ABOUT THE POEM: This poem explores strength stripped of mythology. It rejects rehearsed bravery and inherited confidence, focusing instead on endurance born from deprivation. The speaker is not chasing glory; they are negotiating survival in a world that distributes belonging unevenly. The metaphors—mountains climbed without preparation, oceans crossed without strokes, wings denied yet still lifting—frame life as a series of unchosen trials where persistence replaces hope. Notably, the poem refuses consolation: there is no prayer, no dream, no promise of rescue. What remains is pulse—biological insistence as philosophy. The voice carries controlled anger, not spectacle. Emptiness is not romanticized; it is the raw material from which motion begins. This is not a victory poem but a continuation poem: movement without guarantees. The final reach toward distant stars is not optimism but defiance—action without permission, meaning forged where none is offered.Title – Against All Odds
Daredevils sing anthems of rehearsed risks-
hollow chests, borrowed courage echoing thin.
True strength arrives untaught:
the Himalayas, faced with no knowledge of the climb,
do-or-die on sheer, unforgiving stone.
It is walking oceans of time,
legs heavy, no stroke to borrow,
waves relentless, horizon endless.
It is reaching for the moon and farther-
caged, abused, discarded, wings denied-
lifting on splintered will alone.
Necessity mothers invention.
I come for unforeseen heroics.
Yet my heart refuses this truth:
others taste belonging, warm and full-
why am I still untouched?
Blood surges in my veins,
claiming its right to pulse in living flesh.
I want one place in this unfair world
before the years run out and waste me.
I walk on-
no ground beneath, no sky above-
neither begging nor bragging,
hoping nor praying nor dreaming,
even while starving for life.
From that emptiness
the journey truly begins-
the real test.
No map, no mentor, no mercy-
only the pulse that refuses to fade.
I forge my path from absence alone,
paying in silence the price unpaid.
The stars stay distant; I reach anyway.
