The Bohemiaspeaks Experiment: Mapping the Essence of Human Nature

After spending around 2 years writing poetry about fictional characters from all around the world, I asked a friend who is more in touch with the geeky tech world to put together a WORD CLOUD from all the poems that featured on this blog.

As many of you know, a world cloud is generated based on the number of times a word happens to be in a given body of text. Out of 100 poems and around 25,000 words the more a word recurs the larger it would be in the cloud. So looking at the result for bohemiaspeaks in which characters from all walks of life are pouring their hearts out in poetry is sort of a mini-exercise that tries to capture the essence of human nature and emotions.

Lo and behold, the result is a beautiful portrait that I will have to hold on to for some time and think about. I will not try to make sense of the exact recurrence of words in this cloud, I do not think that we need to. But I think that we can just look at it, enjoy its randomness and beauty, and be grateful for any word inside that resonates with us.

This word cloud is the common denominator between: the sex worker in Amsterdam, the Child Worker in Hanoi, the Taxi Driver in Manhattan, the Investment Banker in Calcutta, the Plumber in Buenos Aires, the Soldier in Baghdad, the Gypsy Weaver in the south of Spain, the Pop Star in Tokyo, the Woman in a Burka in Kandahar, the Painter in Lima, the Whirling Dervish in Istanbul, the Female Activist in London, the DJ in Ibiza, the Cancer Patient, the Sailor, the Sociologist, the Pilot, the Eskimo, the Suicide Bomber, the Swahili Hunter, the Pigeon Keeper, the Scriptwriter, the Gravedigger and the list goes on and on covering 100 characters!!!

This is a visual testament that there is no difference between us all. Across races, nationalities, professions, religions, political affiliations we can still find so much words in common. Words like “love”, “life”, “together”, “dreams” and “truth”. Or words like “fear”, “pain”, “empty”, “darkness” and “burn”.

In conclusion of this experiment, I guess our lives are nothing but a word cloud in progress. It is up to us to decide which words will appear with greater weight. If we take a snapshot of our lives right now, what words would be counted most? What words would be counted most if we took a snapshot of the world? And based on this knowledge, how will we act accordingly?

A famous poet called Rumi once said: “Let your words rise, and not your voice. For it is the rain that grows flowers and not the thunder”.

Just some food for thought.

Sincerely,
The Author of Bohemiaspeaks

The Exhibitionist: Mardi Gras

Covered underneath
The mantle of desire
Naked truths
Pursued by only those
Brave enough to rid themselves
Of clothes
Nothing there
But nature
Have you ever scorned a tree?
All their layered garments
Made to conceal
Hypocrisies
Made to repress desires
To establish social order
Human kingdoms
Ravaging, pillaging
Raping, murdering
Stealing
Let me say this now
And hear it clear
I see so much more justice
Between the animals
Why are we so attached
To these repressive notions
When a thousand civil years
Have proved them wrong
This is a dog eat dog world
After all
So let’s just strip
And be the dogs we are
Its much more pleasant
In the summer too

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Character: 90/100

The Lawyer: Anarchy of Nature’s Laws

Books on my desk
Rules
A thousand years of culture,
A thousand manuscripts
But we’re still here
Killing, stealing, waging wars
You tell me
When walking on that road
The stone below you
Is pressed beneath your feet
And suddenly that violence
Once an act of crime
Becomes organic, part of human lives
An orange squeezed from living trees
A flower picked for someone loved
A cow chopped up into a meal
A man promoted, another fired
A baby born, another hungry dies
These laws, more natural
Than human made decrees
More permanent
Than fleeting scrolls
We aim for man-made justice
In this world
When maybe all we need to do
Is realize
That justice
Is not black or white
It’s in this order here
While artificial laws
Are subject to
The systems they create
And honestly
From what this world has seen
These systems failed
They failed so bad
And so
The time has come
For us to re-evaluate
To have the courage
To question all these rules

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Character: 87/100

The Physicist: Paradigm of my Belonging

These lone deeds here
Like cold stones casting shadows
On the bright side of the moon
And my heart aches
With every darkened crater
Until my soul like bundled cheese
Is porous from inside
Leaking with a sense of nothingness
A sense of disappointed grief
For all that which I have done
And toiled to create
That bonds of love could shatter
Like feeble snowflakes on a branch
That bridges built
Could be demolished with one deed
That light itself could never shine
Around your silhouette
That shapes divine
Are formed around your lips
When smiling and conversing
That all the laws of motion
Could never stop us
From parting ways
That all my universe
Implodes into this moment here
In present time
Confined by singularities
Of forgone truths
Crying for some sense of worth
For some hope
For some meaning
And for belonging

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Character: 86/100
Written on December 5, 2012

The Builder: Constructing Happiness

There, far beyond my mental pedestal
Lie avenues of truth untold
And endless rolls of nature’s honeycombs
Like domes stacked on the pillars of gratitude
A fortress for the gracious hearts
And humble men and women of this world
A castle melting sweetened joy
For us to claim when we deserve

My fortune at its best can only see the light
When built from rubble on a surface strong
And so I go about my life
Building structures in my soul
Repairing all that time makes obsolete
Until my body’s nothing but a shape
That cases my divinity within

A shape so simple can say a million words
And words when put together are a force
With which I bear my fire and remorse
And walk towards my purity in shame
Each day’s a step,
The world’s a band of soldiers marching
And soldiers march with little cause
What cause can make the world protrude
Beyond the selfish nature of our design?

And so a builder becomes a legionnaire
In realms of thought s/he toils to dispute
All that befounds our meager lives
To build a palace for all our countrymen
To live in dignity and divine grace
With words of wisdom and acts of love
I build salvation for our dying race

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Character: 80/100 (We’re getting closer!)

The Circus Performer: Ethos of a Wandering Clown

What awaits us then?
Dunes of sand
Never-ending journeys
In distant lands, exotic
With languages idiotic
Songs we’ve never heard
Imaginary kingdoms below a tent
With colored dances throughout the night
Lighting up horizons with their flare
And as the time approaches for our cue
We melt inside a loosely knit parade

Why are we afraid of not knowing?
When fear is but another avenue of adventure
A line to walk without a net to fall upon
A rope released to fly across the room
And right before you reach the safety point
The wisdom of the world shines right upon you
You realize
The price tags of today lose value
And all that is around you seems to glow

Why are we afraid?
To venture forward in this world
To give ourselves to something larger
To fuse ourselves with magical delight
And free ourselves, just like a wandering bird
Living off what the day provides
Taking shelter when it rains
Jugglers, jesters, lion tamers
No expectation, no anticipation
Just faith
Everlasting, eternal, steadfast
And never budging faith

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Character: 48/100

Castles in the Sand – Journey of the Mystic Voyager

Now is the time
It is the present
It is the gift
And between the smears
The smudges of my sundial
Sketched on the sand
I dance, burning my feet
As the sun pours in its time
And with my toes I carve a new beginning
A new device that only points to now
A compass that I use to venture forward
Towards the frontiers of that which is unknown

And no fear shall I know inside me
Of failure, restlessness, or demise
For I live now
I am transparent
The cosmic rays of time
Can never shape me
I am fluid
I take the shape of whatever life gives me
I am dense
With love and knowledge and eternal forgiveness

I sit atop this cauldron boiling
My legs apart
Sexless and alone
Afraid to dive inside
A vehicle that will take me somewhere else
A land where time has lost its meaning
A land where people don’t have form
A land where thoughts can replicate like cancer
And swarm towards the borders of the obscene

And when I’ve burned
Atop this mystic sundial on the sand
I join the yellow grains below my feet
My dance of liberation has left a mark
I am a castle sculpted on the sandy shores
Between the mussels and the clams
I am queen
And what else do I need!

In Search of Identity – Journey of the Mentally Insane

I’m ripping through!
I’m almost there
On the other side
I can smell the baloney sandwiches
In the land of truth
Where the sun never sets

I am a prisoner
Of my own thoughts
A freedom fighter I like to think
A matador of self inflicted truth
I speak out loud and someone shrugs
They place me in a metal cage

My shrieks they break the glass
And afterwards
I use the pieces
To light a fire
Inside my head

I stab and stab and stab away
My laughter overcomes the pain
I use my palms to paint the walls
With dark red strokes
I draw a door

I must escape
I’m almost there
I ram the door
It just won’t budge

I ram and ram and ram away
My shoulder splits
I use the pieces
To pick the lock

It just won’t budge
This door I’ve made
And everything I’ve said and done
My whole life’s work
Is not enough to make it happen

I slowly sink towards the floor
In utmost pain
Beaten, stabbed, burned and shattered
I go to bed
I need my rest
Tomorrow
I’ll try again
To find the answer
My proud charade of self-determination

Eternal Gray – last testament of the junkie

Monstrous tentacles ploughing through my veins

Reaching into my deep thoughts at night

Hunting me relentlessly and without stop.

As I peer through the window sill

I catch a glimpse of light and smile,

Its been dark for quite a while

But somehow I still have not forgotten

How color looks like

Even though I now perceive the world,

In shades of gray

I guess that gray is a perfect mix

Between two ends that do not often meet

Or at least for me they don’t.

In its banality I feel at ease

Or probably rather more accustomed to

Why look for color?

When you can paint your life in gray

Why even bother to improve

When you can always use the gray

Into my veins it clenches tight

Onto my very blood cells

There is no need to fight

Soon even the color within me will disappear

And I will become one

With eternal everlasting mediocrity

International Disorder – rambling of the deranged scholar

(To be rambled very quickly)
Regardless of the debate regarding
the effectiveness of international legalization,
one cannot deny
from a descriptive point of view
that the cultural values of the renaissance
and enlightenment eras in Europe
act as the building blocks
of our modern international liberal order.

To the extent in which
the international normative environment
is contingent on the sociocultural values
of a specific form of polity
(that of Europe to be precise),
an anomaly arises
when such an international model is used
to govern diverse polities
with different understandings of social values.

One could assume
that only when an international order
that better reflects the notion
of uneven and combined development
comes into existence,
then such an anomaly can be solved.

In this respect we may conclude
that the current liberal order is anachronistic
with the logic of social evolution
and of humanity as a whole.

Bedroom Bliss – sonnet of the man in love

Combined with smiles and laughter I release
My inner anger spreads into the air

The stench of fear is overcome by peace
The calmness of an empty dragon’s lair

A smile so innocent from her lips so pure
Unclothes the pieces of my inner gloom
The more she smiles the more I feel secure
Undressing me as spring bursts into bloom

She shakes as I exchange her gentle touch
We mate and I ascend into a haze
The fire burns as we lay whole and clutch
Our passion keeps the dying flame ablaze

Forever seems to linger far away
All I ask for is another day

Thorns – dilemma of the eternally troubled

The countless thorns we try to pluck
We count and pluck and throw away
Have made another bush beneath our feet
And now the thorns we once had overcome
Are sounding bells for our own sad defeat

When plucking thorns it is a must to think
Beyond the pleasure of the pain
of plucking our own plights

What of the thorns when they’re discharged?
A harmless little lifeless thing we think
But soon enough we come to learn
That as we march towards victory
We drown in our own reckless pride

For such a future prickle pickle
Remember to go against your instinct
Don’t pluck the living hell out of yourself
Instead just treat the wounds and wait until
Those thorny bastards fall off along your way

The Graveyard – wisdom of the sad and depressed

Pestilence in our imagery controls our sight
And everything we sought to have falls short
Of what our fingertips can reach for
With impaired vision and obstructed touch
We yell out loud to rip apart the void
That engulfs our entirety but alas
Our sounds bounce of the thickness of our cage
And we end up victims of our own decree
With bleeding ears, incapable eyes and severed hands
We rest on what we used to call our home
Turned into something of our grave
Appliances and rooms just objects in the yard
And compounding our ordeal we’re left with taste and smell
The taste of misery and smell of a decaying corpse