Poetry: Ode to A Ravaged Soul

Ode to A Ravaged Soul

Erin Yoo

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The world
Presumes that it sees me
Knows me
 
But, verily, they merely espy
A phantasmagoric apparition
Lingering in the caliginous recesses
Of this outré, nightmarish realm
 
The world espies me 
From a sequestered alcove
Of the
Panoramic
Scrutinizing
Vantage,
Through obscured lens,
Unduly distorting figures
Out of their proper proportions
 
The imperious coteries
That ensconce me
Ensnare my very soul
With their deriding gibes
Masquerade
Under a superficial facade
With hypocrisy so tangible
It swims under their subconsciousness
 
Why are a fated few
Left to arduously traverse
The precarious bridge
Towards amiable reception
While a select echelon heedlessly ostracizes others
At mere whim?

To whatever suits
Their capricious fancy
At an instantaneous hiatus?


Why is the natural order of species
Stratified into
An impenetrable hierarchy?
 
Some destined to be prey,
While others, predators?
 
How grimly sardonic
Is the widely profused conception
That children are still yet so unworldly,
 
That the acerbic sword that
Tears asunder the gossamer thread
Of childhood innocence and mirth,
Is confined to the august spheres
Pertaining to the adult world,
 
Narry a gyrating cogitation transpiring
That tantamount is the caustic blade
Sheathed in the bantam pockets
Of schoolchildren
 
Infused with the rapacious desire
To force everyone to be equal,
As in the novel Fahrenheit 451,
Because they cannot bear
Any vestige short of conformity
 
“The inside is what counts.”
Asserts the world,
Wholly conceding that it is
A quintessential cliche
 
Yet,
Why are those endowed
With aesthetic, Grecian symmetry,
Abiding by the stringent precision
Of the Fibonacci sequence,
 
Those bestowed with
An impalpable allure
Defined by a draconian set
Of concrete mathematics,

***

 

 

“Is everyone around me vapidly flamboyant toucans –

“And I, a raven in an aviary, mired in this state, fruitlessly held captive”

“How contemptible it is to be dredged in this vacuous systematics –”

“Appraised by a Golden Ratio, Grecian symmetry, under hegemony over the gymnastics –”

“Of the propagating antics masquerading under blatant hypocrisy, such acrobatics –”

“Of the glistering, blistering stars with their blinking burning, as the insincere white onyx”

“When all the stars burn out, I’ll fasten a kerosene lamp,”

“In the celestial ethers – I’ll emblazon, once and for all, an unbigoted stamp”

 

 

***

Why are they deemed
Thoroughly unimpeachable
Without even a glimpse
Into their abysmal recesses?
 
The stereotypes that society deems as
Timeworn platitudes
Prod at the frail veneer surface,
Simmering with gamboling gibes
 
Truth is a fruit
I strain to grasp
I am no Sisphyean
 
I simply yearn
To be seen as my own person,
Not through the taunting optic
Of the callous coterie,
Feckless classmates

One day,
I hope to sever the fetters
Of a lugubrious sprite
Reigning hegemony over me,
To shatter the confines
Of my glass sepulcher,
Fragile in ideals
Yet inescapable in blind staunchness,
To roam along life’s meandering paths
As an untethered spirit
And reconcile with the marauded soul
Who suffered countless pillaging
The distraught soul
Whose wings have been clipped
Feathers stuck,
Between the steel bars of a menagerie,

My former self