
It’s easy when he thinks of them
as less than human beings.

Wonder how the Nazis
could so surely kill the Jews?
They saw them not as men and women,
but vermin and refuse.

“Jews don’t cry, but let out
filthy water from their eyes;
they drop at death onto the ground
like rats and roaches die.”

Then they take the bodies to be
buried in mass graves;
discarding, nary a tear,
the skeletal remains.

To you and I this seems far-fetched:
what man could do such things?
It’s easy when he thinks of them
as less than human beings.

When they go home
to greet their wives,
they act like you and me —
at the moment, men at home, not of atrocity.

If they get caught they claim that
they were “doing as we’re told”;
instead of rot they may
run free and merrily grow old.

Neither are they inhuman
nor mythologic beasts;
they live next door and at the core
are just like you and me.

The Devil's Dogs

Satan, in a man’s disguise,
went up to check on Earth;
appallingly he saw it lacked
an evil of much worth.

Returned to Hell and thought surely
“that must be made to change;
I shall create a horrid beast
to terrorise its range”.

At its birth he saw its worth —
it caused his hand to bleed;
it mauled the hounds and growled at him
and reaped the Hellish seed.

He looked and liked his new creation
“They’ve never been among”,
He thought to himself, in contemplation,
“I’ll call the beast a dog!”

The dog soon had a female mate
with which to spread its kind;
the Devil set them loose on Earth
to see what prey they'd find.

The dogs maddened the earthly men;
“Somebody get the chains!”
Till the women’s tender hearts would
see them look for prey.

They took them in as refugees
and gave them all the food.
They tried to make them residents
and train them to be good.

Dogs by nature have the urge —
the ceaseless need to feast;
and soon were they to prove
themselves as horrifying beasts.

A young girl knelt before a dog
to dress it in her lace;
But it in instinct snapped at her
and savored flesh of face.

A shepherd left his flock alone
to have a spot of tea;
At his return he saw that
he was missing all his sheep.

A mother poor left on a plate
a piece of bread to carve;
the dog wanted to help itself,
so all her kids would starve.

The Devil proudly saw his work
and saw what they had done:
“The dogs have taken twenty-four;
I hope they’re having fun”.

The people gave the Devil's dogs
unneeded love and play.
They didn't fear and didn't flee, and
neither did they pray.

A woman dressed the hell-dog’s wound
using a linen band;
She took it in and bathed its fur
although it bit her hand.

It rained one day, it poured that day;
The dogs were doing fine —
scarcely do they feel the rain —
but folks led them inside.

The evening came, the dogs ran loose
and were the fools confused;
till the dogs flooded the roads
and broke to them the news:

One by one the dogs did maul
the people of the town;
Not a crew of twenty men
could put the monsters down.

Soon — within an hour's time —
would all the folks be dead;
the dogs would not, nary a thought
within their ugly heads.

Satan laughed with hearty glee,
“Killed men, not only sheep!”;
poured himself a glass of wine,
and put himself to sleep.

Sea in which we intertwine

Sea of fishes, sea of mine,

sea in which we intertwine.
Be it barren or be it fair,
we all sail to it from everywhere.

Does it scald, or does it freeze?
Is to swim a misery?
Do we, the seamen, return ashore
or remain in it forevermore?

Does it scald for sinners, freeze for saints?
Do those who dive get whipped with pain?
A waking paradise or an abyssal sleep?
No end to the secrets the sea does keep.

Souls and eyes

Does a cockroach

see through its eyes

as I see through mine?

And do I see

like the fishes in the ocean,

or the skippers in the zinnia,

or the eagles seeking prey?

Do their poor souls humanlike cry out

from simple brains?

Do your thoughts bleed?

Do your thoughts bleed

from head to paper?

Do they bleed with prose

as they do with poetry?

Do they come gushing

like a gunshot wound,

or trickling like a cut?

What they know

Writers write what they know.

When I write that fact does show;

I've lived for only sixteen years,

and I write about myself.

On poetry

I was a terrible poet

in my pre-adolescent years.

Blindly following tradition —

writing whatever words rhymed

rather than what 

nature made me want to write.

Why did I write poetry at a time when 

I did not understand it?

Ask my twelve-year-old self 

why one writes poetry

and I could not answer.

Ask me now

the same question,

and I would respond

“to express what

cannot be expressed

as powerfully in prose”.

Blending beans

Today I found that if you blend canned kidney beans it has a nutty taste but the texture of hummus. I will try it also with chickpeas.

Fitting in vs. belonging

Minutes before the publication of this post I wrote this for my SEL class.

One belongs to a group when they (1) can connect with them emotionally and (2) feel free to behave authentically when with said group. This is different from “fitting in”, which is deliberately altering one’s behavior to appeal more to a group. If someone tries to “fit in” they, subconsciously or not, think that the group will reject or ostracize them if they act as they naturally would. People usually are fine with differing in interests from their friends if they feel belonging.




Because “fitting in” is contrived behavior, the friendships made under it to are necessarily more tenuous and superficial than ones resulting from belonging. One decides that they belong with a group because they feel understood by and comfortable with them; they decide that they fit in because they’re acting in a way the group finds unobjectionable.

Tofu

 You can make fairly convincing(texture-wise) yoghurt using silken tofu(the one that I used was Mori-Nu Extra Firm) by adding a block to a blender with 0.5-1 cup of water and blending it thoroughly. It would've, however, tasted better had I added a banana or peanut butter.

At.

At four years old my mind was a big blur. Cognitively, I was slow to develop, and I don't think I thought at all until I turned five or six. I do remember daydreaming about cartoon characters. My first clear memory was when I was an infant, and the doctor who was examining me told me not to pee on him; my second — at two or three — was when I pulled a TV over myself, and my father and some other man had to rescue me(the image of them after they got me from under there is burnt into my head); my third — at three or four — was of my father chastising me for wetting myself in a convenience store(got a good smack to the rear for that). We moved houses shortly thereafter(though not, I think, because of that incident).

At twelve I thought myself a philosopher and a writer, and fantasised about becoming immortalised as one of the greats, after stumbling upon the works of such philosophers as Bertrand Russell and being allowed unrestricted access to writing implements. Though my reading ability has been advanced for the past several years if my test scores(which I think attest more to Californian children being generally stupid and aliterate than to my literary prowess) are to be trusted, I read Wuthering Heights in early 2020 and didn't comprehend a line of it. I couldn't yet infer the big picture of a novel from its smaller events and dialogue. At that time I did not realise how immature I was, thinking myself to be on par with an adult, and I thought that prose stylism and Irene Iddesleigh levels of circumlocution, rather than clear communication, made a good writer. I even handwrote in the slanted cursive people from centuries past did, except I grossly exaggerated it; much of my writing from 2020 is illegible to me today.

At almost sixteen, time passes quickly; when I was ten, watching 5 minutes count down seemed like an eternity, now it's a blip. I am more focused on myself and on the real world(nature, politics, history) than on the abstract; the opposite was true when I was twelve. I've begun reading Jane Eyre and realised that there's no way I could've understood this had I read it three or four years ago. I wager that in a few years’ time I'll think the same about my sixteen-year-old self as I do currently about my twelve-year-old self.

This morning

I awoke at 04:00(I'm not sure what woke me up, as my alarm was set for 05:30 and I'd gone to bed at midnight) and decided to stay awake and read. It'd been a few years since I'd gotten up so early, and I wonder why I stopped; the darkness and silence of the early morning, and the knowledge you have plenty of time to do whatever before the day begins, impart to you a sense of serenity and bliss difficult to capture with words.

Why do I write?

I write for one reason, and one reason only — to permanentise my thoughts' place in the world. In my head there's a storm of thoughts, some of which worth preserving, that will be lost forever if I die without writing them down. There's no point in not giving the world my strange perspective while I can. When I write I notice that there exists no writer I've read whose work reads similarly to mine, who structures their writing the same way that I do; I am slightly self-conscious of this fact, as I fear that I do not measure up to said writers, but sometimes, like right now, I ask myself a question whose answer I know very well: would I rather be distinctive and odd, or be a run-of-the-mill writer whose work prospective publishers roll their eyes at before throwing into the trash and moving on to the next nondescript item? I've had experiences — some I wish to share, but most I would rather not — unique to myself; I cannot let these experiences be lost once I am no longer here to tell them. I do not care about being “good” at writing as much as I do about preserving my thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

Memory of my grandmother

 My grandmother died three years ago, the day after 2021 began. I have many memories of her, and one I feel currently compelled to share is when I was staying at her house. She told me that there was a long word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and sang to me “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, if you say it fast enough you might become explosive”. 

Man, I miss her.