I look at you, I see me
You: That is the tenth time this hour you’ve scratched a sentence out.
You’re pushing the nib in too deep. The paper is going to tear. Can’t you see the ink
flowing out of the words? What are you searching for? Who are you seeking?
Me: You’re behaving like you don’t know.
You’re looking down at me trying to capture you, aren’t you? To name you, to make you tangible in some sense? I have tried other things to get to you. You know that. Maybe the nib was too sharp to come out of. Something softer, more subtle would work to get a hold of you, I thought. Maybe you’d decide to drip onto my white canvas through the fine hair of a paintbrush dipped in water. No, that would be too slow. You’re too fast for me. A camera could work better then, I imagined. I used a film roll- looked at your imprints in a dark room to understand who you really are. But you’re too clever for me, I think. Or I’m ignoring something about you. How do you affect me in so many ways?
Why does so much of who I am have to do with who you are?
You: Started with your riddles again, haven’t you?
You like confusion. You complain about it but you find comfort in your loops, your circles of the same thoughts, the same ideas you’ve been battling with ever since you understood you wanted to apply yourself in art.
Don’t you?
Me: And you find comfort in your questions. Perhaps questions could be your answer. I should try defining you through questions.
You: Why not? Solve a riddle with another riddle!
This is a part of another narrative I am writing- a dialogue between selves. Any ideas for extension?
Anything at this point would help!
The start is good but some where towards the later half tends to lose touch with the loops, complaints n confusion.
The last line of solving riddles with riddles has been nicely put in. May be the confusion can be about various aspects individually talked with your own self or the 6th sense which always interacts with us at each step of our thought process. Just a thought you may like to explore…..
Go on would like to read whats coming more of it…
wow, this can never have a end, wonder if you keep writing it for long time what would happen?
circles within circles.
psychedelic .
Hi Nishant!
Thanks for that immediate response. I am working on it now and it just seems to be taking different trajectories.
Sorry I had to delete the earlier poem- which I really liked myself.
In this world of social media, it is so difficult to publish content without getting accused of stealing from everyone’s lives. I had four friends messaging me to tell me how I had betrayed their trust and written a piece on their lives.
Crazy.
I guess you should be happy that people identified with the poem as their own. What better an acknowledgment could you have got? That is what the optimist in me has to say.
However those weren’t messages from the pleased and you certainly didn’t like getting them and both of us hated it getting removed.
I guess I will wait for this one to be completed.
I would have written this very differently if I was writing it. I have some criticism. The use of words, the expressions could be better. But lets not go into that. I am not good at writing and should not comment.
One and probably not the easiest way of extending this will be the following: Continue this conversation between you and yourself. There are lot of avenues to explore. For example, reasons why your self does not want to be explored or maybe she does not mind being explored, she is scared becoming a part of this materialistic world as a mere commodity in trade. Do not introduce more speaking characters. Maybe people in the past but only as objects, not as ones playing an active role. How you end it, should be interesting…