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Showing posts from January, 2026

Central (Poem)

Note: This poem entirely steals from "Picture of Autumn" by Thomas Chatterton. The poem may be considered to be an inspired retelling in this aspect, but it is more accurately described as artistic highway robbery from early british romanticism. I also COMPLETELY stole my description of winter as warm from Eliot's "The Wasteland". I am unfortunately not creative, but regardless I hope you like the poem loyal rathin.blog reader.  Central When winter, overbearing and warm, do appear, With his old hand aging the falling ice Bringing up silver and gold to crucify the year Bearing upon his back the weighted dice When all the homes, those hills, are young When some levied roses, and inks, do meet From where they’re sung. When naught left is fair, and the sunbleak sheets Do bend the body unto the sleepless ground When I am searching for something which repeats When the rhythmic signature do give way To the game we found And we forget our worst bound hopes to play When ...

Someday Soon (Poem)

  Someday Soon And you will feel it silent someday soon Like bullets through water hitting your skin The daughter of emphasis and mechanics. You will find helplessness in bargain bins, Like stranded thoughts. Suddenly someday soon You will see only decaying physics. Like a language I’ve yet to learn, you talk. Like a puzzle I’ve yet to place, your face Yearns to sustain that piece of someday soon. When it slows, I will slow with it, and chalk Outlines will revive all except the skin. I cannot walk, I stop to note: Divine Intervention waits for someday soon. And someday soon old thoughts will converge In folds of time and these corridors That themselves take refuge from the simple Idea of you.  I wait for, it does not Come, someday soon

Cattle Drives (poem)

Cattle Drives Like the men who came to Texas With only drawn-out boots for possessions to herd cattle in the drives to Kansas,  Your face contains that old kind of copper, Where all the best of hope and time’s resistance Means to make well the thought of a train, One to cover 1000 miles of distance, But with each unit oxygen, things still remain Like the ruffled back of a man in transit Who gazes onto the buffalo grass. Picturesque, the land that was before it: The cattle drives and their greatest trespass. It all leaves, waiting long enough alone. Cow leather gets exchanged, your face turns grown.

Style over Substance: Punk, the Internet, and The Shifting Role of Subculture

The following article is a sample essay written in my (Rathin) freshman year. Expect looser formatting and clearer prose going forward:   Style over Substance: Punk, the Internet, and The Shifting Role of Subculture Punk, since its inception, has been viewed as the prototypical subculture movement. In their transgressive style, influential music, and anti-establishment attitude, the punk movement, though proclaimed “dead” by the media and punk themselves, has proved itself to be one of the most distinctive and unabashedly political subcultures. Punk band, the “Sex Pistols” are arguably the most important musical group in defining the style and attitude of the punk movement. To rock critic Greil Marcus, “the Sex Pistols were meant to be a force that would set the world on its ear… and finally unite music and politics” (Marcus) . Today, the role that popular music subculture has changed significantly since its heyday. This stark change can be seen in a major demonstration of the Sex...