"marginal" poems
As the laser rays from Science City lit up the night sky in a resplendent rush of colours, I watched on, quietly , from the balcony; my mind racing back to the class 9 Basics of Economics book and to that class.
Utility. A major concept in economics.
I had understood it so well then.
I had paid full attention to the teacher when she had explained that once I had had a spoonful of Biriyani, a little bit of my hunger was satiated and I would enjoy the next spoonful a little bit less than the first.
That was how utility operated, marginal utility diminishing with every spoonful.
Today, as the rays light up the sky, I think of him, and of the principle of utility.
Does the principle apply to first love as well, as it does to the first taste of Biriyani?
As love's bittersweet concoction explodes, does it render the following loves as only marginally utilitarian then?
As the first rush, first blush fades, as love's faces change, do we begin to get satiated a little less than the first time?
And is it really because we are already a bit full, a little satiated?
Or is it because the hunger gnaws on, craving that first rush, once again?
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 10:10 PM UTC
My mind is expanding,
But these grades are demanding.
Though my ways stand out
My GPA is not outstanding.
What good is knowledge,
If you can’t prove it on paper?
I WANT TO SEE THE WORLD!!!
But getting good grades is safer.
So I must be productive,
My right to dream has been abducted,
I once considered reflective struggles constructive,
But marginal quotas interrupt it
I’m feeling inspired,
My drive is now fired!
Oh but I can’t attend to that now..
Because I can’t study when I’m tired.
So I put it off,
Dreams are lost,
Robot mode on,
in a society of full of
scholarly knock-offs.
"Serendipity does not exist,"
"You’re choosing to fail if you’re choosing to live,"
"Why live creatively if you can puff, click or sip?"
I’m in an abusive relationship with my To-Do list
Don’t lose track,
Don’t look back,
Because time is money
And honey,
society will tell you how you spend it.
If you just let it.
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 7:36 PM UTC
Our summer fellowships are over! We learned a lot - for instance - how summer’s a lot less fun when you’re hemmed-up, inside working. I mean, we preesh’d the clinical experience, the learning, and especially how good these fellowships will look on our med-school applications - seriously - but there were a hundred rules - aren’t rules incompatible with summer?
Hmm, Ok, let’s see, something poetic..
As the summer sun's blistering radiance waned, shadows,
muscled by sunrays to the marginal edges and corners,
gradually spread, like water - soothing, lenifying and assuaging
simmered nerves with their refreshing, canopied touch.
If sunlight scorched with heat, twilight soothed and gentled,
while varnishing, the dimming world with rainbow, event-horizons,
larger, more inventive, colorful and glorious than any mere mortal art.
Night gradually squeezed, unseen, through those vivid sunset cracks,
and refreshing night-air, drawn in by the last, escaping updrafts of heat,
rustled cooling relief to weary workers seeking the solace of evening and home.
back to unpoetic realities..
When work was finished, we’d retreat from the heat, racing up to the rooftop pool, like two happy porpoises out of school.
Whoever invented poolside food delivery, should win the Nobel Prize for ‘thank you very much.’ We wouldn’t go back to our rooms until it was dark and we’d started to prune.
Now, we’ve a month to relax before our Junior year begins. We got letters from Yale that said, “As upperclassmen..” “Upperclassmen!” We shouted as we danced in hand-holding circles, singing, “Upperclassmen, upperclassmen, upperclassmen, upperclassmen. upperclassmen.”
We’ve grown so much at Yale.
Aug 2, 2023
Aug 2, 2023 at 12:05 PM UTC
Every day we're told
of our specialty-
Individuality.
We're all different
not sensible-
Incomprehensible.
To see another mind
even marginal-
Impossible.
But the more I look.
deep down
Around
we're really all
the same-
even in name.
Dec 23, 2011
Dec 23, 2011 at 5:15 AM UTC
If corporate Dems tell me about how 'We all do better when we all do better'...
Or about how 'It's not about class, it's about coming out for Dems'...
Or about how, 'No one identifies with the working class' or 'nobody wants to identify with the working poor'...
I say to you, WE ARE THE WORKING POOR.
Look at the stains on their clothes, listen to their words, look at the rugged callous of their hands, who amongst us can last a job loss, or wage cut, or a car blow out?
None of us, cept the 1%.
We are the precariat class, the proletarian class.
I say to you, the working poor and homeless are the 'emarginati', the literal marginal ones, the ones at the edges of society.
But who, honestly, isn't at the edge???
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate turned carpet-bagging Congressional goon, Bank of America executive turned-state-CFO Alex Sink embodies the centrist-right neoliberal dogma of 'business-rules', who cares about immigrants besides those who 'clean our hotels and do our landscaping'.
Brand-imaging, quaffed corporate Dems are why the two-party system in broken.
Both parties are sell-outs to capital, and they think we don't know.
We know, and we remember.
Neoliberal capitalism of 'Washington Consensus' imposed on the rest of humanity will fall.
I just hope we wise up as a republic in the mean time.
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 11:31 PM UTC
They bustle, hustle
like ants in a box,
going nowhere, nowhere,
pop up to my counter top
from their semi-ordered line
I take their orders, same as last time:
Venti-turtle-soy-sugarfree-latte-extrafoam-nowhippedcream
and I swipe their plastic cards through my machine.
What a dream, a dream.
Chatter, swipe, shout, sign-here-please
And scatter on out with marginal ease—
hands full of coffee cups, bagels, cream cheese
Calling a boss, late again (I laugh,
I’ve been here since six,
and they think they’ve got a tough schedule to keep?)
When it’s finally time, I take my break,
stare at the syrups, the powders, the cakes,
and pour my coffee black
with nothing that’s fake.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 5:33 PM UTC
perhaps we do not wish to admit,
that the majority of the words we speak,
the conversations overheard, even without intent,
leave us not awash, not suffocating, but
mesmerized in an awful way
squelching tirades of banality,
humdrum housework life's tirades of
meeting basic needs, functionaries of life,
bureaucrats of our domestic affairs,
accountants calculating marginal cures,
overridden by the occasional impulse,
which delights until it too
is humdrum-ed out of existence
a passing blazing ambulance
begs to contradict,
reminders that there are
crevasses on the city streets,
that in minuscule moments,
life becomes twisted making our lethargy,
a course 101 introduction to tragedy
but this is not the norm,
this imbalanced equation,
1X = 99 whys,
to survive,
to justify,
to mediate
between these un-counterbalanced weights,
I write poetry
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 6:57 PM UTC
**The Marginal Difference
Tween Child And Adult**
awake Sunday stuff to do...
another unit of life decapsulated,
where one will compromise
with all those lofty
make believe dreamy would-be goals
that course thru the brain,
when sleepy morphs into
the to do list at the premier of today's
wacky wakey consciousness movie
and a poem forms on lips
that have not yet been
coffee'd
into adult responsibility
the list purview'd,
and you purvey,
foresee, attending,
bend back that pointer finger
looking right at ya guiltily
one and enough,
believe getting that one done,
will be
satisfyingly crossed off that
grownup
groaning
tatooed list
of the unavoidable
one will make the
marginal difference....
tween child and adult
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 8:58 AM UTC
Light hearted when I am with him
Devastated when we are apart,
I am a dreamer; he is a lay backer,
Without a genuine heart, our love is
like a unnatural clip from noughts&crosses
hate destroy lives, love can bring it back together
However, what is left of my Love for him dies each day:
We are apart, because it is impossible to settle this kind of love
We never dance; we never kiss on the dance floor
Our rhythm never entwined, he had no rhythm,
So I never experience a kiss on the dance floor,
Feelings alters when replace by loneliness
Love bails,
when a marriage fails,
wishing and hoping that our love would
be enough to hold them
Unlike a poor man's flowers picked fresh from the fields..
Without adversity
Free for plucking, never got a chance to blossoms
my love for him was marginal:
However, nothing but deep respect for him
a part of me will always have to choose,
so, I choose to be happy , I choose loneliness
before, confusing pity for love..
Aug 27, 2020
Aug 27, 2020 at 9:00 AM UTC
Most of the time something similar happens in everybody’s life
When two people meet each other, they know each other very well
Only fake smile and fake laughter is what they share in between them
A reluctance in heart remains
Everything seems to be formal,
everything they get involved in at that moment in time is fake.
It seems everything is out for display
Each and everything that is happening is part of the play, which was rehearsed prior
Most of the time something similar like this happens in everyone’s life.
Is this life?
Is this what was thought and imagined as part of life
Is this the future?
If so, then things need to change.
Everything needs to be reconciled and rechecked again, all over again.
We live in a world where everything is guarded by walls
Secrecy is what seems to be there all along
Taking advantage of others,
eliminating the best options and possibilities for the sake of marginal gains.
All this and much more.
The cobweb type pattern works in everyday life.
Still even in all this chaos, mistakes and threatening circumstances, better to stand for what you believe is right, right from the beginning
A time will come when you will realize all that what you have done is right
The only thing required then will be honesty and truthfulness from your side.
Hope for a better tomorrow
Keep on going
Then and only then you will realize the outside world is not bad either
Always be clear in your mind in what you believe and all that you stand for.
Appreciate the life you live, realize its value
Only then you will be able to understand what’s life going to be in future
Till then it’s struggle all the way as each day passes by
The next day brings in something new, something different
So don’t give up
Don’t lose hope
Be positive
Have a positive attitude in life
Only then each and everything will fall in it's proper place
Only then you will understand what is meant by to be successful in life.
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 9:52 PM UTC
which side is real
day or dream
based on how it feels
not how it seems
a thresh-hold, marginal at best
to keep the sane from all the rest
in research we demoralize
the beauty held within our eyes
i cannot describe what i once felt
pure emotion, heaven's hell
Feb 25, 2011
Feb 25, 2011 at 11:20 PM UTC
I am cog in the wheel
do not dismount me
I am cog in the wheel
of a not dreary chariot,
A marginal chariot chasing the
uppings of me.
I am a cog in the wheel
never detach me
I am cog in the wheel
of an ecstatic chariot,
A fancy chariot with horses
smiling at me.
I am cog in the wheel
dare not disentangle me
I am a cog in the wheel
of a suprising chariot,
A royal chariot hopping
to peculiarities of me.
I am cog in the wheel
suppose not disaffiliate me
I am cog in the wheel
of a heavenly chariot,
A pearly chariot scampering
towards hallucinations of me.
I am cog in the wheel
absurd not disassemble me
I am a cog in the wheel
of a spacious chariot,
A majestic chariot skipping
beyond incubus of me.
I am a cog in the wheel
please do not disassociate me
I am a cog in the wheel
of a cordial chariot,
A regal chariot escorting
development strands.
I am a cog in the wheel...
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 2:52 AM UTC
Im serving lifes with this pen/
Convicted for Killing time
Im
Eternally trapped within/
For my sins
Solitarily confined
In these lines
where do I begin/
Can you read between them
It never ends/
The margin is marginal/
Carte blanch
Ive over stepped my boundaries
Broke the rule cardinal/
Now Im in an invisible/
cell feeling miserable/
My time shouldve been
More productive
This is NA Not Applicable/
23 hours in the whole
Lost ours in part
Another 60 gone/
Thought is food
scarf down words/
Appetite absurd clearly just observe/
work the mind
Stay fit/
only way to survive inside
Mental aerobics Various signs/
Shape it
chin up chin down equals a syllable/
My own worst enemy
My dictions despicable/
Train everyday to enhance
Considerable/
For I know never leaving
These sentences for life/
Are habitual/
Even before I got booked
They extradited my freedom/
The right to write
When I tried to free lance
I was just free writing/
They cuffed my free hands
Life sentence to this pen
Now they want my annihilation
Too many things gone missing punctuations
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 12:51 PM UTC
upstairs and downstairs, like a frazzled owl character in my third-grade reader
in the doorway of my 200-level on sub-Sahara where we talk only of Nigeria
holding the elevator for my superior in the lobby of a too-tall edifice to man
a college student.
an ABD.
intern.
backstage at your high school graduation ceremony, your mortarboard won't stay on your head
in a food court where your mother doesn't get it when you say you can't wear pants anymore, or get your bimonthly haircut
when you're skirting the poverty line after your family business was sued but your FAFSA says parent #1 earns six figures
initiate.
neophyte.
not-quite-other.
the female body as a threshold between worlds, channel betwixt boundaries
Schrodinger's cat simultaneously in separation and marginal phases according to van Gennep
divorce papers signed but not sent, enclosed in manila at the bottom of a cherrywood desk
continuum.
spectrum.
a line without points.
Mar 3, 2016
Mar 3, 2016 at 4:55 PM UTC
My marginal dysfunctions like a panther saunter gliding me out to peripheries edge.
We won't comment on loose banter, someone says.
My mind circles the time as the crow flies,
too disturbed for reentry, tweets the parakeet.
Phase out with allegiance to no one,
Phase back in with desperate facade.
I am blank, bleak and broken.
Well...that's just the token to get us back in ...the Dahlia wasn't always black to begin with you know, so many colors remain to absorb our sorrow.
So lost, forgotten and frail...
a ghastly scene so serene and forsaken.
Do not fret my fellow faire, we are ghosts of crimson lore, pathos to the people...morose...together on the edge of forever.
Interlacing fingers, we stand then walk the plank of insanity...who will hold my hand??
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 11:06 AM UTC
As you were sleeping
and possibly dead
I stripped the skin cell
and sweat soaked sheets
from my bed.
Scrawled two quotes
on the whiteboard that read
"Wait,
they don't love
you like I love you."and
"What you think
you become."
Poured milk into every bowl that we own.
Fed the fish and my pen
and the fire-bellied toads.
Kicked down the garbage pail,
rolled on the floor.
"They don't love you like I do. No,
they love you more."
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 9:54 PM UTC
She's last year's model.
Scouring the sewers now
For a temporary replacement
How the times go fast.
This time, every time, nothing
Seemed to go right always -
Always some marginal error
That grows magically in magnitude
Dare not speak of tragedies
Hidden well by silence and
Plastic drapery strategically hung
To hide how we really felt
Left unattended those veins
And arteries that once
Sweet Dopamine and Oxytocin flowed
Congeal, clog, atrophy and collapse
Shedding a carcass of love
Full of bittersweet memories
Exposed to the elements within
To be plastered over by time
Jan 2, 2012
Jan 2, 2012 at 2:29 PM UTC
You asked:
"How you came to your dead end?"
How did I?
Perhaps too much of chasing butterflies,
or maybe running barefoot in hot, avid pursuit
of those looping, berserk kites
adrift like airborne serpents
in delirious evening skies.
Then there were those chimeric rainbows -
sedately fantastic illusions of dream jobs,
and loving homes with ambrosial glows.
They all eventually led to the same prosaic end,
for, any-which-way, all roads wound up
at appropriately conventional
and consequently beaten bend.
Till the chase went on, it was the same old story -
All fulfilled ambition promptly subject to
increasingly falling marginal utility.
After all of it was said and done,
every little crown lost and won,
the agony of the question still remained
no last words arose,
to which to exclaim and say Yay!
Life had me in its hook. See:?
while this is what it meant to be free: !
✽
Fossilized in my den, I stared wistfully
at life's irrevocable loose ends
and this is how my friend
I arrived at my proverbial dead ends.
Nov 27, 2019
Nov 27, 2019 at 5:59 PM UTC
We're bored like monks
in the margins
of ancient scripture.
We want to leave behind lazy hieroglyphs
and accidental red herrings
feigning illumination
rendered by the deviousness of time
in its enclave,
running a brush of flaky gold paint
over delicate decadence
and sprinkling dust like a fairy--
we are to believe it is all
some ancient treasure.
We prance in the ether of the material world
in junkyards where we sift through the wreckage
coddling memories like drying uteruses,
realizing our generation will not leave behind artifacts
worthy of nostalgia's ensconcing embrace.
With that realization we weep and
We continue to dig.
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 10:21 AM UTC
Nos densos odores de um incenso de mirra,
embriagado pelo entediante vazio da bagunça de meu quarto,
devaneio-me pelos arredores dum mundo marginal
concebido da tristeza que em fogo me cala
Num sopro de arrependimento as brasas se queimam
e a fumaça toxica que respiro, exala-se pelos poros
Deleitando-me em singelo prazer
espero as cinzas se formarem
Observo atentamente a destruição da matéria,
pois somente assim vejo meu destino,
e talvez,
não de bom grado,
num sopro,
aceite as últimas cinzas da vida caírem no
Sujo e bagunçado chão de meu quarto( mundo).
Jun 23, 2013
Jun 23, 2013 at 11:34 PM UTC
It is a slow but fast shadow
This thing they call, I think exams
The shadow starts
With the rising of a new year
And sets when least expected
Sets on all its subjects
Creating a feeling of terror
That in the meantime
There will be no sunshine
This shadow.
The dark sets in
I have to balance the accounts
And quote Hyde vs. Hyde
The first day
And the darkness still prevails
I expect sun next
But am supposed now
To assume the boring role
Of the Kenya revenue Authority
This shadow
The economist, the auditor
They can make businesses
But what can they do about
The much I have to do?
To determine the marginal cost
Whatever that is
This shadow.
Jun 23, 2012
Jun 23, 2012 at 5:16 AM UTC
At Hagen -Daz it's free cone day
and you should see the line.
It stretches for two blocks or more
in fashion Serpentine.
Those in the loop
will get a scoop
of premium ice cream.
Though payments not required-
it does cost them their time.
For the store it's not a total loss
to give free cones one time.
Its advertising you can't buy
to see those folks in Line.
The sun is bright, the air is cool
most pleasant by degree.
So many people wait on line,
but there you won't catch me.
Its not that I don't like ice cream-
My girth show that's a lie.
It's just there are much better things
a poets hands can try.
I'd write a song, record a score
If I am so inclined
or steal a kiss from my lady fair
since I am not on line.
The years are ever shorter now
and shorter still my time.
Let others waste this precious gift,
whilst i enjoy this wine.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 8:03 PM UTC
you are required
to exist within the strictures of reason
and think in lines and squares
you are required
to wake at a certain hour
and appear at an appointed place
you are required
to grin and bear dreams deferred
for marginal mediocrity
but
i require
the teeming torrent of passion
that drives discovery of the sublime
i require
the burning rebirth of a thousand suns
torches in the night of new dreams
i require
the promise of wild lascivious eyes
and the whipping wind of desire
i require you
May 16, 2011
May 16, 2011 at 9:44 AM UTC
unable to know the struggles of womanhood
unable to identify with the patriarchy
unable to sympathize with the lowest classes
unwilling to sympathize with the highest classes
not of color due to a privilege by birth
vehemently rejecting of ubiquitous white supremacy
not of a divergent sexuality
not so steeped in the norm as to reject the very idea
aloof from generational narratives of tenacious entrepreneurship
slave to demographic trends of marginal employment
born with a leg up in the freest nation's capitalist paradise
dreams of one day seeing it destroyed
tasked to be normal
i begin to wonder
Jun 28, 2015
Jun 28, 2015 at 2:40 PM UTC
Margins are interesting places
where the unique can often be found
A simpler freer life,
uncomplicated without any pretentions.
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 9:45 AM UTC