PUBERTY

I cry, I laugh, I moan, I groan, I weep, I smile, I gloat, I rot;
My pubertal gluttony ringing its toll.
Mustn’t I like to be nestled in my mother’s lot?
No, decided my testosterone, riding the hormonal foal.

It must be a ritualistic malady;
For at times, it could make one’s soul get rinsed in fuming coal-tar.
Or, is it, from the Gods, an intended parody?
For it could also get a heart into elation, just as far.

You give me days of violent upheaval; so, I try to clamber down.
Yet, you dare to make my path slippery?
Being the tempting Satan in the gown,
You condemn me of frippery!

You lure me into random femininity,
Making me forget how anyone ever can be so feminine than a mother.
And with you pulling the strings of my integrity,
Must I figure out that they are but another bother?

You make me scathe morality for imbecile pride,
For furnishing my attitude with not the thought of the Dove but of the Machete.
With you teaching me it is cowardice people deride,
Must I learn not to break the walls of Gandhi and Mandela but rather to ricochet?

But it’s true that you give me the time to find myself.
You ruffle in me my birthmark-passions to the point of insomnia;
You give me the courage to keep yelling at people who play deaf.
And in the Time’s yonder, you will be on the top-pile of my nostalgia.

Puberty, you are an enigma to be solved as well as a treasure to be treasured;
You are the steeplechase of life, yes, yet the oasis of the desert.
From my senility, it is you I point when I say my life was well measured;
It is to you I yearn to revert.

• FOOTNOTE
  Originally published in Medium: https://gloriouspublication.com/puberty-a-poem-8bcc1d014177