Yeah, Right, A Writer?!

He is a Poet -

Creator of such a

Moribund body of work

That he could have been

An embalmer.

 

He once thought the world a guava tree

With opportunity ripe;

He found instead fruitless despair,

Hopelessness and strife.

“At last I realize,” he said

“The bitterness of life!”

 

So he took to writing, thus to cope

The words flowed from his pen

But, “Why’re your poems filled with black hope?”

And so he answered them -

That his poems were just a conduit

For this aching soul of his;

He writes not of the world he wants

But of the world that is.

 

He said,

“Slogans are bogus

Mantras are not answers

And platitudes don’t change attitudes.

I don’t write bedtime stories

To keep you warm, and tuck you under

I wish to jar, to shake, to stir -

To wake you from your slumber!”

 

Author's Note

The title is someone's reaction when I answered the inevitable 'So, what d'you want to be' question, a few years back.

The second stanza is a tribute to one of my favourite writers.

And this is a manifesto.

Reviews

[SOUL LESS]

Well, being a writer for yourself is very different from being a commercial author. Even Shakespeare put stupid parts in his play to make people happy :)

Cheers!

[Alvin L. Kathembe]

Thanks for the review bro, it's been a while! Hope you're good