P O E T R Y
Anindya Arif
I have conjured all of my misplaced guilt
and enclosed it in satin Armour wrapped
around 19th-century mysticism.
The armour, now ruptured, reeks of repugnancy all throughout.
I have taken all my Rationalizations
and stamped them all over my egotistical whims,
Which have caused them to mutilate into
A crash site in excess of artificial keepsakes.
I have grown so jaded of the keepsakes,
That I want to turn my empty midtown apartment
Into a grief observatory
So I can create a detailed Renaissance map
On why I keep circling back to everything
That is considered deplorable,
And then paint the dome of the observatory
With a primer for forgetting.
Then, I want to leave the observatory behind,
Sit on a cornerstone and write tedious essays on the internet
On how there’s a metaphorical
Knife in my chest that I keep plunging back into
Old wounds whilst disproving conspiracy theorists.
I have been asleep for so long
That everything that I had left behind
And everyone I have lost to indifference and distance
Have now been contained inside a vial
turned bright fuchsia
And exploded,
And by the time I am done with the following line
I would have already elongated my revile against
How the universe does not care,
And we are nothing more than a bag of chemicals
for whom everything is already preordained
Spiralling down towards
Any form of desire
That would convince us otherwise.
Everything I have written thus far
Is ineffable, and I feel weary and desperate
To return back to an overly saccharine place
Where Pascal’s Wager does not apply
In yet another vain attempt
To find the space between
Forgiveness and absolution.
And in another forlorn October,
I will turn the observatory
Into a bunker
To write a Post-war anthology series of poems.
About self-destruction, addiction to Percocet
About people who grieve by loving someone new,
About those who want to drown themselves.
Only to rediscover the obvious,
That I am, myself,
And there’s no cure for that.
Anindya eats music, fiction, and reality — all for breakfast. Send him fresh recipes at [email protected]