Three Poems about Childhood
On childhood, the inner child, indoctrination, and being changed by the passage of time.
Hello my dear readers. This week’s upload is a bit of a break from usual form. I have three different poems for you today, all organized around the theme of childhood.
I have been busy spending time with my aunts and uncles this week so I have not had much time to write 3,500+ word essays like I usually do. Instead I used this time to write poetry. But rest assured that my brain is brimming with many ideas and that more essays on spiritual and racialist topics will appear on here when I return.
When I spend time with my young nieces and nephews I can’t help but think about how children are so different from young adults like myself. I might be 25 but my childhood feels like an eternity ago. It’s not good to be lost in nostalgia, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the differences on who I am now compared to who I was then. So I wrote these three different poems about childhood, the inner child, indoctrination, and being changed by the passage of time.
I.
A child's footsteps are light
they don't carry
a heavy ego.
A child's movements are harmonious
their instruments are
not yet out of tune.
A child's heart is soft
It hasn't decayed
into cold numbness.
A child's mind is vast,
not yet forced
into being so narrow.
I say: Never grow up.
Fight to keep alive
your little celestial spark
known as childishness
II.
Some kids play sports, some kids cry,
all I did was ask “Why, why, why?”
All my nights were vivid dreams,
All my days I played by streams.
Some kids did physical activity,
but I was stuck in thought-captivity.
Playing with forms and stories in my brain,
no one ever built brakes on my thought-train.
The society outside was neat, organized,
everything fits into a box and gets analyzed.
Inside me was an invisible place of genesis,
unformed mind-stuff, nescience, and desires endless.
To me, the mission of all adults seemed to be:
make my soul like the society outside me,
something labelled, boxed, with rational utility.
But why? I couldn’t understand this mad futility.
I resisted this with all of my might,
something about it just never seemed right.
They wanted to transform me into an adult -
But tired misery seemed to be their result.
But punishment is a persuasive teacher.
I ceased being an innocent, chaotic creature.
I took on the guise of the diligent student,
and subjugated enjoyment to being prudent.
I rebelled silently in the imaginary
the space behind my eyes was my sanctuary
But I couldn’t blur the world into a lie for long
soon reality will face me sternly and strong.
III.
When we are born we are a fresh motion of the universe.
We are born an energy of overflowing newness
unleashed upon an ancient complexity of causes.
We are thrown into a world of people who have been marked,
and we delight them with our marklessness.
“All children are kind and forgiving” I have heard us say, us marked ones.
They speak of marklessness with a voice both joyful and sorrowful.
Joyful,
because marklessness exists.
Sorrowful,
because they know it is transient,
because
To live is to be marked.
When we grow up the universe changes us as we change the universe.
Some of our markings are like scars from daggers,
and other markings are like the sweet moisture that remains from a kiss.
The shadows of our memories follow us everywhere we go,
conditioning our experiences,
and those conditioned experiences themselves become new memories,
which further condition our experiences.
To live is to be marked
to change, to become, to be wounded, to be touched,
to live is to be-born-die-and-be-reborn-again and again.
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Thank you and see you next week, my dear reader! May The Infinitely Holy and Endlessly Good God guide you into all spiritual and material prosperity! Aum/Amen.