Profane prophecies
On exposure, heresy, and the curse of seeing clearly
Tired of bleeding my ink for a purpose,
I wanted it to ooze something profane,
Did you think you were taking the reins,
Can you be more inane?
Stripping is what we have done,
Not our body, our thoughts.
Undressing is what we attempt,
Not from their convictions, their contempts.
We have peeled off their borrowed virtues,
Unbuttoned their borrowed outrage,
Did we not bare them of costumes of certainty
What used to masquerade as courage.
Still… most skins have refuse to fall,
They clung to doctrine like tendon to muscle,
Costumes we removed, they expect us to atone,
We are left- Misread, Misnamed, Alone.
Was it ever about nakedness,
Or shock, or frivolous art,
It was about seeing what remains
When belief is torn apart.
Let’s concoct what they deem holy,
To let meaning bleed out slowly,
Then let the wound speak honestly
Of what we know already.
This is truly a brilliant poem, although it lacks fluidity and the message, I feel, is delivered in an incoherent fashion.
I read it thrice, and these are my thoughts on it, though I could be really off with the accuracy of my take on it —
"Tired of bleeding my ink for a purpose,
I wanted it to ooze something profane." — I relate so hard to this line. I have given up purpose, I let the moment, the emotional "bhava" take the rein. For how dare I control a flooding river, in a deluge, I drown the page.
Undressing mentally, is the only true way to write.
Unbottining moral virtues, outrage seems so real, especially in this pretentious outrage era of social media. "Costumes of certainity" term is so apt.
The society will love the truth sayer, as long as he is convinent. As soon as he strips them of their dearly held beliefs, they will start stoning him, mislabeling him etc..
My only suggestion would be, to try leaning more towards free verse. Sometimes you don't need to synthesize a sentence, just so it's last syllable rhymes. Don't sacrifice meaning & heart, at the altar of rhyme scheme.