Of Love & Grief

If it’s better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all,
Then how do you explain grief
To Romeo in sight of Juliet’s lifeless body?
How do you weigh grief and love
In the scales of emotion
When the pain of separation
Is enough to kill the lovers and set aflame years of togetherness.
Henceforth, it is a plea to the creator-
To let the characters live in their aura,
To summon Romeo and Juliet in the multiverse-
The greatest of all, not a tragedy to be called hereafter:

Juliet: Oh Romeo, what costs you to deceive such a love,
and to carry the pain of sustaining your beloved in thy mighty arms..

Romeo: My dearest Juliet, the pain of deceiving you against all odds,
is beyond measure to the pain of living an insensate life devoid of your presence.

Juliet: Unsought all these years, I’m surprised to seek a man,
Who fights like a fierce rebel, and aspire not to be a hero-
Rather set a glory to procure his lover.
I must praise your resolute attitude, darlin’

Romeo: Your words cut deep, my love,
but what glory remains in the bare cold hands of your beloved if not love?

Juliet: I’m certain, ‘tis the dire desire of belongingness.
To be yours, to be mine and to become us till the end of life.

Romeo: So be it, if union isn’t written in our fate,
We shall chisel our love into the pedestals of time with our bare bloody fingers
Till every next lover is called Romeo, and his beloved, Juliet…

Juliet: We shall remain eternal lovers,
in every universe and in every poetic verse of romance,
our souls bleeding love enamoured with ceaseless joy,
To hold each other in every story, soliciting the creator-
a blithe tragedy shall never be bequeathed on any beloved individual.

Romeo and Juliet: Let us be free from your yearnings, oh heavenly Master.
We meet in the next alternate universe,
where time and space cannot keep us apart
and the stars shall guide us to a happy ending.

~Navaparna in collaboration with Minhaz

Day 14 of Na/GloPoWriMo 2023.

Prompt 14 source: https://www.napowrimo.net/day-fourteen-10/
Now for our (optional) daily prompt. Hopefully, this one will provide you with a bit of Friday fun. Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous poem. It can be long or short, rhymed or not. But take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines. You can use your poem to make fun of the original (in the vein of a parody), or turn the form and manner of the original into a vehicle for making points about something else (more of a satire – though the dividing lines get rather confused and thin at times).

Today, I’ve tried something new in composing this poem. With my friend, Minhaz who is apparently another poet, we formed the dialogues impersonating Romeo and Juliet, him acting like Romeo 2.0 and Me as Juliet 2.0! It was so fun and creative that we really enjoyed letting our creative juices flow restlessly. We can literally change the world with our new vision isn’t?? haha do let us know your thoughts on our newest attempt for trying out unconventional way of composing poems.

A satire in the form of a conversation between the two famous lovers of all time from Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy- Romeo and Juliet. The dialogues are directing a new way of exhibiting the characters in the modern context, to exist as the power couple in every universe and to not give up on love, while fate may guide them in a better path so that do not they end up dirty in the hands of fate. The poem is a plea to the Author, to recontextualize the plot and bring in a new light to the characters. The main reference of this poem is to criticize Tennyson’s philosophy/ poetic context:

“I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”

from Lord Tennyson’s poem, In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 27 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45336/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-27

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