a poet and a thinker...

Tuesday 14 January 2014

The Act Of Omission

Disappointment. What would you suggest is the most important prerequisite for disappointment?
Imagine a world where people did what they are supposed to do without wishing for anything in return. Now imagine extending this difficult, to the extent of impossible scenario, to personal lives. Like it or not, every interaction is basically a transaction, and it is expectation which is the breeding ground for disappointment. 'The Act  Of Omission' is the sin of 'not doing' that what is expected. It is one reason why so many of us are met with disappointment.

This poem explores such acts of omission. While the first stanza highlights that unless WE feel the need for something, there is no way that it can be omitted, hinting that what we 'feel' is often our own mind's manifestation. Thus to avoid being disappointed, we must stop judging our interaction/transaction with baseless optimism justified in little children alone. May be the other person is not actually as close to us as we may feel. May be what we expected out of them did not even cross their mind!
The second stanza describes three causes leading to omission. Why would someone NOT DO what you thought they would? May be because you expected it from the wrong person as already described, or may be, that feeling has died away in them. Or, because it was a deliberate attempt to 'not act' in a particular manner as happens sometimes when people complicate things by putting in too much thought.
Finally I ask you via my poem, what do you think is 'tyranny'? In case of a misleading 'virtual' truth as is an image, would you blame the mirror that reflects, the image itself or the person who perceives it? Is false promise, on the other hand, a bigger sin?

THE ACT OF OMISSION

Red embers that glow without warmth,
Blue Jays in the lap of skies blue,
green apples in a big green tree,
they exist if you think they do.

To unveil that what may not be!
Like gold in a copper chest!
Or that what died a white dwarf?
Or that what was put to rest?

What is tyranny, ask, we all must.
In a tranquil pond, a face?
Or the ripples pretty, pretty promising,
that abate without a trace?

-Mx

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