By Mihika Agrawal
Everything is art if you justify it poetically enough.
I suppose that’s true.
But it is my humble belief that, you might disagree with me here, that poetry, poetry is a sort of a science. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to deprecate the concepts of art or science. The lines between those two are blurry anyways.
What I mean to say is that the sort of precision poetry requires, the sort of effect it has, is just too unreal to be fathomed by a label. It’s about all the right words, arranged in the right ways, striking the right memories, feelings, sounds, colours. Take your favorite poem for example; try playing around with its words, altering its soft cadence. Doesn’t really hit the same anymore, does it?
// I feed myself spoonfuls of stardust everyday so I can etch my bones with the entirety of it all. I feel like running away to a place of infinite paradoxes where this monotony can be washed away with coffee colored skies and galaxy hearts. //
It’s just words. Sounds and symbols forced into existence by us sapiens so we can understand each other. But oh what effulgent, resplendent words. Ones you never thought could go together, sitting there, staring back at you, as reasonable as ever.
//A flame burns inside me, calm and steady, calm and steady. A single shooting star falls unadorned in the night sky. Then it screams seething till a cloudburst of unwept water floods down and takes it over.//
The funny thing though, is that you don’t have to put down scores of lines every time, a few words will do the trick. Emotions and conscience, real and tangible, down on paper. Just a little string of letters and your world tilts at its axis, all its perfectly arranged memoranda sliding off. Every fiber of your being rearranged into something so much more.
Ah, poetry, thou art beautiful.
So, thank you poetry. For all your wicked wonder and enticing echoes. For holding out a mirror to my soul, be it somebody else’s words.
Thank you poets. For showing me that these lines we draw over rationality and sanity are nothing but chains against human expression. For giving away your gifts, your mind, your heart to those tired souls that drink all your ink like religion.
Thank you poetry, for making sense when common sense doesn’t.
//As you descend after your long flight your being breaks into a thousand butterflies hovering over a valley of pale orchids that accept you as their own so they can hold you forever to a kinder world.//
