A couple of years ago a gold fish in our department secretary's office looked me in the eye and dropped dead and that scared the hell out of me. I am not sure if it was reading too much poetry that made see metaphors in ordinary events but the gold fish's short life and sudden death seemed ominous. I was suffering from a severe writer's block at the time and that may also have led to the connection I found between my mental inertia and the restricting globe, the site of that fish's sudden demise. The poem I wrote that night unleashed a rare streak of poetry writing and hence was special for me. However I wrote it with a sense of humor that seems to be lost on some of my readers who saw a sense of gloom in the stanzas. Although I admit that the comparison between the gold fish's insulated, stagnant world is a reference to my choking writer's block, the imagery was meant to add a certain wit. Those who have seen a gold fish wordlessly mouthing at them from behind a glass bowl will know exactly what I mean. I drew a little illustration to go with the poem in an attempt to draw out the undertones of humor in the poem especially since my gold fish looks more like Nemo than like a gold fish. Ha!...
Fish Bowl
I'm a gold fish,
Big eye-balled,
A finned, palm-sized baby,
Awestruck in permanancy, through time,
And my journey is concentric,
At best.
My world, a transparent globe,
A thought-bubble,
like a sleeping Earth,
That does not revolve.
My blood has turned white over time,
From forced neutrality and disconnection,
A cry is stuck in my gills like a stinging hair,
And age has knocked out,
The gritty teeth of aggression,
Down to a full-lipped, mouthy and yet,
Ever so soundless rebellion.
Don't knock on my bowl, I beg,
My walls though dense are brittle,
They echo with each thoughtless,
Strike of your knuckle,
And eddy my small yet precious,
Inscrutibilities.
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