For All is Good

constructive criticism always welcome

My inner conflicts

 

                                    are like streets that lead nowhere
                  

                but a Kubin's gibbet,
                      

                            made out of barbed wire

 and umbilical cord…. 
                           

                                             Hanged is the
         

             hundred-year-old grandma
     

        that my child carries,
                                    

                       and burnt is the white on the sheet…
                     

 

                      Hanged is the child
             

          begot on the same bed
                

              that squeaks like a bird
                                    

                  and rests on three legs
                                      

 

                  (If I could, I would
             

    break that bird's neck

   and put it to sleep)
  

  For all is good,
       

                  ten fingers,
                          

                                ten toes,
                                     

                                          the first breath,
                       

                           the first word,
         

                                          the first step
                  

                                      (but step in Fahrstuhl zum Schafott)
               

 

        What a pair,
               

                       me and the grandma
                                 

        that my child carries
             

                  I rise,
                                

                         In the same spasm
              

                  She falls
                

                     (if I were you,
   

                       I would let us rot...)
                                   

 

   The belly full of no-prospects

                   and death,
       

                                    the swinging chair
       

        and us
                        

                            swung to the same spot

        

                     nowhere

          

     What a pair,
               

                     my inner conflicts
            

                            and all that is born

          turning to dust...

 

Reviews

[Girl Friday (Sarah W.)]

Wow, this is very interesting. I had to read it through twice to really get the entire impact. The form sort of draws you into a sublime sort of feeling, which is juxtaposed to the concept of the piece; I found that refreshing. I like to see writers play with form and style, because that is how the "new" is born. Well done.

[Marri]

thank you very much! Your words are appreciated and are certainly an encouragement for experimenting with form and style :)

[Nightfall]

For all is good, for all is bad,
i'm your new frnd, marry's writing ain't much bad,
i loved your writing, so...i'm not sad,
i think you're now wake~up..ain't on the bed,
it's a evening here, may i ask...what's there, ...?
i'm on my chair, i loved your wallpic's. hairs....

your this writing's powerful...i can say,
this's ~varun...that's my name...
~varun's my name...may i ask your real name...?

Ten fingers,
Ten toes,
the first breath,
do you like to wear long scandal or heel...?
i think you know what's your zeal,
your writing was good...omg...it isssssss a please....
i'n not gonna ya tease, but i felt your every writing's breath...

[Nick.B]

Greet poem about insecurities and about taking a fight with us, the concept of the poem seems pretty interesting...anyway great job, love your style

[Marri]

thank you, I will check your style after my exams are over and I become again social...

[Nick.B]

Haha...yeah I know the feeling, same here

[krish]

nice figuring.........

[Chris]

Me, myself, and I ...it gets crowded behind our eyes.

[Marri]

perhaps better crowded than deserted....

[Chris]

If we "share" a conversation it must be less - dangerous - than speaking intelligibly with our selves.

[Marri]

and here comes the danger...of accepting oneself completely...and putting a full stop to that conversation....

[Chris]

some ARE more "talkative" than others.

[Marri]

I think Schnabel said : 'the notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes- ah, that is where the art resides' ...so, are there 'talkative ones' or are there just better silences....

[Chris]

seems many "fill" their silences with white noise - less distracting. Of course THAT noise might be another's ...silence.

[Robin]

Kubin sets the backdrop to this soul searing piece , where hope is a small flame against the dark contrasts... I hear the existential groans - of life and death

[Marri]

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=314263422009953 here, some existential groans....

[Robin]

Indeed

[Steven]

The whole point is "my inner conflicts." The weave of three familial people (that must be, as all things from our mind are relatable to us) stare out at us as they walk, doggedly, forced to by pulses. "Barbed wire," "burnt is the white," "no prospects," "nowhere," "turning to dust," are an animus against life, both born and refusing to die, which is really a refusal to cease hurting. It is the beat of a heart which makes alive the pain of the stab.

Very well written whisper of despair. It is good to let it out sometimes.

[Marri]

Thank you, it was exactly this, 'a whisper of despair'. Writing as always serves as a slap and consolation at the same time

[Ken Simm.]

Speaks in cobwebbed whispers to me this write. All old peeling paint and lost memories. Pessimistic yes but with a subtle undercurrent. If you like a series of greys and as the normal person can see about 4-5000 of them. This includes quite a few of the coloured greys as well.
Multilayered and plural as ever.

[Marri]

Such reviews (and in this number I include Circe's) construct a whole other dimension to what I put down on the paper. As personal as writing is, as miraculas is the dialogue it creates between people...a dialogue between the intimate that is voiceless and the stranger who hears the unsaid... Indeed it requires inspiraton to mix colours for the nuances of your soul, but it takes even more inspiration for others to see it...Thank you

[Circe]

it's hard to comment on this I've read it twice now and I'm flabbergasted.. it grips you by the oesophagus... I like the personal turning abstract.. and still is felt intuitively.. the carrying of grandma.. that incredible weight, of history.. of a full term woman.. on a child, really stunning.. turning to dust.. is like the opposite... weightlessness.. life and inner conflict and birth vs death... very contrasting, complementary forces.. it feels like you can't get too far.. can't fly away, the progress is slow, you take a few steps but the streets go nowhere.

[Marri]

I suppose this one was born out of late night pesimism, late night inner contradictions, late night sorrow of living with illusions that inevitably die, late night mysery that we are born with hope and live with hope and are outlived with hope. I can feel that I have drifted in my abstract madness here, and I can feel what I wanted to say, alas sometimes words betray us. I can feel the heavy weight of life which has no prospect if it is carried by those who are bound to die (not physically, but rather emotionally, deep down in the black hole of human soul). And the paradox that the greatest hope should be carried by the most innocent and fragile. My heart was asking who is to blame: those who die prematurely taking with themselves human empathy and love and compassion, or those who were never born. And then, I suppose it saddened me that we might be born with coded tragism in ourselves. Sometimes all the efforts we make, be it with the purest illusions supporting them, turn in vain. Sometimes it is one of those late-night horror revelations that these efforts can be renamed life. Thank you for dechiphering the abstract wanderings of my late-night journeys.

[Circe]

I look forward to your explanations and fascinating wanderings.. looking at my own family, I should think that coded tragism you say is very evident.. it's as if I can write how these stories will end by now... and it frightens me that element of determinism... perhaps hope is a survival mechanism.. formed as a result of the complexities in the human mind.. to counter futility.. seems like a debate going back and forth... but we must accept its presence...

[Marri]

I keep forgetting the name of that story about people reaching that paradise of excessive happiness, that place of having everything they want, of being so euphorically happy...and not being able to bear the heavy weight, not being able to deal with it. The writer I say had an incredible insight into our phsycological defects. Perhaps we can only be happy chasing a dream, a state, an emotion. And the only blessing is to recognise that dream amd have the passion to want it. If we have the capacity to look forward something, to create a mental map between where we are and where we want to be, then I guess we are somewhat happy. The nearer we get, the more painful is the urge to sabotage what we have achieved. Do we sense that if we have everything we ever wanted we would die? Emotionally? Without dreams and inspiration? And then, we self-destructively ruin what is there, just to leave empty space for dreams to chase. Or perhaps I am being influenced by the frozen colours of last days, that emotionless gray.

[Circe]

yes... very deep thoughts you have... I think in the case of attaining happiness and chasing a dream... these are on an organic level for survival.. to achieve something better, a new level of comfort, security... except that when we reach those ideals, they are not what we thought they would be.. our imagination was so fixated, so obsessed perhaps that our measure of that reward is out of proportion with reality.. which is when our minds can sort of reason and control those urges... I think feelings of happiness or love is like any cycle in life.... where we experience something good and something bad, nothing ever stays constant... we are changing beings.. adapting and learning... and so who we are changes with every experience...

[Marri]

'who we are changes with every experience' I love this. Sounds like 'no one can step twice in the same river' by Heraclitus, who, if i remember rightly, was outsmarted by his own follower Cratylus who says 'no one can step once in the same river'. Of course, memories are elusive so quoting what I remember from school is dangerous. But i like the idea that things move, despite us most of the time. There is some true hope in that. That we become better. That we want to become better.

[Circe]

wow... what does he mean when he says no one can step once in the same river? sounds like a riddle!

[Marri]

I understand it as a constatation that everything changes so quick that we can never react quick enough to keep up with life. As if making a step into the water seems like a second to us, but in fact takes a whole eternity when we realise that during making that step the river has already changed. The wave we wanted to step onto is forever gone, our intention to step might have remained the same, but the water has changed. Because 'we are changing beings' as you say...so every second alters everything around us, everything moves, and reality might be easy to grasp if only it could stay still, but it doesn't...so, we perceive shadows and traces of something that was there, but already moved forward...and we could never catch up to hold it still for enough time to perceive it wholly.

[Circe]

that's absolutely brilliant expression and explanation... thank you for sharing that, very very wise words... I do agree with that too... waters change too fast, our reaction is secondary... but we do not need to despair..