Gratitude 7 (Teachers' Day Special 2014) : Five

Teachers' Day Special : I suppose that's self-explanatory. Please read the entire poem before forming your opinions.

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Five

In the classrooms behind the cobwebs

Of our greying reminiscence

There lives a story of The Five :

Five high school friends --

Five rebels of hot young blood

Who found all things unfair;

Five devils of the school's halls,

Every teacher's nightmare

And how they ruled the place!

They mangled the chairs and walls

And broke the teacher's desk, and

Trashed the washroom stalls.

Every teacher, class and rule

Was branded as nonsense

By The Five, the high school bosses,

With the utmost confidence.

If ever perchance there was a class

That they deigned to attend,

It ended with one or all of them

Standing out at the hallway's end...

... and on Teachers' Day in Class Twelfth,

The Five, the smart and clever,

Decided it was revenge time --

Payback, now or never.

They usurped the stage on September Five,

All prudence dead and burnt,

And hurled every sick expletive

That they had ever learnt.

When The Five finally left the stage,

Anger spent and gone,

Their homeroom teacher of three years

Asked to speak with them alone.

The words spoken to The Five behind

Those closed classroom doors

Are unknown to all others till date --

Not even the Principal knows

But thereafter till Farewell,

The Five went underground;

Come school's end, they shook hands and parted,

Never again to be found.

Tonight, on September Five,

Fifty and five years thence,

Three people gathered at my place --

Three remaining of Five friends --

And on the moonlit rooftop

Looking skyward, we lay

Whispering to every star,

Happy Teachers' Day.

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Gratitude 8 : Plumeria Pink

Gratitude 7 has been written and is being saved for a particular occasion. This here is therefore Gratitude 8, a tribute to old companions and the good times spent with them.
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Plumeria Pink

In our old school of a decade and a fifth
There grew two plumeria trees
With pale trunks
And branches dressed all year in delicate blossoms
And decked with the sounds of our laughter --

One tree mine, blooming innocent white
The other yours, its blossoms
Rebelliously touched with pink
Both with leaves most joyously resplendent 
With the hopes of our youth, and with the joy
Of being home to little creatures -- birds, spiders, caterpillars;

And the fallen blooms
Adorned our childish funerals of dead birds
And the occasional dead squirrel
The souls of which we prayed for as is taught :
But oh, futile teaching of transience! While 
We mourned the woodsy creatures, not once did we doubt
The permanence of our play upon the plumerias' boughs.

Then suddenly one day the trees
Were inches higher than how we knew them
And the two of us, miles farther
Than we ever dreamed we'd be,
Our new schools
On opposite ends of a six-lane expressway, jammed
With honking six-wheeled lorries and six-feet trailers,
Sixty five kilometers of bustling commerce between us.

Sometimes I wonder if, there, you ever see any plumerias
Like the ones we climbed --
Because lining the wall of my new school here
Grow a perfect infantry of their kind;
Confident in the appeal of their white blooms they smile at me and call,
Especially after a morning rain
Or in the afternoons when the bus runs late
They expectantly watch me as I walk over, touch them, smell their fallen flowers;
And when I quietly walk away, they ask me why

And to their utter hurt I tell them
That for all their beauty of blossoms pure and brightly white,
They cannot give me that which I miss
For they bloom white, so white, far too white --
Too confident, too comfortable in white to ever care or ever dare
To wear the slightest blush of pink.
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All the trees mentioned are real, and the poem contains little bits of some real people as well. I thought of this poem when I saw children in my new school playing beneath the plumerias, not long after I'd made a visit to my old school. In hindsight, my study of Toru Dutt's 'Our Casuarina Tree' in my old school for the ICSE probably influenced my thinking -- it is interesting to note that Dutt's poem mentions yet another poem by an even greater poet -- 'The Yew Trees of Borrowdale' by Wordsworth.
Also, the first time I have varies stanza lengths to such an extent -- so do tell me if it's working.

Gratitude 6 : The Moon and The Sun

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The Moon and The Sun

It's funny how
The mortals on earth
Revel in my shine;

Funny how
They find it calming
Soothing, romantic--

Funny how
They eulogize me
In verse much studied,

Funny how
They think I'm magical,
Mystical, beautiful...

...and how
They imagine were-beasts
Manifesting on my watch;

It's funny how I,
With my dull, unpredictable glow,
Have captured their imagination;

How I
Bring a sense of rest
A sense of peace, unlike you;

How funny it is
That I find place in incantation
And in children's dreams.

How funny it is indeed
That they worship me so
When all of me is but a bit of you,
When all my rays are yours
And all my shine is but a reflection
Of your blinding, burning light.
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The poem is inspired by tonight's full moon which, by the way, is distinctive in being Friday the 13th with a full moon -- which will happen next in far-off 2049. And yes, allegory is intended in the poem -- but of course, since it belongs to the Gratitude series.

Gratitude 5 : Spring Forward, Fall Back

Dedicated to people who risk their own well-being to protect that of others. Pretty self-explanatory, I guess.

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Spring Forward, Fall Back

You dig your heels into the horizon

And latch on to the setting sun.

Your fingers ache, your muscles tear

As the wintry ground shirks away in fear

From the last rays of lively warmth

That keep our spirits awake;

The chill numbs body, the gloom lulls mind

In the blinding mist the innocents find

False dreams of comfort they can't resist.

But up on the rooftops you persist,

To live your one and only dream

Of keeping their dreams alive:

On the tips of your hurting toes you stand

And gather in your calloused hand

The lights of a million fiery stars --

And keep them, safe, beneath your scars --

Not once flinching from the heat,

Not caring if it burns.

Under your skin they crackle and boil

And grow, as, hours on end, you toil;

And you smile, for every second of pain

Translates to the innocents' gain

(When they wake, come summertime)

Of an hour of daylight.

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If you don't get the poem, it is probably because you don't know that 'Spring Forward, Fall Back' is a term associated with DST, which is not followed in all countries -- including my own, actually.

I also tip my hat to all the great English Literature textbook poets who have ingrained in me the idea of comparing war to winter and peace to summer -- notably James Kirkup.

Gratitude 4 : World Wide

A tribute to all people from different cultures around the world who have shared their time with me and chosen to be my friend.

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World Wide

You look different from me

You are half a decade older

You are double my size.

Your skin is forty shades lighter,

Your culture shockingly liberal to me

Your life, in my opinion, a mess --

And yet when I first spoke to you

I thought you were friend material.

I am a rule-follower, a nerd.

To your protest-mongering rebel

I am orthodox, prejudiced,

Not to mention unbelievably tiny.

My English is strange,

Full of expressions you've never heard,

And my clothes make no sense to you--

But you thought we were similar.

I am an only child, you have siblings;

I am multilingual, you are dyslexic;

My Mom loves me, yours is dead;

I like fiction, you read essays;

I like chocolate... which you like as well.

And when we talk about everything

Or sometimes about stupid nothings

Only the chocolate matters.

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The poem borrows bits from different online friends and acquaintances. Anyone see yourself in here?

Gratitude 3 : Surprise

The third poem of the series, for a change, is written from a perspective different from my real life view. This poem is more twisted than the first two, and touches on negative feelings that are felt alongside gratitude when favours are received down the gradient of power, position or talent.
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Surprise

I thought no one understood me,
And no one wanted to.
I thought that people of my kind
Were dirt to those like you.
You were a sensation,
One of the popular girls and guys,
But you stood beside me in the lab--
Surprise, surprise.

I thought my jokes were silly,
And all my clubs uncool.
I thought no one would ever want
To hang out with this fool
But you, the over-gifted,
The local star on the rise,
Sat beside me to have your food.
Golly, surprise!

You're the kid with the highest scores
In math and basketball
You're going to theatre camp
Yet again, this fall!
The day you won the Spelling Bee
By spelling 'macadamize'
You ran up to me to celebrate--
Much to the surprise

Of the cliques of pretty faces
And the loud-mouth gangs
That expect every popular kid
To fall in with their ranks--
You said you were done with 'cool'
And you'd rather socialize
With someone who dared to critique you
And oh, the surprise...

...you insisted that I did it well.
You said that my insight
Was a gift -- and two weeks ago
You convinced me to write.
Well, I saw today's paper,
And I cannot believe my eyes..!
They published my book review.
Jolly, jolly surprise!

And today I will take you
For a treat at KFC.
But I'm afraid that you and I
Will now no longer be
The master and the apprentice --
You will soon realize
That I am the competition now...
Surprise, surprise?
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I have often felt that secretly, we all like to screw over the people who got us where we are -- it gives us the high of defeating the master. Thoughts?

Gratitude 2 : Ordinariness

The first poem in the series was about unlikely friends. This one once again talks about high school friends, but this time I talk about the usual, perhaps too usual, people.
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Ordinariness

You would walk in
With your bag and bottle of simple colours
Your hair and clothes of simple design
And plop down beside me, and smile.

I would sit up
Your arrival letting me know that it was exactly
Five minutes to homeroom, and I
Would turn to you, and smile.

Half the time
You wouldn't get my 'cool' talk
And at other times, tired of the cool kids,
I would turn to you for support.

You never did
Anything unexpected or unpredictable--
Even your talents were old, time-worn attributes
Of the unchanging you;

Your sameness
Was the perfect foil to my entropy :
The randomness of soul, mind and action that defined
The chaotic, crazy me.

You were annoying
Boring even, because your constancy
Was not conducive to the rebellion of our age
And often I was pressed to agree

But today I am proud
To have known that courage
Which transcends the ordinary desire to be unique
And becomes unique in ordinariness.
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Gratitude 1 : A Teenage Goodbye

The 'Gratitude' series will be a set of posts, primarily modern-style poems that don't follow too many rules. It serves the dual purpose of giving thanks to all the people I don't usually thank, and of forcing me to write more. The first one is based on the theme of unlikely friendships in high school.

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A Teenage Goodbye

Thank you

For the laughter

For the love

For the support without judgement

And the unflinching loyalty.

Thank you

For hangin' around

Aloof, but observant

Conspicuous in your disinterest

In being seen or heard.

They said

That we didn't gel

That I cramped your style

And you ruined my hard-earned reputation

But we could care less--

And today

At the threshold

Of our new, exciting lives

I am glad I chose to be your friend

And you chose to be mine...

...And we

Chose not to give a s***

To their snooty opinions

And their skewed sense of morality

That cramped our style.

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