Poetry 2014 Shortlist, Raamesh Gowri Raghavan

Division of Labour

The division of labour between poet and person

I think, is very cumbersome:

The poet is of course free -
To live in a truth of his own contrivance
Strewn with an abundance of roses or miseries
As he sees fit;

The person often has a wife and child
And so the slavery of billed existence.
But he is the one with the eyes and ears
That the poet so parasitises on
To turn sights into spectacles
And sounds into symphonies
Or all into a dystopic, pus-filled rant.
It is in this obscene dance of words yet
That the person finds freedom -
However fleeting - from his personhood
Entrapped in flesh, that presents him mirages
To drudge on.
Cumbersome indeed then, this schizophrenia
Of being real and imaginary
In the same fragile frame.