rummaging through old stuff...and behold!!

lately i have been going through my stuff quite a bit. it's amazing all the oddities that one manages to accumulate over the course of time. in three years on this island i've ended up with the following seemingly useless junk that means a lot to me (there's a million other things but they don't have any value what-so-ever, like this 3 inch iron nail. yeah where did that come form??).

• an empty bottle of Powerrade (Naartjie flavour) that the South African bru's passed on to me.
• a DVD of the Italian movie 'La Dolce Vita'...thanks to dear pal Udhin and yes, i don't speak Italian.
• a Bengali rock band CD from Nafiz (now that i can have some use of since i do speak Bengali).
• a snorkelling mask by Wolfy (and i cannot swim. not yet).
• quite a few books, most of which came from Heathcoat.
• a tiny glowing magnetic Guitar from my mom. i really have no idea what to do with that but i love it.
• and the pick of the lot is this old scrap book full of my earlier writings that i came across while rummaging through my room. i had absolutely forgotten about it.

i like to read my old stuff and compare it with my newer writings and see how i have evolved as a writer and a person over time. that's why i'm keeping all my old junk. it reminds me of who i was and shows me how far i have come.

anyways, here a snippet from the scrap book...

a friend once gave me a list of words and challenged me to come up with some thing in an hour using the listed words. amazingly i still had the list and the subsequent effort of mine in my scrap book. here's what i came up with (the words are listed at the end).

.From Words.

it's a silent & black night as i reflect upon my very life.
the windows lashed by the rain, a storm rages outside
just like the one welling up inside.
it wasn't pretty, but that's how it was
cause after all that's who i was.

all along i've lived in a haze,
my feelings morbid inside of me.
but suddenly tonight they surge forward
and even if death came it would be too late,
cause all my life i've searched for solitude
but tonight i'm all alone.

what was it that i always wanted?
just a hope.
to escape from this world submerged in emptiness,
but maybe even this was too much .

cause here i am, crying and pathetic
battered and raped by the hatred that only this macabre world can invoke.
i lie in my own vomit and blood
still no tears will ever emerge.

though i've been hurt, i'm not defeated.
and even as the moon spreads its silver pale far into the night
alone in my melancholy, i can see the dawn of a new day.

a day where this cruel and apathetic world is but a forgotten nightmare,
when the scars from the past no longer remain in the pure light.
and all this pain will not be in vain.

i've been waiting to see such a day emerge right before my eyes,
and only for this
i will survive.

the word list: rape, crying, alone/solitude, tears, black, moon, vain, waiting, blood, fed up, death, hope, escape, submerged, haze, macabre, hatred, fright, apathy, pathetic, melancholy, vomit, hurt, empty, defeated, past, pure, rain, scar, emptiness, cruel, world.

(the words in italic are the ones that i missed out on. but apart from that i consider it a pretty decent if not a frightening effort that just goes on to show that one need not be fed up of life to write such bad poetry).

needless to say, i won the bet.

:)