Now that I've finally graduated, I guess I can admit that this poem originated as a desperate attempt to stay awake in class. Being one of those types that can't keep their eyes open once the droning voice of the teacher hits the brain and the brain decides it wants a shut-eye, I had experimented on many methods to not fall asleep in class. Some of them being
- genuinely paying attention in class (yeah, right!)
- singing in my head (singing helps sleeping)
- doodling in the notebook (sleep generates better doodles)
- doodling on the desk (spoils the pen)
- trying to decipher the graffiti already present on the desk (taxing on the brain, tired brain accelerates sleep)
- eating black pepper (read that tip in a book, totally useless)
- SMS-ing (wallet didn't agree on that much)
- writing a novel on ninjas (after writing pages of a highly decorative introduction of the characters, I realised that I had no plot!)
- pretending to take down notes, but actually writing on how much I hate the subject or the teacher (stopped after a teacher tried looking into my notes, while I hastly turned the page)
- deliberately dropping the pen, bending down on pretext of retrieving it, sleeping for a few seconds and resurfacing with the pen (the effort made me more sleepy)
........... The methods were countless. But they all failed. That was when I suddenly came up with the idea of poetry. Now I am not much of a poetry person. I like stories more. Find them more straightforward (not referring to the plot), and they last longer. Even when I hear a song, I end up paying more attention to the music and the voice than the lyrics.
During college, I noticed that most of the poems were written by music band members, as lyrics for their self compositions. Now what was strange was that they all preferred to stick to genre of depression, pain, cruelty, trauma, loss, suicide, and yes, broken hearts! I even asked one of them as to why don't they write happy poems, but he just gave a one of those looks that says "dumb kid, what do you know about life! (or rather heavy metal lyrics writing)".
Back in the classroom, I was trying really hard on writing a funny poem, with rhyming words and everything. Failed! Then I figured, if not funny, the poem can still be happy if I appreciate the beauty of nature or something like that. Failed! Now at this point, I concluded that I lack imagination (previous experience with novel writing proved it), so I almost gave up on poetry as well. But all that failure made me think of the poets of my college, who wrote only on negative thoughts. And that made me think, I can be just as negative and depressive as they are! And thus orginated my poem Failure, which I named so because
- it was about failure
- it orginated as a result of my failure at staying awake in class
- it was as a result of my failure at happy poetry.
I wont say thats its a really good poem, specially since I can't judge it (I'm not much of a poetry person anyway). But I am happy that I managed to rhyme words and actually make sense of the rhyming, something that I didn't think was one of my capabilities. And more importantly, I did stay awake in class! Though I paid zero attention to what was happening, but hey, one can't have everything, right?
