Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Show us a leg

Where is everybody??

You may be asking yourselves the same question, actually. We’ve been slow with keeping up on the forums but that’s because the team is busy, busy, busy with editing for Papercuts. As you all may know, this is the first time we’ve opened up our doors to public submissions. This has obviously increased our workload quite a bit, but we’ve dealt with the situation by expanding our poetry and prose teams. We’ve got two great new people on board: Omer Wahaj for prose and Hera Naguib for poetry. Some of you may already be working with these two if your submissions were selected for Vol. 8  🙂

In other news, we’ve issued a special bonus call for submissions for poetry. If you missed the boat the last time it came around, you have a second chance to submit a poem for Vol. 8! Same theme: Forbidden. Same address: editor.papercuts@desiwriterslounge.net Deadline: 2nd June. We’re doing this because we got so many poems on love and sex this time that our poetry editors have original sin coming out of their ears! We are looking for something different, people. As one of our editors never said (in fact, would never dream of saying) forbidden fruit doesn’t only refer to the low hanging fruit!

Anyway, this blog entry is just to verify that all of us are alive and kicking (often ourselves and occasionally each other) but we’d love to see more activity from YOU, dear readers and writers, on the forums. Remember, at the end of the day it’s you who keeps it going! So enough of a summer break, everyone, and let’s get back to some writing, shall we?

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Gone in 60 Minutes

 

October 2003 – Bozeman, Montana. It’s the coldest autumn I’ve ever seen. I’m part of a five-member team that has been sent by Rotary Pakistan on an exchange trip to Montana, USA. Our instructions are simple: Thou Shalt Improve Cultural Ties by Educating the American People about Thy Country. The mission itself is not quite that simple. We travel to small towns and prosperous but conservative communities in the heartland of rural America, in a frontier State where the Pioneer spirit is alive and well and Lewis and Clark are still everyone’s biggest heroes.

We hop from city to town to city, sometimes staying for a day, sometimes three days, and if we’re lucky, a week. We make bleary-eyed Power Point presentations at 7-am meetings in hotels – about small industry in Pakistan, about art, culture and advertising, about banking and debt relief, about poverty and schools for girls. We are asked if there are cars in our country or if people still travel on camels.

We meet hundreds of friendly, hospitable, open-hearted people, none of whom know what to expect from a Group Study Exchange team from Pakistan. They’re all visibly relieved to meet us; then they’re worried for us. They ask us if it’s safe in our part of the world, what with the war in Iraq and all. They tell us about the people who haven’t turned up to make our acquaintance: the woman across the street who’s frantic at the thought of her neighbor hosting a potential terrorist; the man two houses down whose brother was murdered in Karachi.

We cook bad Pakistani food with no fear of being found out. We make friends for life. We learn how to fry an egg by making it dance. We hear an early-morning broadcast on the radio about how schools in Pakistan teach students to hate America. We sing Elvis songs in a train. We realize that our Rotary meeting audiences are intrigued by us but they’d rather hear the new football coach speak about this season’s prospects for the State team, the Grizzlies.

We go to barn dances and we sit in silent awe on backyard piers that overlook idyllic, unspoilt lakes nestled between snow-capped mountains. We give talks about our country at schools where the globe being used in Geography class still shows East Pakistan.

And then, in Bozeman, I’m told by a Rotarian, “We have a special surprise for you! Have you heard of Greg Mortenson?”

I haven’t. And just like that, we’re whisked to the modest offices of the Central Asian Institute – an organization that funds and runs girls’ schools in Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan. After what we’ve experienced in the last few weeks, the CAI and its work is not just astonishing – it’s practically a culture shock. The programme officer is young and enthusiastic. She tries to speak a few words of Urdu. She can’t wait to visit Pakistan.

Mr. Mortenson is not there in person for the meeting… ironically, he’s in Pakistan, working on a project. I tell the CAI staff about the work I’m doing in an NGO for girls’ education in remote Pakistani villages. We make a $100 donation to the Institute before leaving. Somewhere not so far back in our minds there is the thought that it’s all going to come back to our part of the world anyway.

But now it turns out that only $41 probably made it back to ‘us’. In fact, a bigger portion of that donation ($47) would have gone towards funding Mr. Mortenson’s busy speaking programme, which takes him across the length and breadth of the United States all year round – much of that programme focused on promoting (and selling) his books.

No, this is not going where ’60 Minutes’ went with it. When news of the documentary broke, I had several conflicting thoughts and emotions. Like many others, I felt betrayed. Then I berated myself for expecting any different. Who could believe in goodness in today’s world? I met my cousin over breakfast and told her that Greg Mortenson was probably CIA anyway. Secretly, I felt terrible that his life’s work, which depended almost entirely on his reputation for its sustainability, was probably going to go down the drain. I was angry at ’60 Minutes’ for taking the sensational high road when the human impact was so evidently devastating. I was relieved that we never wound up scheduling the DWL floods fundraiser this year and requesting Mr. Mortenson to come as chief guest! I was torn about what this would mean for him as a writer. When did the story start taking precedence over the truth? Was it worth the risk of being found out?

And that last point was what eventually decided the matter for me. When Alex Haley was prosecuted for plagiarism and exposed for more or less making up the entire plot, premise and characters of Roots (1976) it could’ve signaled the end of the novel and his writing career. I imagine many hundreds of thousands of his readers, particularly African Americans, felt betrayed as well. And yet, more than forty years later, Roots remains THE definitive mainstream text on black history in America. The issues it raised and the awareness it created took black activism beyond American streets and living rooms onto the global stage of popular culture. Indeed, while Haley will always be remembered as the writer who lied, his book somehow survived the scandal. Why?

Because the book, even if fictional, was essentially true. Slavery was no tall tale.

Because that novel was just a dang good read.

The story related in Three Cups of Tea (of Greg Mortenson’s botched K2 attempt and subsequent visit to a remote mountain village) has been crucial to the success of his fundraising and awareness campaign. Now, although he still claims categorically that he did go to Korphe village in Baltistan after failing to summit K2, his porters apparently say he didn’t. Oops. Similarly, it turns out that his ‘kidnappers’ in Balochistan (related in Stones into Schools) were actually a bunch of people (including the chief of a think tank in Islamabad) who were just trying to show him around. The kidnapping, it would seem, was taking place in Greg’s head while he was being covertly transported around the tribal area with a group of acquaintances who’d confiscated his passport for safekeeping and had thrown a bag over his face for anonymity.

WHO CARES?

To my mind, the biggest contribution that Greg Mortenson has made to peace in this region is not in the schools he has set up; it is in the tireless activism that he has done in his home country and the way his books have drawn the world’s attention to a different, richer view of what Pakistan and Afghanistan are and what the priorities of a foreign policy to address this region should be. Mortenson has reached out to the American public the way no one has managed to do on our behalf ever before.

So it’s not the schools I’m so worried about. Education outside the State system is an ongoing, evolving endeavour in Pakistan. Programmes start, schools get set up, some schools close, others mushroom, projects run out of funding, lapsed schools are resurrected, one organization moves out, another moves in. Even if CAI starts raking in fewer funds and has to withdraw support for some schools, it is quite likely that the latter will be able to pull in funding from another organisation.

But who’s going to fund those advocacy trips around the US? Who’s going to buy the tickets for the thousands of hours that Greg Mortenson puts into talking about a part of the world that the American population actually knows very little of? Who’s going to plug the gap when those speaking engagements dwindle? Who’s going to publish and promote the next book that urges the world to see the humanity in our people and to invest in them?

Make no mistake, this is the real cost of that documentary and its fallout, which must necessarily come. It isn’t often that a do-gooder comes along with that killer combination of commitment and the power to hold you, to make you listen – to win your trust – as Greg Mortenson has. A very important voice is in danger of being silenced.

But in the middle of this mess, I have hope. It’s the books, you see. Whether or not Mr. Mortenson went to Korphe in 1993 does not eclipse the overall truth of what his books are shouting out to the world: Remember these are people, just like you; if you help them, you forge peace. And they’re good books. People will continue to read them and many people will continue to believe and to act because of them. I think sometimes we forget how powerful that can be.

You never know, the pen may still win the day.

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Submission Deadline for Papercuts Volume 8

Hello all,

Just a reminder that the submission deadline for Volume 8 is almost upon us! Your material should be with us by April 15th. Don’t forget, the theme for Volume 8 is ‘Forbidden’.

You can read the guidelines for submission here.

Sincerely,

The DWL Team.

 

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Salman Rushdie Comes to Atlanta

On my way to work a couple of weeks ago, right as I pressed the button to change radio stations after my commune with NPR radio on my way to work, the words “Salman Rushdie speaking on memories at Emory University” snagged in my ears. Rihanna was moaning about whips and chains on the new radio station and I was in the mood to sing along, so I made a mental note to hit Google up with those words later since the Emory campus is down the road for yours truly.

It turns out that Salman Rushdie is a visiting professor at Emory University in Atlanta, GA this semester. I had already missed the first public dialogue he’d done with Deepa Mehta. (Midnlght’s Children is being turned into a movie with Deepa Mehta directing it. When I have my novel published, I’m going to hold out for Deepa Mehta to come knock on my door – or, the more likely reality, go bang on her door until she answers just to rid herself of the knocking.) So, amidst disappointment, I scanned on down on the press release and saw that Rushie was doing another public conversation on the role of memories in writing that coming Sunday.

Now, I’m not a super-fan of Rushdie. Magical realism just isn’t my thing, so after reading the first two pages of Midnight’s Children, I walked away from the book. In fact, as long as I’m playing confessions here, I haven’t read a single Rushdie novel. However, what does intrigue me as a creative non-fiction writer is the role and use of memories in writing; plus, there was the fact that Rushdie is a renowned South Asian writer and I want to be one, so I figured I should go be in his presence.

The event was held in a church auditorium on the Emory campus, on Sunday at 5 PM, free and ticketless. On the big day, I showed up at 3:30 PM and was fifth online. All 5 of us had plunked down onto the floor and buried our heads into a book as we waited for the doors to open, which I now find amusing. I snagged a seat front and center in the first row. Make no mistake: Salman Rushdie saw me. When I finally get my book published and he sees my photo on the back jacket, he’ll say, “She was the woman who kept fidgeting and texting while I spoke.” To clarify: I wasn’t texting. I was taking notes on my cell phone so that I can write this blog entry for the good of mankind and memoir writers everywhere.

There were a few highlights throughout the event. It was a conversation between Rushdie and a senior member of Emory’s upper echelon around the construction of memory, of how we believe the truth of our memory more than the actual facts themselves. Rushdies example elicited chuckles from the audience. He explained when the Indo-Chinese border wars were happening and China essentially beat the Indian army, conversation amongst the adults took place that he overheard about how, now that India was no longer part of the British empire, we might become part of the Chinese empire and how people might have to learn to speak Chinese. As he mused on this memory with his family, Rushdie’s mother interrupted him and essentially told him not to be daft because he was in boarding school in Britain when all of this went down. When Rushdie checked the actual records, he found that he really was in Britain at the time. Rushdie had literally reconstructed this memory through others’ and placed himself in that moment in time. This made him fascinated with the construction of memory.

Since I have every intention of writing a memoir, I’m quite fascinated with this idea of a construction of memory, especially since the only thing I have to compare the fallacy of my own memories is those of the family and friends. In that scenario, how does one determine whose truth is stronger? This is something I’ve struggled with in my writing – my perception of what I know happened versus others’. I felt marginally at ease when, as Rushdie discussed problems of truth in the novel, especially for things like verbatim dialog, he very bluntly dumped on our heads that “there’s no way people remember dialogue the way it is written in memoirs. It is partly–if not completely–made up, but they are making it up in service of the truth.” Memoir authors, including myself, are clearly making things up; the question is how much are we making up.

The conversation meandered its way through how we look at the past with the eyes of the present and the way we see the past is transformed by the times of the present, which is quite true. Three years ago, I might have ended my bestseller with the main character going on to live a morose, melancholic life, the sort of life heroines in Bollywood movies live when fate takes her down before her happy ending musical. Today, however, I know my main character, no matter what she does, will live, whole-heartedly, wildly. None of the facts of my past has changed; my perspective, however, has, so I shake my head in agreement with Rushdie.

Then we came on to one of my favorite subjects: on how to write a memoir, about the differences and similarities in writing fiction and non-fiction. Rushdie stressed that one must create “novelistic elements,” in non-fiction writing, where we must make the people come to life on the page, even the character baring our own name. “If you can’t make them live on the page,” he stated matter of factly, “then it doesn’t matter that they really live.” One point that struck home was that, in writing a memoir, we have to be particularly critical of the character representing ourselves. We cannot go easy on ourselves – and we cannot write out of revenge. Rushdie encouraged really looking into if something needs to be said or not. Of course, if it is vital to our story and truth, then it must be told, but if it’s not, he recommended rethinking it, to examine why we feel the need to recreate an event that didn’t add to our truth – which essentially is saying that if it doesn’t add to pushing your story forward, you don’t need it.
Rushdie was quite witty actually – there were a reference to how he’s quite tight with Jerry Springer after being on a talk-show together (long amusing story that involves poking fun at a leader of the gun rights group in the U.S.). When the topic of the abundance of memoirs in the market was brought up, he attributed it to Oprah Winfrey and the creation of the confessional culture.

Q&A took the conversation all over the place. Somewhere in there, it came up that Rushdie himself wrote the screenplay for Midnight”s Children, describing the experience “like cutting off both arms and limbs” since he had to cull the novel to exactly what needed to be in the movie and what could be abandoned. Someone piped up with the question of whether Rushdie regretted writing Satanic Verses; Rushdie shut that question down with a quick no and moved on. When asked for tidbits on how the progression of his own memoir was going, Rushdie was quite tight-lipped on the content but elaborated that he believes that if he keeps his mouth shut, then the words will come out through his fingers; he finds that projects often lose their steam because people talk about it too much. I wonder if that was a message specifically for me. When asked if he would choose to categorize himself as a writer or as his public speaking self, Rushdie ended with “I chose the life I chose to tell stories.”

The man is strangely charismatic in person. I have a feeling Padma might have had an effect on his fashion sense. Rushdie very charmingly was dressed in a quite dapper suit with red socks. His voice and accent, if I closed my eyes, I could quite attribute to a much younger, debonair man.

He’s going to be at Emory the entire semester. On my way out, I overheard a current Emory student casually toss of that Rushdie would be visiting his creative writing class. I wonder if he truly comprehends the depth of the privilege he has or if he will look back years later in amazement and thump himself on the head for the opportunity he let pass by.
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We’re Back!

So that didn’t take too long! We’re back online after having switched to our new host. The forums are up and running and within the next day or so, Papercuts will finally be available on its permanent address www.desiwriterslounge.net/papercuts.

Meanwhile, watch out for the next installment of Vol 7 material, coming your way on February 15th!

We are grateful for your patronage and your patience during the host switching.

– The DWL Team

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Thank you, DWL.

It was my birthday on the 17th. My husband’s family was here, and he decided to take on a DIY project for the weekend. We are the people who laze in front of the TV on Saturdays, put off doing laundry until we can see the bottom of our drawers (no pun intended), and call a plumber for fishing out a nail out of the sink. A DIY project in this house presented itself like a looming disaster. And this is not just any project I am talking about. It’s not like he was planning to hammer some nails and hang our pictures, not at all – a monkey could do that. My husband, ladies and gentlemen, was planning to put tiles all over the kitchen walls above the granite counters to create a dazzling backsplash. Aaaaarrrgh!!!

So, the project began on the 15th. The boys made several trips to Home Depot, selected tiles and grout, and began putting adhesive on the walls, christened chipkum by our cousin, between annoying sessions of FIFA on PS3, endless cups of chai, and loud, harmless cursing. By the time the chipkum was done, it was the 16th, and my kitchen was in complete and utter chaos. At this point, they started to press down the tile sheets on chipkum while I was cooking a birthday feast…wait for it…for myself! Yes, I was, in fact, required to cook a feast for the entire family on my birthday to celebrate. Charming, right? God bless our cousin’s wife, she did most of the cooking while the boys showed mock annoyance and worked around us. At midnight, a wannabe black forest cake from a chain grocery store was cut by yours truly. All of us looked like construction workers. Grout was all over our clothes and all over my kitchen counters (gasp!), the chai was still flowing freely, and of course, FIFA was still being played.
Such was my birthday celebration. Imagine my surprise then, when I logged on to DWL on the morning of my birthday and found AMAZING, beautiful, thoughtful, absolutely wonderful birthday wishes from the mods and members. It REALLY made my day, guys. All of a sudden, it was OK that I was working like crazy on my birthday, cleaning up wretched dried-up grout from the newly installed tiles. My arms were ready to fall off, but it was all good – DWL loves me – and that made it all bearable.
Almost a week later, I am sitting in my living room. My husband is STILL cleaning the grout. We are almost ready to seal the tiles, and in two hours, my kitchen will look amazing.
For this difficult birthday and horrible week, I thank you, DWL. The ‘Lounge has been with me through some grave times; this last week was one of the “insignificantly troublesome” variety, but I would have pulled my hair out if it weren’t for DWL and Papercuts.
Brimming with love,
N.
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Papercuts Pre-Launch Meeting/Reading

Exciting news! We’re holding a small reading in Islamabad next week to promote the next volume of Papercuts! Kuch Khaas has graciously agreed to host us on January 4th, but we HAVE to be certain of the number of people in attendance! If you are planning on being there, please get in touch via email at shehla(at)desiwriterslounge(dot)net. This event is not open to the public, so get in touch with us if you want to attend! (And to get the details, of course).

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The Problem of Imagery



“There is a simple trick at the heart of imaginative writing…The trick is that if you write in words that evoke the senses, if your language is full of things that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched, you create a world your reader can enter.”

-Imaginative Writing – The Elements of Craft by Janet Burroway. Second Edition. Page 3. (Not following a standard citation method here).

I have often belabored a singular point in my critique to poets who must have come to detest it by now: introduce more concrete images to your poem. When you create a poem, no matter how commonplace the language written, it evidently transforms into a masterpiece in your mind. It is the same instinct that makes a mother love her child beyond its physical appearance. Obviously, the devotion to the poem from the poet is of (slightly) lesser magnitude.

During my years at DWL, I have come across countless poems that hold great potential. The themes may be very strong and refreshing, the idea nothing short of genius, but more often than not, the poems fall flat once written. The most important thing that the poet must understand is the importance of getting the reader involved. No one cares about your personal suffering, plight, identity crisis, break-up, et cetera, if it doesn’t somehow pull them into the theme of your poem. If readers can’t hold on to the poem by some kind of tactile imagery offered to them, they will not give a damn about the story you have to tell. Essentially, they want to be able to find a world they can enter – aptly phrased in the quote above.

In my experience, the best way to check a poem for its impact and quality is to take yourself out of the poem. Invariably, my poems are in first-person. Empathy dictates that a large ratio of a random sample of readers should be able to relate to my experiences as written in the poem. If I am to write about my life however, without giving them a chance to be a part of it, chances are empathy will be flushed down the toilet in 2 seconds flat. Even if I am writing about something that is of extreme personal significance, I must make the poem “friendly” for my readers. I generally try to do this by introducing the reader to my world, getting them acquainted with my life and surroundings. I mention the pile of dirty laundry at the foot of the bed in passing. A bamboo bowl of two month old potpourri on the nightstand – almost completely scentless, except the times when a wayward breeze from the broken window teases it. A red lampshade throwing diffuse light on a dried ring of stale chai on the coffee table. These are concrete images. Something the reader can recognize and hold on to. Now if I throw in a hurtful fight with my significant other somewhere between the dirty laundry and the caked ring of chai, with the emotional outburst highlighted metaphorically by the red lampshade – aha! I have a poem and I have pulled. You. In. I do this by writing out what exactly I want to say in the poem (the fight) and slowly fleshing it out with images, metaphors, and similes – figures of speech do wonders for your poem. Be creative with them. The way to flesh out your poem is best done by trying to look at what you have to offer beside yourself and your personal experience. So if you take yourself out of the poem, what is left? If you’ve got a handful of articles and a weak line of introduction, then you’ve got work to do. Build a world around yourself in the poem and you’ve got what you are looking for.

I am going to leave you with a short poem by Yusef Komunyakaa. It is a very personal poem (as most of them are), but please try to look for concrete imagery that he cleverly introduces along with spectacular metaphors and similes. Enjoy – and of course, happy writing!

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I am stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way – the stone lets me go.
I turn that way – I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

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A Sombre Update

As an unimaginable disaster unfolds in Pakistan in the shape of massive floods, the Desi Writers Lounge community is planning an initiative to take part in the relief efforts as best as it can. We have several ideas brewing on the forums. Primarily we are focusing on ways to get the international community to take note of the horrific plight of millions of Pakistanis. The biggest source of distress right now is the weak response and media coverage internationally, and what that means in terms of aid money that is required urgently.

We have issued a call for articles and eye witness accounts from members based in Pakistan who have the means to visit relief camps and collection centers, which we intend to promote on international blogs and online publications. Another idea in the pipelines is that of a writing competition with an entrance fee in the form of a check made out to a specific relief organization (we have not decided which one yet). We are thinking of promoting this writing competition in universities outside of Pakistan, and roping in guest judges who are established authors and journalists.

These and other ideas are being discussed on the forums currently, and we would love to get feedback and input from you.

sincerely,
The Desi Writers Lounge Team

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There’s Death, Good Sir, And Then There’s Death

There’s death in a blinking cursor; death in a blank page.

I often find myself staring at the John Doe of poetry titles, ‘Document1’ (Microsoft Word); a thousand words bled white. I then look through my poetry archive [read: ramblings of the poor man’s Stephen King/M. Night Shyamalan] and think Holy Frack, what the pig’s scrotum happened to me? I could find terror in a teacup, a tale of macabre waiting to unfold behind the steely blue eyes of a doorman.

Now, there’s only wretched white noise. I think ‘vampire’ – bam! Head stuffed with images from the latest episode of ‘The Vampire Diaries.’ Next thought: evil fetus that drives its mother insane through violent nightmares – hello, ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ slash ‘Splice’ slash ‘Alien.’ Every thought is unoriginal, derivative. Where once all I needed was a word [‘Whack!’ was my inspiration for ‘Incubus’], a phrase [‘Eat some of my remorse’ from ‘a la carte’ just came to me], or a character [suicidal closet-homosexual, for example – see ‘Sodom’], now I find myself fishing for inspiration; forcing my hand on the keyboard. I wrote two poems recently – they were as effective as Stephenie Meyer’s take on Nosferatu [my umpteenth ‘Twilight’ reference; do you see where I’m going with this?]. To her credit, though, I found ‘The Host’ to be a particularly riveting read. Gaah – I’m digressing again. I can’t write 224 words without – sigh. Moving on.

I once wrote a concept about a little boy who walks in on his parents having sex; he’s told they were playing a ‘wrestling game.’ I must have forgotten all about it: just came across the document while cleaning up my ‘My Documents’ folder. [I also came across a document that only read: ‘PRIVATE MALE ESCORTS NOW AVAILABLE, HANDSOME GUYS FOR YOUR SWEET MASSAGE, DINING AND NIGHTLIFE PLEASURES’ – and before you triumphantly pump your fist in the air, Shehla (she insists on interpreting ‘Sodom’ as my subconcious urging me to come out of the closet!), that was character research: I played a gigolo in a Lahore Grammar School production – but that’s a story for another time].

The draft/concept read:
“9 year old boy (8? 7? How young is too young?) sees parents in Kama Sutra position number – oh just pick a number. Goes batshit ballistic till daddy tells him they were ‘wrestling.’ Boy wants to ‘wrestle’ with sister – [comment added later: ‘You’re fu***ng sick, Obi, make it girl from school.’], scary freaky shit – to show or not to show?
‘I drew mommy as a trout’ / daddy as (what’s a really big fish? Shark? Lol, this gives ‘Jaws’ a whole new meaning.)”

When I couldn’t think up of anything more original than that concept, I decided to write out a poem based on the material my perverse mind conjured more than a year ago. This is what I came up with:

I drew mommy as a trout; Snotty Steven thought it was a grey
SpongeBob SquarePants – he doesn’t know they don’t have
spines; silvery freshwater seafood – Steven laughed when
I used the fuchsia pink crayon to fill in mommy’s cheeks; but that’s her
only camouflage against the rose bed spread when daddy plays
the wrestling game with her. Mrs. Trellis was quite bemused (I learnt the word
in English-II today) when she saw daddy
devouring mommy; a great big shark, or the whale that wolfed down Geppetto
“Why would you draw your parents that way?” she asked me; but that’s how I saw them,
Swear on the old ghoul that lives in the attic. She said she’d call home when it’s
After dark, but that when’s they play the wrestling game most; the trout and
The shark. Tonight, canvas in hand, I opened their bedroom door, just as
Daddy was done wrestling her on our hardwood floors; they were so quiet after those
Three seconds I was sure he was going to dogheaven (just like old Scooby did)
From a heart-attack, just like that mostly shirtless man from mommy’s favorite soap opera –
And mommy was going to be crushed under that human grand piano
(Sylvester does many times, but a cat has nine lives, doesn’t he?)
They were staring at me but not staring too; so I asked mommy if what they were doing
Was just for fun; and my heart skipped a beat – what if daddy turns into Jaws and mommy’s
No more – sometimes I wish Steven hadn’t made me watch that movie – but then mommy
Laughed in a voice that was much too hoarse, and said of course, baby, of course.
Daddy took me to my room, and while fidgeting with my Transformers model said
that it’s not scary what they do; that might be true
I’ve seen them pray sometimes in between their game; just yesterday I counted
Mommy taking the Lord’s name
Five times (or was it six?) – so maybe it is holy and daddy’s not a monster after all; he crinkled
His eyes and laughed when I showed him my picture;
he tousled my hair and said
I’d have my fill of the wrestling game one day
Little Peggy makes me all funny inside, with her painted toenails and
Maple syrup scent; I wonder if she’ll be at school tomorrow
I wonder if she’ll play.

After writing this, trying to change and alter it into something worth salvaging [read: making it so complex it seemed as though the poor boy was spewing Sanskrit], I have now resigned myself to the following:
a) I should stop trying to enter the mind of an eight-year old (as poetry protagonist, gaah – this reads like I’m a bizarre Inception pedophile),
b) I should stop trying to write poetry that rhymes,
c) I should just … stop?

Oh sweet Krishna, I started off this blog post saying there’s death in a blinking cursor.
Well, there are some things worse than death.