AN ODE TO MODERN POETRY

“MY COLORLESS SOLITUDE”

As my skeptical mind wonders
How many out there can really write
poetry
Versus how many think they can
And make you and me believe it
for our brains don’t understand.

Damn, I think I just rhymed
That’s not how real bards do it.
Rhyming is for dilettantes; ne’er for them auteurs
Because modern poetry
is not about rhyme
What it also isn’t about
is reason.

It’s not conventional, for convention is passé
As long as we are the same kind of different
But of a different kind, all the same.

Some lines are excruciatingly long, like the never-ending brook, a meandering rivulet, the labyrinth of thoughts, an abyss of bad metaphors
Others, short.

It’s about variations in the lengths of its various lines
For variations give
it form.
And form, character.

Sentences.
Incomplete
sentences like these
make for complete
lines. An odd break
here.

(Also, every ‘here’ need not always have a ‘there.’)

An enveloping verb, an earthy adjective
Incongruous phrases
like “my colorless solitude.”
With a hint of pathos – melancholy to be precise,
And a paradox thrown in
For what can be more telling, than the sorrow of a smile?

Just vague enough
as you wonder if it makes sense
Yet, teasing with apparent profundity
so you hesitate to call out its absurdity,
Out of fear – fear that it’ll show
you’re not nearly as intellectual, you know

Besides, something so dark and vague must have to do
with that arcane thing
they chose to call…“Life.”

Do I have it all covered? Do my lines represent me?
Or does my verse only make it worse? (Sorry; just had to be pathetic, you see.)

Arcane, noir, vague check.
Profound, paradox, pathos check.
Form check. Character check.

So it is, in all its depth and profundity
And unnecessary redundancy,
My poetry, a glimpse of the real me
A hint of aura, a touch of mystery.
The dark side, the light side, and all things I believe
myself to be. Exactly
like how you believe yourself to be.

You and I, we’re not so different, don’t you see?
But for the fact
that one of us
writes terrible poetry.

W-T-F Q Person Are You?

First there was the Farcebook hype. Then there was Farcebook, which plateaued after the initial high of having rediscovered kindergarten classmates and high-school crushes. After that came an attempt to rekindle the FB charm with an insane influx of quizzes. Ask any random question – chances are it’s likely to be a Farcebook quiz.

Farcebook certainly has been imaginative in creating random quizzes to guess your personality.  Where they lack imagination, however, is to tell you your personality based on the kind of quiz you take. For now, let’s pretend you have answered subtle questions like What is your favorite color?, and multiple-choice ones like Do you prefer to travel or watch a soap?. It’s not your answers, but the quiz you took that reveals the person that you are. At least according to the “What Type of Farcebook Quiz Person Are You?“ Quiz.

1. LIVID (Likes Ideal Vacations to Imaginary Destinations)

Adventurous, Exotic and Itinerant may well be your favorite words in the dictionary. Your favorite pastime happens to be browsing the dictionary. You love traveling the world, but only through the Face of Books – and you completely trust their decision on where you want to travel, since they know you better than you know yourself. The less enlightened may call you a loser, miser, or a couch potato. But that simply isn’t you. You are a content, frugal settee-spud stud. You love the idea of ogling basking on the warm Caribbean Beaches one minute, and experiencing the freezing beautiful snow-capped Bavarian Alps the next. Adventure means a lot to you. In other words, you will take a game of  Atlantis over Tetris, anyday.

#Your favorite quiz is What Is Your Ideal Vacation Destination?

2. PLOP (The Previous Life Opportunity Ponderer)

You are charmed by the arcane. You delve into the depths of your past life and ponder over opportunities lost. If you were still the Shakespeare that FB said you used to be, all your blog posts would have been books by now. Or, the jokes your friends do not laugh at would have been “Kafkaesque,” instead of just plain flat. You could have been Liszt or Chopin in your previous life, not because of your musical genius, but the sheer number of women at your fingertips today. You like to question, and you even question science with your psycho psychic noitingocerp*. Who you are today, or what you can do with your future isn’t very important. We’re all going to be dead at the end of it. But what you really look forward to is the futuristic future – the next life, where you can take a quiz and find out what you were in your previous life.

#Your favorite quiz is Who Were You In Your Past Life?

3. SCAGS (Side-kick Character in A Giggly Soap)

You are compassionate. You always identify with the unnoticed, giggling best friends of central characters in soaps. In fact, that is the very reason you would rather do justice to this obscure lame quiz (as opposed to a mainstream lame one) like What Beer Are You?, or Are you an Alfa Romeo or a Ferrari?. Given the opportunity, you will never choose to be Seinfeld in Seinfeld, nor Fraiser in Fraiser, or Raymond in Everybody loves Raymond. You identify with the fake fanciful people on screen rather than the wicked ones in the harsh world. Your personality alone is too monotonous for you. You want to give it character (no pun intended) and adorn it with numerous peripheral personas.

#Your favorite quiz is Which [N.A.M.E.O.F.S.O.A.P.] Character Are You?

4. MMCP (The Mean Machine Car Personality)

Let’s Face it. Cars often have more personality than people. Has a Corvette ever given you a dense, lost smile any time? Never. It has always looked back at you with attitude. You like to see yourself as the mean machine. Flashy. Full of gloss. Smokin’. Raving Revving. Why, with fiber like that, you could even fly! Alas, those four conspicuous tires – add to that balding with time – is what keeps you rooted to the ground.

#Your favorite quiz is What Car Are You?

5. PWNER (Paranoid of the Wicked, Nasty, Exploitive Repercussions)

You are the paradox of all Farcebook quiz personalities. If you ever took a Farcebook quiz, it would tell you you are a person who will never take Farcebook quizzes. You are paranoid about the repercussions that might entail. What if Farcebook makes it look like some “fun quiz” but is actually profiling me? What if it sells my data to some third party? If I suddenly find some brochures to exotic getaways in my mailbox, would it be because of that harmless quiz I took? What if it picks some vague answers I give just for kicks, and labels them as my personality flaws traits? And what if they sell these traits to some insurance company who will then hike my premium and co-pay? What if….?

Perhaps this is how you think. Or perhaps you have a spouse, who may or may not be reading this, thinks like this and has got you thinking on similar lines as well. You will most likely not take a quiz on Farcebook. Instead, you will turn to your whining personal web-space and blog about it.

# If you had a favorite Farcebook Quiz, it would be Why would people want to take those Farcebook Quizzes and volunteer their privacy?

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*If seeing far in the future is precognition, seeing far in the past must be noitingocerp.

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