Written piece
Poem-Knowing me now
Nirmala Pillai
India
About this piece
My submission is a poem where for a person in the modern chase for success, the lines of normalcy blur and gets lost between the facts and fiction created by the self delusion. Madness appears normal and they too survive in this world of Maya.
Poem
—Knowing me now.—
I lived on the crest of a wave
for so long , so long-
All my breathing-working life.
Driven to achieve, fearing to fall,
Deep into the troughs of waves-
Danced on the airborne peaks-
Five senses weeping to stop.
Success is a ladder I thought-
Breathless, sleepless and alert;
Till twirl and swirl became one.
Thrill-Drunk, the flesh screamed -
My mind mined the pleasures,
To dig a hole. I feel. I fell. I fail.
What is peace?
Where is calm?
Time harvested my dreams.
Winnowed my pain.
Made me. This is me, now.
I met the old face in the mirror;
My flat world of no dimensions ,
Fragile, the frailty of existence.
No corners or niches existed,
To hold and hang my toxic self.
I was perfect.
I am perfect .
So I thought, until now.
The first Psychiatrist I met asked,
“How did you Survive?
You have Bipolar disorder,
Moderate depression,
Manic tendencies and some more.”
After sixty years. I turned to stone.
Was I a dangerous human ?
Roaming freely in an ordered world.
How did I still live and became an Icon?
Could I have become a killer,
A suicide victim, a psychopath!
I, me and myself :
Could we three terrorise the world?
I live in terror of myself .