Depressed Poets of the 21st Century

The stage is slowly changing its color, and the bright, grandiose drop of curtains in the background have started to turn grey, and the audience is impatiently seated at the edges of their seat, waiting, sometimes in tranquil, but mostly in anticipation—of what that is not known, and what is known is that the black clouds are back and this time it will rain a thousand nights.

Does anyone ever talk about these nights, or days when the sky is clear, bright, and promisingly beautiful and the next scene has us floating on top of destructive waters?

It’s a very inspiring life only if you’re unable to feel a thing. And everyone else has a similar, uninspiring tale, like you and I, and the one who says he is not.

And the poets, they are depressed, their minds swaying in the garden of chaos—empty verses floating at midnight, which is the hour of joy, and joy is nothing but a short story lived in deceit.

Here they walk, trying arduously to let go of their tracks. But who would ever tell them that in life, and everything that is misery, shall be unconditionally inscribed is us, now and forever?

Dreams left in peril, and now the poet has changed his attire to cotton—the perfection of absorbing the guilt, misery, and affliction such splendidly, but where to the soul? This naked soul has no home, my love.

And the poets, all they think about is how depressing the tunes of life have become. Or maybe it was always there and only poetry made it more meaningful or even meaningless.

Pathetic and impassioned or maybe harmonious and sublime. It’s the world that eventually gets to decide so why not write until every might in the pen is forever dry.

And the depressed poet does just the same. The unpublished, confessional lines have him walking the steps of the cosmos, in unison with the brightest and the dimmest star in the observable universe.

And the depressed poet has nobody to lean onto when the sweetest of the evening turns into an agonizing war inside the mind. It’s the game of ‘yes he’s okay’ that he so pleasingly embraces. And he continues because of the poetry of suffering that has him walking alongside the depths of chaos.

And how long does it take for one to realize that the stage will at some point be empty, and every audience or performer will have left? And left is that lonely curtain, black and gloomy now, entangled with grief and sorrow of a thousand but whom to tell.

It’s the depressed poet who will tell you the story of that miserable curtain, my love.

‘-Yogesh Chandra