A Failed Rebellion of Light

I was born

Thrown rather

In this universal mud.

The gossamer of pure thoughts

Made muddy by the collision.

Fate was just another game.

I learned to call it ‘angst’

Read of it as ‘angoisse’

Made it my own,

My possession,

And clung to it.

I was not born this sclerotic.

I learned to adapt to inflexibility.

Convalescence, for me, was a myth

And so was this angst for the world.

But then the world thrives on schadenfreude

Doesn’t it?

Fretting was breathing

My limbs respired

And I walked further.

Discovered nothing but

Everything the road promised itself to

Be, it was naught.

A tautological phrase

Summed up my life.

The jetsam of my jarring

The flotsam of my feelings

Was fodder to the people.

They ate themselves

Consuming my surreal minutiae

Of a dissected orchid.

My only source of pride was

I, being an anachronism.

It is strange how being an outcaste of time

Gave me pleasure

My personal, karmic schadenfreude

To time.

A precocious savant

Budding and building

I thought of myself.

But of course

Playing the pawn in a game of rooks

I had given up.

Submitted

To the angst.

A much awaited paroxysm,

A paroxysm of light

Gleaming and burning through

The night’s reflection in a

Shallow lake was needed.

A redoubtable flourish

Of fresh water

Pouring perennially

From the immortal source of life.

But all that I was left with

Were my own encomiums for myself.

So

My limbs lay limp

My frown did frown

And I being the anachronism in angst

Withdrawing from the rebellion

Made my way home.

Happy

And

Defeated.