Ophelia
Poor Ophelia,
bound from one lord to the next.
Poor Ophelia,
a vision in red,
blurred by deceit and murder.
Poor, poor Ophelia,
without the prince you are
but a servant.
Poor Ophelia,
whose love was wasted on a boy
Gone made with hate and revenge.
Poor Ophelia,
who’s plan to thought out the king,
was no more than a trick of the hat.
Poor Ophelia,
Who’s gone mad as death takes another home.
Poor Ophelia,
who drowned without knowing true love.
Poor, poor, Ophelia,
I now know what it feels like to be a ghost.
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#motivationmonday Sharing this to help out. @tanayawinder is trying to raise funds to fly out to NYC to attend a book signing for her poetry. She's selling books at $10 each plus $2.50. She needs to raise funds asap. Please consider doing something amazing today, skip your coffee and buy a book of Indigenous poetry. You'll be supporting an artist directly, you will empower her to continue to share her craft with the world. I bought two copies so I can give one as a gift and hopefully introduce more people to her work. This is how we allow the energy we put out into the world to circle and gain momentum. I am so grateful to those who have helped me in the past, and if I can help in some way, I try to. Uplift others! More info can be found on her IG account, Twitter and FB. Thank you all! Buy some books! Support #literacy support the #Arts #supportthearts #poetry #womeninpoetry #poetsofinstagram #tanayawinder #native #resilience #spokenword https://www.instagram.com/p/BoH56x_g9e4/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1p5s241mox2i2
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Feminism and conundrum of admiration: A poetic perspective
Feminism and conundrum of admiration: A poetic perspective
BY Mehmood Ashraf-Poet, & Blogger, Researcher
She was built like a dream (Catch 22)
Coral is far more red than her lips' red; As any she belied with false compare (Sonnet 130)
Wherever she was, there was Eden (Mark Twain, Eve's Diary)
History of mankind is the history of ideas, said German Idealist Hegel. Being a poet, one says that history of mankind is a historically lyrical narration of personal relatedness with the external world, sometimes passed over as expressions. For not all can be put into the realm of language; it falls so short of words. Some things are on the horizon of spirits and deep emotions, needing expressions as in a painting or a lyrical expression; an artistic, aesthetic mode. Woman, by far, has a central position in this realm of literature after nature. One needs only look at the innumerable expressions of such, as outlined above and further below. Being a poet, one cannot help but admire what is admirable and beautiful. At the same time, one feels perturbed and dissonant given the blurring of lines between admiration and harassment owing to radical onslaught of MeToo banner holders who are bent on turning around centuries rooted traditions.
Granted, ‘will to power’ (a term by Nietzsche) is a fundamental drive in human nature. Feminism is an accumulated will of women, a will to assert their choices, escape the repression and advance liberalization. In short, feminism is an idea of woman freedom and emancipation. Lest they forget, essence of freedom is responsibility i.e. not an unbridled unguided but a ‘regulated’ freedom is a normative imperative. A distinction made between negative and positive freedom- after all, every vehicle is free to move on roads but for all vehicles to be free, they have to follow rules and lights. As Kant said, acting under some kind of a categorical imperative, a value or universal moral law is a fundamental principle of human freedom. More freedom makes increased responsibility imperative and inevitable.
In contrast, the highest freedom feminism has bestowed upon women is skepticism, defiance, Topless parades and deconstruction of centuries rooted customs, norms and tradition. Regarding tradition, even the admiration has been blurred with ‘language games’ of sexism, misogyny and harassment.
Some romantics would say, cosmetics are an extension of the will, will to look beautiful, will to be admired. On that, feminists would shave off their heads, essentially dewomanising appearance as a rebellious response to status quo. Or even worse, feminists would do topless parades, a desperate expression of woman’s freedom. One needs look at Go Toplessda as a blessing of feminism inflicted unto us, burying the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils and blurring the line between admiration and harassment making ‘stare’, the sin. Better yet, they say it is an expression of her will, her freedom-to go topless-. They say beauty is a construct of ‘patriarchy’, another language game. Therefore, it was destined to be attacked and need1ed dismantling. But beauty is the least of the concerns of feminists. If women need any liberation, it is the liberation from clutches of feminism itself which are leading women and traditions into an abysmal abyss which gives dizziness of freedom.
As notable poet, known as Iqbal Lahori said: Wajud I zann s hai tasveer I kaenaat m rang (woman is the color in the picture of universe) i.e. the existence of woman adds contours, colors to life; she makes life, otherwise full of futility and shallowness, worth living for; giving meaning to lives of men, coloring an otherwise doom and gloom world of men. Feminists worry freeing woman in roles, yet more worrying is their dewomanization implicitly ingrained in the paradigm..
Man would always aspire more than science could bestow upon him. While science explained, art expressed using imagination as tool; where knowledge and language felt restrictive, art opened vast doors of expression of relatedness, belonging and admiration of nature. To wonder is one of the foremost humanist predispositions. To wonder, is human. It is a sin, to kill a mockingbird. Greater is the sin, to stop a man from wondering the wandered-wilderness of imagination and nature. It is far from a sinister conspiracy of men as perceived by banner holders of me-too.
What possible trouble MeToo-ers could have with expressions of admirations and beauty. Feminism is harming the artistic traditions via realigning rules and long respected aspirations projected aesthetically. Feminism is harshly worrisome for art and aesthetics alike. The structurally exclusive narrative of feminism and particularly of MeToo is blurring line between admiration and harassment, a concern shared by a few leading women themselves (also recently expressed by TV presenter Melanie Sykes).
Wonders a poet, it is become criminally offensive complimenting, honoring and romanticizing. The transcendental love, relatedness and wonders of nature kept poets busy brushing and painting the world as imagination, as idea; the poetic affair with imagined beauty, ‘an endless fountain of immortal drink, pouring unto us from the heaven's brink’ evolved into the personification of nature. Woman’s beauty got an esteemed status in the realm of literature and particularly poetry. The abstract beauty of nature began to be identified with woman. Poets have been narrating beauty and love for nature and now woman had come to take the throne, as a queen, a princess, a beloved, a naturalistic entity in the broader spectrum of nature itself not externalized but an existential part of it.
The ideologically totalitarian feminism is grown suspicious over this line of admiration. It is sinful to admire the ‘clicking of her heels, heart cannot go wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, or go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter’ (Love in the Time of cholera). How about admiring from a distance, are feminists cool with it?-She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close (Gaiman & Pratchet). Woman equaled nature, a perfectionist ending to artist’s journey of the beauty in wonders of nature. It is becoming offensively sinful to admire her, praise her. Staring is not polite, they say. What is to relation of man with nature if not of stare and wonder!
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Water Illusion
Hold me, embrace me in the warm comfort
Of the water. A pleasant dream fills my void
Of a mind as the euphoria of the moment continues.
I know sin gains nothing but sorrow.
But this heat and passion disniergates
The very thought as velvet soft lips
Press against the hollow of my throat.
Touch me, take me, and never stop loving me.
All my life, I’ve waited for a moment like this,
It’s too late to turn back now. I am yours for the taking,
But you are not mine to take.
The pleasure fades away as the warm
Comforting water turns into an icy grip.
My dream has ended and leaves me wanting more.
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