Have you ever realised how many creatives say their best work stems from a dark place. Thomas Hardy rings a bell? The fact that alienation and exile is at the center of Caribbean poetics and discourse? Sometimes depression is used as a safety net for the mind of a poet or writer, because such intense feelings result in complex works. Therefore, at times that darkness becomes a common aesthetic.
Some say that sadness begets creativity.
We write about the torments of our soul as a cathartic process for emotional instability,
As a way to handle loneliness, or if we feel rejected,
To build a barrier and feel protected.
So we have our poets, our creatives, who drink from the cup of unrequited love and lust,
Who pen the words of their loss of trust.
They sing the ballard to that somber dim flame,
For the one in their heart but whom they could never claim.
The romantics cried the worlds of pain and troubles is what shapes a soul.
But who wants to exist in this brittle cold?
A cold void, an inarticulate thing, that you try to comprehend,
While staying strong but your will starts to bend.
Beyond the confinements, though as mesmerising as it can be,
To be trapped in a state of constant melancholy.
What now exists? When a poet becomes her works
But the soul behind is pushed aside buried beneath the words.
Her emotions no longer her own, its meanings they can’t contain.
Left to the interpretation of the world, naked is her pain.
A poetic verse, a literary analogy,
Behind it all was just a girl too scared to reach and see.
So she stayed sheltered and she wrote how she felt
No need to venture, when these were the cards she was dealt.
Her pain became a source of comfort that she submerged her conscious in unconsciously.
She didn’t want to a take a chance and try to breathe.
For breathing meant she’d finally live,
And life came with too many risks and unknowns
She rather keep her heart a stone.
But loving you taught her what she was missing all along.
You looked beyond the words on the page, you stayed behind to watch the ink dry.
You saw the soul behind the silent cry.
You filled that void with endless warmth and care,
You held out your hand and you took that fear.
That fear to be attached to something other than that darkness which she’d grown to know,
When you sparked a light with a guiding glow.
You see my love, if sadness begets creativity.
Then happiness forms a sublime artistry.
My Millennial Dilemma 