Within the void your absence made,
I wandered lost, in shadows stayed.
Yet in the silence, pure and deep,
I found a self I longed to keep.
A hidden flame, a quiet light,
Born from the depths of endless night.
Within the void your absence made,
I found myself, no longer afraid

Life needs a fire of happiness inside me.

The one inside me died when people refused to even have a look at my independently published novels.

I tried to write books inspired metaphorically by my own life-threatening coma-inducing high-speed bike accident. When the Indian publishers rejected my manuscript, terming it as poorly written or full of proofing errors, I self-published my novels on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Program.

So far, I have successfully achieved twice as much success than what I envisioned in my first novel. I completed my graduation despite that accident, just like Akshant did so in the novel. Then I even got the M.Tech on institutional scholarship. Afterwards, I even started a PhD course in Animal Biotechnology from the same ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute as my M.Tech on institutional scholarship, but had to quit it when COVID19 struck. I started preparing for various competitive recruitment exams.

I qualified as a Probationary Officer with the Bank of India through the IBPS PO/MT CRP-XII, but joined the State Bank of India as a Probationary Officer because that was a better option.

As I had cleared even SSC-CGLE AAuO exam, I later quit the SBI PO job when I received the call letter from my present job.

Some people have even dared to defame my novels by rating them badly on Amazon.

Now I have to accept that I can't ever expect my friends, relatives, or colleagues to read my novels. I'll just focus on my job and forget that I wasted 14 years in writing and self-publishing the 9 titles on Amazon as Kindle eBooks and hardcopies. Maybe my depression will help me passively **** myself one day.

My blood pressure is already much lower than normal. Vitamin supplements help, but temporarily.

So many artists have died due to depression. I shall not be the first one. People can go berate my novels on Amazon. My parents tell me that since I have a job now, I shouldn't focus on my creative expression.

all was peaceful
   serene
      secure
content in this
sleepy isolation
with only the dogs
for company
had i wished
to disturb their
soothing repose
reading
a little-known novel
once heralded
the hero
if he could
be called such
was fracturing
slowly
on the brink
of shattering

before the incendiary
final pages
could be reached
this dormant comfort
erupted
interrupted
by a shattering
much closer
   to home;
both dogs
and man
on the highest
of alert
searching
for a cause
anything
   to blame
but finding
nothing

NOVELTIES
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.

This is my translation of a Latin epigram by the English poet Thomas Campion. In Campion’s era some English poets continued to write poems in Latin and/or Greek. For instance, John Milton and Andrew Marvell wrote poems in Latin, while Shakespeare was criticized by Ben Jonson, if I remember things correctly, for having “little” Greek and Latin.

Not being “versed” in the senior languages was seen as a deficiency in literary circles back then. Shakespeare was called an “upstart crow” for daring to write “litter-chure” without a proper university degree. How could he properly quote the ancients if he couldn’t read them in their original languages? The Bard of Avon was doomed to failure and obscurity … or perhaps not, since the English language was finally in vogue in England (where for centuries English kings had been unable to read, write or even speak the mother tongue, preferring French, Latin and Greek).

My title is a bit of a pun, because novels were new to the world when they first arrived, and were thus considered by the literary elites to be “novelties” not on par with more serious verse plays. Some of the more popular early novels were “subversive” (pardon the pun) explorations of ****** naughtiness, through characters like Tom Jones, Moll Flanders, et al.

Campion probably didn’t have such campy (enough with the puns, already!) novels in mind when he wrote his epigram, since the more titillating (cease! desist!) ones had yet to arrive. But perhaps he would prove to be a “profit” (I’m udderly hopeless!).

Keywords/Tags: Campion, Latin, translation, epigram, novels, novelties, booksellers, publishers, authors, pimps, ******, prostitutes, prostitution, exotic, positions

Novelties
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.

*

Original Latin text:

IN LIBRARIOS
by Thomas Campion

Impressionum plurium librum laudat
Librarius; scortum nec non minus leno.

Keywords/Tags: Campion, Latin, translation, epigram, novels, novelties, booksellers, publishers, authors, pimps, ******, prostitutes, prostitution, exotic, positions, quote, quotation, saying, witticism, bon mot

she's made of words
of unspoken poetry
a series of novels in the making
and skin littered in love letters

each time she whispers in my ear
i hear lyrics and verses of unsung songs
a melody so sweet
sweeter than wine
and candy combined

each letter she strings together
looks like constellations across the evening
and every syllable she utters blows up in sparks
like lightning in the night sky

yes, she may be hard to read
but she's fun to analyse
how one can be so complex
so beautiful
at the same time

truly
there is no one like her
someone who can speak her own mind
she's unique, fantastical
one of a kind.