Slyvia Plath wrote poetry that was poignant and playful. She turned metaphors on their head and rammed them to produce the result they intend to. In the below poem titled "Metaphors" she pulled the most gallant stunt with her mind-blogging metaphors to spell Spoiler PREGNANT I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising. Money’s new-minted in this fat purse. I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I’ve eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
Twenty-one is a sweet age, however, the poet thinks it won't last long because you will be ripe by twenty-two with the worldly blows. A.E. Housman's "WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY" is coming-of-age narrative in a concise frame. When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
There's time for Valentine's but if you are planning for a velvety rose or a chocolate-dripping cake then you still have time to change your mind because you shouldn't gift your pash those jaded gifts. Ring that door bell, give your million-dollar smile and thrust an onion. Yes, onion should be your VD gift. Carol Ann Duffy does not merely jump down your throat or run down your noses championing onion as the perfect choice for a remembrance gift but she peels every question you have about gifting onions in the below humorous poem Valentine I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. I am trying to be truthful. Not a cute card or a kissogram. I give you an onion. Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are. Take it. Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring, if you like. Lethal. Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife.
If you want to decry the humbugs and blowhards around us, what should we do? Don't do anything because it has already been done by C.P. Cavafy in his striking poem called "Waiting for the barbarians" The poem talks of a delusion peddled by power-hungry men which later is imprinted as existential raison d'etre. How often does such a narrative mediate as gimmicks in realpolitik (ahem). Not very often but always! What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything happening in the senate? Why do the senators sit there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What laws can the senators make now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate on his throne, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader. He has even prepared a scroll to give him, replete with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking. Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.
Night of the Scorpion I remember the night my mother was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl beneath a sack of rice. Parting with his poison - flash of diabolic tail in the dark room - he risked the rain again. The peasants came like swarms of flies and buzzed the name of God a hundred times to paralyse the Evil One. With candles and with lanterns throwing giant scorpion shadows on the mud-baked walls they searched for him: he was not found. They clicked their tongues. With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said. May he sit still, they said May the sins of your previous birth be burned away tonight, they said. May your suffering decrease the misfortunes of your next birth, they said. May the sum of all evil balanced in this unreal world against the sum of good become diminished by your pain. May the poison purify your flesh of desire, and your spirit of ambition, they said, and they sat around on the floor with my mother in the centre, the peace of understanding on each face. More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours, more insects, and the endless rain. My mother twisted through and through, groaning on a mat. My father, sceptic, rationalist, trying every curse and blessing, powder, mixture, herb and hybrid. He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match to it. I watched the flame feeding on my mother. I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation. After twenty hours it lost its sting. My mother only said Thank God the scorpion picked on me And spared my children. ~ Nissim Ezekiel No scorpion except for some imagined, potential troubles, and just me filling the part of all the characters in the poem, and all the more a nerve-wracking night due to all that role-playing. Nights. Two of them. A dear one has gone mostly incommunicado. Staring up at the ceiling fan desultorily circulating the air, I recalled this poem from an English textbook. We sure had good selection of poems in our books. I reached for the phone in a manner desultory enough to match the ceiling fan, and as expected, no updates. Except a suggested app that shows pictures of sheep and other soothing things to help you fall asleep. As I fell asleep, I imagined a scurrying squirrel's shadow on the wall, and thanked whoever-replaces-God for sparing Thing1 and picking on me to feel the pangs, yearning and restlessness.
Long ago, in the previous century I won a poetry recitation contest for reciting this poem. One of the few I can still recall from memory.
