Am I a poet?

Hello there. I’ve been thinking about writing poems since when I was very young. A couple of days ago, I sat down to write a few. It was then I realized that as long as I was bounded by the fetters of rhyme and reason (which are very essential for good poetry), I couldn’t write poems. So, I decided to take a break (from the ordinary) and just started following my brain. Till now, I’ve come up with some that have really amazed me. Here is the first one:

Lobotomy

The windows screaming with open mouths
Clouds doing little barrel rolls
The air carries some weighted lies
Asphalt’s hissing on some rattle-snakes

Electrons releasing light on bulbs
Heart’s pumping like a giddy top
Thunder rumbling on paned glass
Neurons routing ways to empty paths.

Notes:

Lobotomy (Lobo - lobe; tomos - slice, to cut ) is a surgical procedure that involves the removal of the connecting nerves for the frontal lobe of the brain. This is usually done for mentally challenged people and people with brain tumors that pose the risk of spreading to the healthy parts of the brain (see movies “And One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” and “From Hell”).

Here, the poem is set in such a way that the poet has undergone lobotomy and is unable to relate things properly. The ‘links’ in his brain have been destroyed, leading his thoughts to switch from topic to topic. But, since he can still vaguely remember things, the topics being switched having a very fine thread of connection.

The open windows remind him of people screaming; Clouds remind him of the recent air-show he’s been to; He remembers his Physics teacher telling him that air has weight. The word weight leads to a phrase called ‘weighted lies’. Then, he thinks about the movie where they show the desert with rattlesnakes on the scorching road.

The thought about the sun leads him to think about light, thereby light bulbs and electrons. From electrons, he goes to the ‘Conduction of heartbeat’ lesson in his Biology class. He then remembers the teacher in his primary school telling him that the heart was like a top. Heartbeat reminds him of thunder, leading to rumbling and the recent earthquake that caused the window panes to rumble. The final note is about his neural pathways that still exist in the other portions of his brain, with no way to go; hence they are empty paths.

Thus, the train of thought of a man devoid of the ability to properly connect things is written in the poem. I have used my own 'bad-linked' memories (I just followed the next thought that popped up in my mind, without reasoning) to get 'into' the mind of the lobotomized person. The rest, like most of us un-lobotomized people, is plain guesswork.

More poems to come,

Thanks!

Ravi Teja R.