age

Poem: Time

Writing

 

Time.

Moving passed like 

Dew dripping from the leaves of

The waxiest cuticles.

My hands,

Gnarled, close tight,

Around the memories,

Uprooted by those of time.

 

Time,

A spectre of the night,

Time, invisible to the eye

Of even the most profound inspectors. 

I suspect.

Expecting time to wait for,

Any man.

Is like expecting a hug on

No man’s land.

 

Time,

And time again we

Try to cheat it’s nimble ways.

Like sacrificial lambs to the slaughter we,

Try to resort to cosmetics to

Bathe in youth’s fountain forever

 

Why Being An Adult Isn’t Fun

Writing

Gone are the days when finger painting and daytime naps were as common as the cold. Instead , replaced by finger tapping and continuous bouts of the common cold! If only we knew as tiny humans, the pure agony that lay before us in the adult world. Let me list just a few for you:

  1. Bills Bills Bills

Anyone who gets giddy at the sight of a £10 decrease in their electricity bill because they forced themselves to have ‘luke warm’  instead ‘hot’ showers all Summer knows full well that they have reached adulthood.  Having to pay your rent, water, electricity, mobile and Wi-Fi bills every month means giving up a tiny piece of your soul with every transaction. A tough trade off but then again who really can live without Wi-Fi?

  1. The Rat Race

Remember at school when you felt a long day was waking up at 10am and finishing at lunchtime? Didn’t your heart just sink to your stomach the first time you experienced the dreaded moonbeam illuminating your face through the office window? Yes, that’s right ‘the dayjob is just so I can get enough money to really enjoy myself with the little time I have to myself’. Just keep telling yourself this.

  1. The Cardigan

You were going so well up to this point. You kept on top of the latest fashion trends, you even set a few of your own but then the adult moment hit you like a lightning bolt and since then you’ve resorted to the tatty woolly throw over which would pass as your dead grandmother’s favourite shawl if worn in just the right light. The point being you now dress like an old crow since the first sign of crow’s feet set in. Word of advice, if you want to stay fashionable then get some damn wrinkle cream because heaven forbid the granny cable knit cardigan moment strikes you when you’re vulnerable!

  1. Topics Of Conversation

You now find yourself conversing on why you prefer courgette over mushroom in your spaghetti Bolognese, where instead in the midst of your youth, you’d be out getting laid. It also now feels weird to use or hear other ‘adults’ use slang words such as  ‘dope’ and ‘amazeballs’ (who uses this last one anyway?).

 

I guess there is one thing to look forward to when you reach adulthood. Retirement.

23 Things learned At 23

Writing

1. My quarter life crisis is just around the corner (that’s at 25 for all you fraction phobics).

2. I can no longer sing the lyrics of Wheatus’ – Teenage Dirtbag without shuddering with guilt at the fact that am no longer a teenager.

3. My first silver hair has sprung out of nowhere, hopefully it doesn’t get a neighbour anytime soon.

4. I’m now eligible to start using wrinkle creams (atleast that’s what the drugstore is saying).

5. Getting asked for ID at clubs and pubs is greatly lessening.

6. Drinking does not do a body good.

7. 32 is not the new 23. I may not be a teen but I’m no old crow just yet!

8. Getting giddy about buying new curtains for the bathroom marks the loss of my youthfulness.

9. By this stage in life you’re either fresh back from travelling and stuck in an office job or dead in a ditch (from travelling or having enough of your office job).

10. I now get money and vouchers as birthday presents instead of fun days out and colouring pencils.

11. All my colleagues at work are atleast double my age.

12. Trying to figure out the necessity of a pension is like trying to figure out the necessity of wasps in our lives (they don’t make honey)!

13. My friends are now either engaged, married or popping out their second child (first one being due to an accidental teenage pregnancy).

14. Being single at this age scares my aging parents.

15. I’ve finally came to the realisation that I’m not going to grow any taller.

16. Too young to be taken seriously by men in suits, too old to be taken seriously by youths.

17. Education never prepared me for the conditioning needed to skilfully brew the perfect cuppa for the work colleagues.

18. The parents miss me but not as much as they use to. (Tears of sadness when I left for uni at 18, tears of joy when I leave after visits at 23).

19. If I was a tree I’d have 23 rings!

20. If I was a dog I’d be 〖94〗_2^1 years old!

21. If I was a cat I’d be dead.

22. 23 in French is ‘vingt-trois’ (vahn-twah)!

23. Age is but a number!

Poem: Rorrim

Writing

 

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.

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