A Habit - Poem by ManiMekhala

by SomeProfile Tue May 03, 2011 11:41 am

ManiMekhala wrote:
Habit
A beautiful habit is
like a super tight shirt.
I wear it with excitement.
Wiggling, struggling,
twisting and fussing,
changing the shape of my body,
And then, I smile,
as I look at the marveling reflection.

Ah! Don't I look pretty?
In the snugly fit shirt-like
beautiful new habit.
So, I flaunt it,
with the ecstatic smile
that comes attached.

But, "you can't wear
the beautiful super tight shirt
forever", I hear.
So, I decide to pull it off.
Then, as I try to hold
the rim of the shirt, I can't feel it.

The shirt, the alluring one,
is stuck to my skin, like a second skin.
I can't see the shirt. It has become me.
or Have I become the shirt?
I panic, I scratch,
I try to peel it off my skin,
Ouch! it hurts. My skin burns.
I anoint with some pearls from my eyes.

It is hard.
The shirt demands all my energy.
It wears me.
Have you tried pulling off a super-tight shirt?
First, you have to tuck your tummy in,
stop breathing for a second, or a minute,
that might seem like an eternity.
It suffocates you,
the foxy shirt you are trying to take off,
gets stuck at your neck,
covers your face and suffocates you!
You can't breathe,
you can't see.
You are lost!
Lost, trying to take the captivating super tight shirt off.

So, I give up.
I give up, trying to peel off my skin.
I wear it now, forever,
strutting a blessed smile.

SomeProfile wrote:
Dear ManiMekhala,

I swear I tried to understand your poem in the way that you intended. But the explicit imagery you painted with your words kept directing all the blood away from my brains and befuddling my understanding. All I kept thinking was, "Poor ManiMekhala! Why is she struggling so much? I can help her easily take off that super-tight shirt and free her voluptuous South Indian curves".

In general, there are two ways out of tight situations like these situations:

a) Allow me to indulge in passionate kisses and sensuous rubbings against you, until the clothes magically slip off without any conscious awareness.

b) Allow me to pounce on you like lion on a deer, and let me rip off that shirt with my bare hands and teeth.

What do you prefer? Option a or option b?

Awaiting your reply with ardent feelings,

S P

Maria wrote:
"The shirt, the alluring one,
is stuck to my skin, like a second skin.
I can't see the shirt. It has become me.
or Have I become the shirt"

ManiMekhala,

My comments earlier were erased...but, it was nice to read your poem again...so will give it another try..your lines remind me of a blog written by a talented blogger..in which she expressed how the "mask becomes the face"...along the same lines..

Liked the last line "strutting a blessed smile" too!

Do keep writing..

best,

M

SomeProfile wrote:
> strutting a blessed smile

When I read that line, I imagined her white shirt knotted at the top of her tummy and her South Indian heroine-type belly button strutting a blessed smile at me.

Have I sinned? Should I go to the confessional this weekend?

by Guest Tue May 03, 2011 11:44 am

all I thought was, 'why doesn't that damed shirt have buttons?'...

by SomeProfile Tue May 03, 2011 11:45 am

Dear ManiMekhala,

While you'll get plenty of appreciative responses from other esteemed Sulekhaites, you must think my responses above to be very sleazy. I admit that I am a douchebag. But I was also trying to make a point.

I am sure that when writing the poem, you were well aware of the imagery it would create in the minds of most readers by your descriptions of a skin-tight shirt and a girl struggling to get out of it. So, it's not like I am bringing up a reaction you didn't already imagine or anticipate. Nevertheless, I was trying to make a point with my sleazy comments. And that is this:

If you were going to write a poem about the cloying, clinging nature of habits, why use distracting imagery that leads the reader away from the main point? Who cares about a 'beautiful habit' (nice pun there btw, with the word 'habit' to also mean a type of clothing; don't know if it was intended)! Why would you want to discard a beautiful habit anyway?

Why not tackle something darker? Perhaps alcohol addiction or substance abuse or sexual obsession. Or perhaps, the aftermath of sexual abuse or rape. Your dark addictions or the bad feelings of being dirty after abuse cling to you like an unremoveable piece of clothing. You struggle with it alone in your shame and guilt and pain. Trying to remove it rips skin right off your body with searing pain. After a few days, the unremoveable dress gets dirty, it starts to smell, you start feeling bugs in it, you notice mold growing on your skin under the clothes. You know that dress is killing you from the inside and the outside in the most grotesquely slow way. But you can't do anything. Write about the utter helpless and shameful feeling you have of being dirty when you go outside, to work, to a temple or to college wearing clean clothes externally, while you know that this smelly, dirty, unhealthy, killing dress is right there underneath, right next to your skin, sucking away sanity as surely as it is sucking away your good health.

If you wrote something like that, you'd have gotten right through to my heart. Right through all the external feelings of sleaze and douchebaggery I might have. Don't try to touch my loins. There are enough women competing for my loins. Touch my heart. That is what I am looking for. White swans are aplenty. Let me see the black swan in you.

Regards,

S P

by harharmahadev Tue May 03, 2011 12:21 pm

SomeProfile wrote:Dear ManiMekhala,

Don't try to touch my loins. There are enough women competing for my loins.
Regards,

S P

Did you name your left/right hands Shashikala and Nirupa?

by SomeProfile Tue May 03, 2011 12:36 pm

harharmahadev wrote:
SomeProfile wrote:Dear ManiMekhala,

Don't try to touch my loins. There are enough women competing for my loins.
Regards,

S P

Did you name your left/right hands Shashikala and Nirupa?

Ouch! * Self-censoring North Indian-style retort involving female relatives *

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