Tongue-borne honesty

Poetry is honesty, you always say
i honestly can't give up your ghost
i'll dress it with pretty words
make sense with nailed punctuation
but you will slip, chilling my fingers as you do
anyways

Poetry is a conversation
I'm turning knobs on a stereo that isn't there
mouthing songs that i cant hear
save for fleeting chords
and missed beats

Poetry is passion!
and your flame has scorched and thawed
brought life and devastation in your wake
and i am nothing but grateful for your purifying flames
to burn me asunder
to have cleansed me

Poetry is heartbreak.
its the scatter of your shattered visage
until each shard peeks at you, a stranger
unknown fragments claiming to be yours
piercing a new home in the gashed hangings of your cardiac viscera.

Poetry is your voice
a smouldering sunbeam sprinkled with succor
a cacophony of cresting crescendo
a tumult of thrashing tides 
a whisper worn in winter warmth

Your heart is poetry
it drips from your sprightly gait
springing moss from your every footfall
when you choose to walk that is,
you always did love the sweet crunch of petrichor between your toes

Trumpets

Staccato breathing
Ears reverb bursting
The fanfare begins!
       Funeral march
Streamers of gold!
       Waves of dusk
Avenues of petals!
       Lashes of rain
Mirth garbed in regality
       Dismal visages in black
Man of cloth, under bramble-arch
       Ancient father, enveloped in gray sky
"We are gathered here today"
"To join-
       "To lay to rest..."

To Settle

The go-getting age we live in is focused on one capitalist construct: getting more. Be it more material possessions, achievements, accomplishments whatever, the idea that is pervasive is that “more is better.”

There is a fundamental problem with this. See, all our lives we are told that we have to accomplish certain goals in our lives to be considered successful. The social norm generally defines these goals as ranging from getting a degree, getting a job, getting a house, getting a spouse etc. And once you have accumulated enough of these, congratulations! You are now successful and happy!

Surprise twist! You are not happy.

Because the struggle never ends.

Once you have accumulated enough of these, let’s call them “milestones”, you see that woah, everyone else is also gathering milestones. And these milestones are “better.”

My excessive use of inverted commas is meant to highlight the subjective nature of these words; a whole separate debate can be head as to what constitutes “better” and of course people in different areas and with different socio-economic backgrounds will obviously have different milestones.

Back to it! Capitalism thrives on competition. It’s the underlying factor: that the best resources will be used in the best way to generate the best outputs. So apart from vying to be the “best” in terms of production and business rationale, this behaviour bleeds into all spheres of life.

Another factor, also the by-product of a capitalist system of economy, is the culture of consumption. The entire socio-economic landscape is specifically paved to sell you things. Bigger, better things.

Combining these factors creates a rather dangerous consumer mind-set. That there is no such thing as enough. There is always more, hence I must want more, because everyone else “has more”, and my social standing is determined how much more I have.

Bringing this back to the topic (finally), the concept of “settling” is considered despicable. To settle is to stop wanting more. Meaning that you are going against the normal social mind-set. So you are automatically considered a rebel, a trouble-maker.

Here is what I present: if you don’t settle, you won’t be happy. Rather you won’t achieve happiness.

Now happiness is considered a destination by most, and the counter ideology is that happiness is a way of life; happiness is found in your everyday routine, because “how one spends his days, is how one spends his life.”

If you are consumed by the never ending quest for “more” so that you can look good in the eyes of society, your happiness is already being determined from external sources. So there goes your sense of inner strength and peace. This is against the happiness is a way of life idea.

If you are never satisfied with what you have, how are you ever reaching that promised land of happiness? And this counters the happiness is a destination idea.

So with either ideology, consumerism kills happiness.

 What I propose is that “settling” is not something to be maligned, rather embraced.

I get the difficulty of the task, because me saying that word right now is making me grimace.

It has too much bad juju attached to it.

So, let’s use an un-biased term: attaining.

I believe once you have accumulated a certain amount of milestones, the quantity and quality not determined by external perceptions but from a true introspective view, then you have attained and happiness is within grasp.

See its simple, once you have attained, you are no longer struggling, you don’t have the nagging doubt that you don’t have enough milestones, because you have the confidence that the milestones you do have are enough for you and your needs.

Obviously developing that independent view is hard work and frankly impossible for some. Not saying that’s a slight on them, but the way that society operates is so conditioned to a specific lifestyle that it just doesn’t tolerate new ways of thinking.

I think that material possessions, and let’s be honest, most settling is in relation to acquiring material goods (better car, bigger house, hotter spouse you name it), material possessions lose their value the more they are acquired; a curve of diminishing returns in other words.

You must have experienced this for yourself: you work hard in the pursuit of a certain goal, and once acquired, it loses its value rather suddenly. This is because the expectation that you build up during the pursuit to keep yourself motivated to keep going, seldom lives up to the real thing.

Some people relish that chase, and don’t find peace and solace once that goal is attained.

If you stop chasing, and are satisfied with what you have, your milestones will have that much more value to you. You would value the car you have, the house you live in; because first, you won’t be comparing your belongings with other people’s, which removes the stigma you might develop for your own stuff; and because your mind would be freer from materialism, and focus more on other pursuits also crucial to you being a well-rounded person.

Hence, to conclude (rather lamely, I know), settling is not a sin. It should be the way of life. Settling means that you have found, or at the very least trying, to find peace and make a home with what you have, beyond mindless competition. Most importantly, that feeling comes from within you, making it all the more potent and eternal.

“And I settled for her. And she settled for me.”

-          Passenger