Shackled to Creation: A Collection of Poetry

By Avtar Simrit

Everything is a lie. Everything is true. But what you read within these pages are just the realities of what you already know to be true. Who am I? I am a writer, a performer, an artist. I am all and none of those things. I am everything and I am nothing. I am myself and I am you. These poems are a reflection. But then again, maybe they won't be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apocalyptic Rhymes
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737725787

Avtar Simrit

Avtar Simrit is a modern mystic and an artist. His writings and art are inspired by mystical inquiry as well as all inner and outer journeys. Avtar's main artistic mediums are the written word, Hip Hop music, and video. To check out his music and other work, visit the author's website: www.mc-pan.com.

Book preview

Shackled to Creation

Shackled to Creation

ALSO BY AVTAR SIMRIT

True Fiction (Volume One)

A Dream of True Time

Break Every Chain

Shackled to Creation

A Collection of Poetry

Avtar Simrit

publisher logo

Apocalyptic Rhymes

Cover design by Avtar Simrit.

Cover art by Monique Rebelle.

Originally published in 2011

11th Anniversary Edition

Copyright © 2022 by Avtar Simrit

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2022

For my dad;

like all things transform and grow,

we have both transformed so much since

these poems were first written.

I no longer need the Sealing Wax.

I love you.

Contents

Eleven Years Later

Part One

A Farewell to Inspired Simplicity

Home in the City

Religious Override

Untitled

The Unattainable

The Illusion of Choice

Untitled

TICK

The World Unseen

Real

My Happy Thoughts

Apart

i fall into your rapture

Blank Thoughts

Maybe

Jazz Hole

Timegasm

Part Two

Tangled Light Tentacles

Light

Wings of White

Messiah

Untitled

Can't Crack

Night of Noise

Untitled

Part Three

Rejecting a Surrogate Reality

The Little Death

Operation Dartboard

Twisted Torment

Surrogate Wall

The Breath of Glass

Cloud Carriage

Colorful Darkness

Laughing

Fuck Shit

TIME

Touch the Cerebrum

Black Mist

The Cult Machine

Lives of the Dead

Purple Fog

Part Four

Hopeful Despair

Tide

Schism from the Dark

Forced Cranial Exposure

Security

All That's Left

Red Box

Sealing Wax

What I Need

The Antichrist Scenario

Cosmological Insurrection

GODDAMNIT

Asphyxiated By a Serrated Cross

Pull the Hammer Back

Just Here, Just Look

Obligatory Paramour

BITCH

Did You Know Pill Rhymes with Kill?

Just Try It

My Heroin

Part Five

What the Blind Shall See

Some Shallow Dream

Ode to the Cerebral King

Triple Trick-or-Treat

Trampled by the Hands

Sacred Friend

Gagged

A Story

Pull Out the Knife

Ugly

Cosmic Love

Part Six

Tear Out Your Eyes And I Shall Give You Wisdom

WALLS

MESH

Cut Burns

My Train

Grotesquely Living

Cosplay

Poppy Seeds and Jolly Ranchers

Patches

Part Seven

Becoming Everything

Perfect Forever

This is a Warning

Spindle Trap

Bone Goggles

Becoming Everything

Finding Eden

Seven

About The Author

Eleven Years Later

As the band Tears for Fears so aptly stated, Funny how time flies. Sometimes it really does, doesn’t it?  It boggles my mind that it’s already been eleven years since I originally published this collection of poetry. That’s one year longer than a decade! Shackled to Creation is a decade old! And the years have seasoned it like a fine wine. To me, these poems still have as much zest, punch, and dark fun as they did when I first wrote them. In some moments of high lyricism, I even think they contain more flavor and are even more poignant today than they ever were. That being said, what is fascinating to me, from a psychological perspective, is that even though I still get so much enjoyment out of these pieces, and I feel them deep into my essence and my balls, I don’t have any emotional connection to them anymore. I feel the pain from some of these pieces now as empathy, not as if the pain was my own and still fresh.

If you have read the second book in this duology of poetry collections, Break Every Chain, you will have been able to see the arc of spiritual and emotional transformation which was my journey through the years. That was my intention, yes; I’m always working in concepts. This is why I intentionally divide each book into seven parts with titles that sum up the theme of that step in the journey. Whenever I create a book, or a music album, it is on concept. So the way that that art is meant to be absorbed is from beginning to end, straight through. That is how I designed it and that is how it is intended to be taken in by the reader, or listener. Unfortunately, what I’ve come to realize—especially with collections of poetry and music albums—the reader or listener tends to ‘jump around’ to different poems or tracks on the album. Hence, a good portion of the meaning and story arc is lost that way if it’s not taken in the way it was meant to be.

I am telling you now, dear reader, that this is how this collection and the one which follows—Break Every Chain—is meant to be read. Reading each part in order, each poem in sequence, the character arc and transformation will reveal itself to you; otherwise the meaning just gets muddled in the mayhem. For Shackled to Creation, I collected all of the poems I wrote in high school and college. This is important to note in order to put these pieces into context of when they were written: mostly from the consciousness of a wounded teenager trying to heal through the only way that worked for him—writing. In the introduction of Break Every Chain, I wrote about Shadow Work and using art to dive deep into your Shadow, integrate it, and transform. This is what I’m referring to here (reference the introduction in Break Every Chain for more info).

Parts one through four collect all the poems I wrote in high school. This segment makes up more than half of the book; that is from ages fourteen to eighteen. Then parts five through seven were written in the two years I was attending Film School. In these parts you can see the seeds of transformation that later sprout in the poems of Break Every Chain. Like I said before, everything is on concept. And when I was putting the poems together for this first volume, I already had a vision projected into the future of the second volume which would be the companion piece and culmination of all that had been planted in Shackled to Creation. From bondage to freedom and I would track the whole metamorphosis in two collections of verse.

In 2011, I was twenty-one years old, living in Providence, Rhode Island, and decided it was finally time to publish Shackled to Creation. It pleases me greatly that I can now have this introduction to the new 11th Anniversary Edition where I can explain the context and ages I was when these poems were written. When it was originally published,