QC Awards- Poetry

In January of this year, I stumbled upon the Kathmandu Word Warriors' QC Poetry Slam Awards. I had never attempted to write or perform Spoken Word Poetry before. However, I regularly watched Sarah Kay, Phil Kaye, and other established Spoken Word Poets on YouTube. When Sarah Kay came to Kathmandu in December, I raced to purchase tickets with a couple of close friends. What I'm trying to say is that Spoken Word Poetry is new to me, but not. Thus, when I sent in a poem called 'If' to the QC Awards, I was not expecting anything. I'd actually sent the poem because my English teacher had exhorted me to. However, I got called to their 2-day-workshop. It was a super helpful weekend, in which I realized how much I enjoy poetry. By sharing poems I wrote on the spot-I also had a second epiphany- I didn't suck. People seemed to like to listen to what I wrote. Then, when I was notified of the auditions for the QC awards, I decided to give it a go. I was extremely nervous and forgot half of my poem. Somehow, though, I made it to the next round. A bunch of my closest girlfriends came to support me. I was extremely nervous- but I somehow made it to the semi-finals, the top-ten. There would be 5 winners, and listening to my peers I had no expectations. To me, it wasn't even about the points anymore. When I had first gotten up on stage during the auditions, I had been terrified. I was shaking and I couldn't speak properly. However, somehow, on the Feb 7th performances, I felt confident on stage.  Like I belonged. Like what I was saying wasn't just sounds or words I'd written up in my bedroom. It felt like something that mattered. People were listening- not in the vague way that most people listen (multitasking- half listening, half trying to come up with a reply) but ACTUALLY LISTENING. There were five winners and I ended up being one of them. That didn't really matter to me though. What mattered was the the fact that I had spoken up about things that actually mattered to me- things from my journal, things I'd been ashamed to share before. I had opened up and people had listened. I had made friends along the way too- friends who were just as interested in literature and writing as I am. After the first weekend of the workshop, I decided that no matter what happens, I'm going to start writing poetry regularly- for myself. Anyway, it was a great month and here's one of my performances if you happen to be interested in watching. It's about feminism- very appropriate for International Women's Day.

Anything But A Rollarcoaster

Adamant, I
Refuse roller-coasters.
Yellow-bellied, scared stiff of 
Anything to do with the air yet I
Adore adventure:

Roaring rivers and the Himalayas
Accompanied by 
Jittery nerves and jangly friends- riches 
Oblivious to even the 
Utmost 
Royale patrons,
Instead lie here with me-
And without a roller-coaster in sight.

The Dribble Home (wards)

Dribble.

Up with the sun,

Down with the stars,

The middle lasts all day.

Dribble.

A mellow sunset,

A changing constant,

Stuck between calloused fingers.

Dribble.

A sliver of slience,

Into the cookie jar

Another (not-so) free-throw.

Dribble.

Through a hundred hands,

A thousand times,

Full of sweat, dirt, and grime.

Dribble.

A sea of heads,

Branches of hair,

Peeking out.

Dribble, swish.

Shots made,

Point scored,

Friendship created.

Dribble.

The home-court advantage.

Dribble, always, dribble.

Because the dribble is home.

Somewhere In Between

I’m from adventures on sandy shores,

that I sleepily carried home,

I’m from hair-flying, lung-bursting

car-rides screaming along to Taylor Swift.

I’m from Simon and Garfunkel

And my mother’s “mac-n-cheese, with everything you’ll ever need”

I’m from group hugs and

“LOL-lots of love”

I’m from stacks of books

And discussions with my father

I’m from the star-gazing,

the stray-puppy-lovin’ hood

I’m from meandering ghettos

And the turquoise ocean

From floating boats,

In the sinking sea.

I’m from ring-pops and tongue tattoos,

Dancing the hula while singing the blues

I’m from thumb-wars and tic-tacs,

Ironic winks and masquerade masks.

I’m from midnight basketball with my brother

Where strategic dribbles fade into lots of giggles.

I’m from ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and

Everything Harry Potter.

I am just as much from ‘Namaste’ as I am from ‘Aloha’

My head’s in the mountains

And my heart’s in the ocean,

But I guess I’m from somewhere in between.

Regret

Regret started by changing my favorite color from periwinkle pink to blasphemy blue,

To impress a gaggle of boys with perpetually runny noses in the fourth grade
Trying to convince THEM that girls didn’t have cooties by lying to myself
But wh ispering lies leads to shouting the truth
And regret sounds like
I do like blue, I do like blue, I do like blue,
But I just don’t like you.

After the awkward, sweaty middle school dance in the 7^th grade,
Regret continued
When a boy whose last name was Spain
Was asked by friends to rate me
and he gave me an 8 out of 10
on a spectrum he made up
a B+ that was somehow determined my worth
Cool, but not cool enough
Regret looked liked marks on my lips
Stamps of teeth that zipped my mouth shut
before I told him what I’d rate him
Holding in verbal diarrhea, that would surely get me a C-

In the 10^th grade, my friends and I were divided in two groups
By boys who were convinced there were two types of girls
Girls like me
And girls like her
Girls who could analyze Shakespeare like it was second nature
But couldn’t walk a meter in two inch heels
And girls who could
Girls with perfect eyebrows and all the right curves in all the right places
Girls who were just friends
And girls who were always someone’s girlfriend
Regret was living in the prison they created
Instead of setting the whole thing on fire
Because they couldn’t understand that we were sisters
And you can’t just tear a family apart.

Regret was the silence

That followed an argument with my brother, 10 years young,
I, a puddle of tears
And he, brimming but unyielding, “Boys don’t cry.”
But regret was not the hug I gave him,
a hard squeeze that attempted to tell him what I couldn’t.

Boys may not cry, but humans do.  
And somewhere between kindergarten and the first football game, we’ve forgotten boys are human too.

And when my friend teased me the other day
“ohhh, she wants the D”
Regret was not my answer
“Yeah, I want the D.
the Destruction of the Patriarchy.”

Would you want to live forever?

Throughout our history, humans have always feared death. Immortality was the goal. Humans souls have constantly searched for a way to be alive-forever. Humans are social creatures, ostracization is not what they look forward to. After you're dead, you're physically-and eventually mentally, left out of the lives of the living. Back from the days of the Qin Dynasty, emperor Shi-huangdi, searched far and wide for the elixir that would permanently extend his time on earth. However, such immortality has never been a possibility-until now. Cloning and created consciousness (which may or not be adapted by the human kind) have begun to develop. Making duplicates or just having our consciousness live while our physical bodies decay is an attempt to live forever. Is this the right thing to do? Are we meant to unnaturally expand our lives? 

Is living forever really the answer to all of our problems? 

Mortality is almost a gift. Mortality is what makes human life so beautiful, so fragile. It's constantly all or nothing. You're either alive, or dead. There is not yet an in between-but at the rate technology is going, there soon may be. Currently, nothing, nobody is going to last forever. All we honestly have is right now. RIGHT NOW. This. Right here. This is the only thing guaranteed; and it is fleeting. That’s a scary, dark, beautiful thought. All we have is now. The gods cringe at the thought of mortality, as do we. However, if we were immortal, we’d spend lifetimes waiting for a better tomorrow. As we only have a limited amount of time, we make sure not to spend ALL of it hoping for better timing. Everything serves a purpose, as does death. 

You're born. You live. You die.
Some thing may happen after that, but there's currently no empirical evidence regarding this.

The only thing we're absolutely certain about is...
You're born. You live. You die.

Where would the complexities of cloning fit into this? Where would an immortal conscious but deteriorating body go in this currently logical order? What about the natural? Are humans manipulating too much, too fast? The current development in technology seems to make our lives easier than ever. Is this necessary? Is this useful? There are so many ethical, social, scientific things to think about regarding this. Have we let our technology develop to the point it is no longer controllable?

If scientists were to create a device from which you could achieve what your forefathers desperately attempted to capture-immortality- would you?

Would you really want to live forever?

Passionate & Pissed

Today, I was flipping through a magazine with a cousin of mine. He's your typical teenager, independent and stubborn. We turned to a page with a lingerie advertisement. There was a skinny, tan woman eating a large piece of chocolate. Chocolate was also all over her body. She was only wearing, non-surprisingly-lingerie.

Seeing this woman, covered in chocolate, probably to show men how 'delicious' she was in her new panties, disgusted me. How was this woman in an AD for other woman, dressed in a way to please men? More than that, why was she aberrantly skinny? Did anybody know what kind of message she was showing the readers-most teenagers like myself?

Anyway, I made a comment about how women are objectified on a daily basis. He sneered. He said, 'She looks hot.' I replied, 'that's probably not what she looks like in real life.' He said, 'if she wants to model for lingerie and she gets a lot of money for it, let it be. Let her do what she wants with her life.'

I had nothing to say. I got up, made a silly excuse, and left.

I was suddenly angry, and I couldn't pinpoint why.

Was I wrong?
Lately, I've been noticing a couple of things about our patriarchal society. Things that I've come to immensely dislike. Last night, at dinner, I was going on about how women get paid less then men just because of women. Someone was saying that how in today's world men are the one's that are being disregarded. I disagreed. I mean, is anybody aware of the fact there are more men alive in this planet because in many countries, once the parents find out that the zygote is a female they abort her? Or how about the fact that women are treated like objects, especially in the sex trade everyday? Or why is it that I can't walk down the street alone without some creep whistling or cat-calling? The other day, I was arguing about this, when somebody said I must be PMSing. I asked why they thought that. They said, 'Well, you're being such a feminist.' I laughed.

Why is being a feminist such a bad thing?

Doesn't anybody see that the photo-shopped models make everybody, especially girls feel like they're never physically good enough? Society has raised us to believe that looks are what matter anyway.

Is it so wrong that I want to fight for women, since even today they're thought less of by society? Yes, there are a growing number of feminist, but is anything really happening? Are boys reducing the cat-calling? Can a women walk out the door at night, confident that she won't get raped? And if she does, will society accuse the men and not her dress? No.

That's why feminists are needed. That's why there aren't enough.

Am I crazy for being so passionate about this?