Poem: Rorrim

 

I control you.

From the cradle to the grave, I will own you.

You can smell me, hold me, taste me,

lose me.

Yet you cannot refrain from the goal to retain me.

You lie to everyone about me,

conduct deceitful acts to earn me,

learn for me, learn from me,

either way, like it or not, you yearn for me.

I am inanimate.

Yet cause you such animation.

Cause corruption and celebration.

You collapse and I spare you.

If luck promises this truth,

I provide the means needed to feed you.

And ask not to whom may this be repayable to?

Yet you still are oblivious to my deeds.

 

You gaze upon me in awe,

via those rose-tinted glasses.

Can you not feel the thorns?

I mesmerize you with every move,

captivate you all too soon.

But you abuse my power.

You twist it.

To capitalize on your venture,

to indoctrinate your peers,

have them rely on fear,

that they will lose me.

I will only go

when a lack of esteem starts to show.

 

Time cannot keep me from you.

You cannot keep me from you.

You are afraid that I may leave your side.

And when I do, you may run and hide.

But do not do so forever.

For to give up on me,

is a battle already lost,

and I will disappear as if merely a ghost.

But stay faithful to me,

and just wait and see.

As things aren’t always what they seem to be.

When I find you, do not be alarmed.

For I am unarmed, unharmed, I am charmed.

 

For it will be pleasant,

to be in the presence of such elegance.

I can blossom or dismantle you,

the choice is my command.

But you may be unlike any other man?

Who had tried to deceit, inflict and conflict me.

          But when all is done, the power will come back to me,

to ordain how your life is planned.

Do you not know who I am?

The aim of the poem is to maintain the reader’s curiosity, and keep them guessing as to what the abject/ topic of the poem is based upon. The poem begins by making the audience assume that the poem is describing money/wealth, the poem then transcends into depicting beauty and the ideas and pressures of beauty pushed by the media, before entering the combined domain of health and aging.

The overall concept and ending finalized question of the piece “Do you not know who I am?” leaves the reader wondering and desiring to know what the root of the poem is hinting at.

The answer is that the poem is a reflection of you. Whatever topic the reader / you associated most greatly with, will be what you then think is the final answer as to what the poem is based on.

The title of the poem – ‘Rorrim’ is actually the word mirror reflected, to subtly hint that the poem is in fact a reflection of each of our own individual unique desires and fears: money, beauty, aging and death.