i miss my poetry writing days.

not that i was ever really good at it but i think i did okay, all things considered. this is an old poem which serves as my bio write-up in livejournal.

why wear something
so thin and holed
and frayed?
why wear a faded shirt? she asks.

but she does not know how
something touches my skin,
gentler than a lover. how
something embraces me so:
my skin sighs, content.

but she does not know
my favorite shirt.

nor me.

admittedly, the fading font color was part of the poems gimmick: a reminder of those days when i would mercilessly play around with font colors, adding bright splashes of red in a mostly-grayed out block of text. but for this instance, i hoped the gimmick made some sense.

the last poem i wrote (which sadly was wrongly attributed to another person in the website of the local poetry group i belonged to, years back -- of course i could prove i was the first to publish the poem in livejournal) was written maybe three or four years ago:

Leftover Night

Something died
in the middle of my dinner, you know.
A fly must have thought
it had enough of this world, and so
it took a dive into
my bowl of soup, half-empty
and already finished.
 
Six legs, two wings
flailing half-heartedly
for exactly three seconds;
twenty-seven more, I sat watching
a dead fly in a stock as flat
as a dinnertime conversation.
It was over
when you saw, pointing out
how disgusting I was, didn't I know that?
 
I watched a dead fly go down
the drain. Thirty years flailing
half-heartedly in a flat soup
and not yet choosing to stop.
 
It has been so long.

someone from the old poetry group, during a critique, pointed out that the stuff i wrote often contained a lot of anger.

it used to be that i would write poems out of frustration. ire that has been percolating for some time in my mind would find their way into some images which i transcribed to word. often what triggered them were trivial incidents, like a passing comment on an old shirt i often wore before.

i have always been a bundle of contained anger.

then at some point, i found a near-constant source of happiness. with that, i ran out of inspiration. much of what i wrote were based on anger and bitterness and frustration; i could never write a gushing love poem that i would feel confident showing to anyone. so for three years or so, i did not write anything.

and then near the end of those 3 years, i started to feel confused and listless. fear, like happiness, would not work for me although the reason was more because i did not know where the fear came from. there were more important things to think about other than writing. it was easier to say something about not liking a situation that, when it comes to it, will not cause me to question my sense of being.

i guess unlike some musicians, going through divorce will not inspire me to write a great album. it would leave me paralyzed with fear and uncertainty. i wonder where the righteous anger of my younger self went. what i have left is cynicism and irritation.

oh well.

but i will admit it here: these poems i included here were both about my mother.