poetry
I could never write poetry, at least the poetry that is deemed acceptable by the tortured souls of the world. All the poems I have written are in the level of what I call "grade school". Not that I am looking down on those who are a decade younger than me. It's just that it was in our elementary school years when the cheesiest poetry we ever wrote was born. I wrote embarrasingly cheesy works such as:
DILEMMA
Can’t stop thinking about you
And it’s driving me nuts!
I don’t want you in my head
Coz boy do I hate your guts!
Can’t keep you out of my mind,
It’s always you all the time!
And it’s not suppose to be like that
Coz I go crazy and I even rhyme!
Why are YOU UP THERE?
I don’t like you at all!
You’re a jerk, an obnoxious creep...
You think you’re all that and more!
I cannot stand the way you smile
The way your whole face lights up.
I shudder at your very touch,
Your touch that’s so gentle and soft...
I mean icky and hard!
I hate the way I feel
When you talk to me in the hall.
The way you melt my bones like butter...
Uh coz you make me nauseous…
That’s all!
And I despise the fact that I turn pink
Every time you’re talking to me...
And that my heart pounds so loudly...
Umm, don’t worry to me those things come naturally.
Now you listen up
And you listen up good:
I...DON’T...LIKE...YOU!!!
IN FACT...I HATE YOU......
So then HOW come I’m falling...
Falling slowly for you?
ARGH!!!
I lie. I wrote that junior year in high school. Chalk it up to me being COMPLETELY me.
Anyway, I remember second year college, intro to fiction class with Vinz Serrano, when we were doing a poetry workshop in class. My poem was about falling in love while dancing. Or something like that. I refuse to really think back as to the actual topic because I KNOW it has something to do with the cotillions I had during the year of the 18th-Birthday-Debut-of-Everyone extravaganza. I digress.
I think sir Vinz said something like the poem was basically okay, but instead of telling that the couple was falling in love while doing the waltz, I show the reader that they are falling in love while doing the waltz. Show, not tell. Speak in images, don't state the obvious.
Needless to say, I wasn't sure how to do that. I tried doing the whole "You have deep eyes in which the night flails./Cool arms of flowers and a lap of rose./" (FYI, a favorite of mine, Pablo Neruda's "White Bee") Didn't really work for me. I felt like a poseur, a pretentious teenager. I had lines in my revised poem such as "Lilting notes wrapped around our hearts and souls/Pulling us closer to the music called love". ANG PANGIT!!! Hindi ko talaga kaya.
And another thing--I'm not a tortured artist. I don't have the angst that for some reason nearly all my classmates in my creative writing classes had. I have normal angst, regular angst, typical angst. True, I have thought of death but only in the shallow "Oh my god I dropped my celfone in front of him I want to die!" type of death. Oh, fine, I'm not that shallow, I have thought of death in its more complex form but beyond that, I have no intention of delving deeper into its mysteries. My point being that I'm alive. Let me cherish my life, let me live it.
Where was I? Oh yes, poetry. So there, I think my lack of sucky experiences have hindered my poetry-writing ability. And my not-so-sucky experiences are normal. And I haven't had any of those "Don't stop!" moments, either. Hehe. Not talking about one particular experience but you get my drift--I haven't fully experienced anything. And I can't even pretend to have experienced any of those because I'm as transparent as a glass window--you can tell from my face or from what I've written when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm embarrassed, when I'm covering something up, etc. Just today, I blushed crazily when I caught sight of someone who makes me think of kisses in the summer rain. It happened in a second, I swear--I saw, then I turned strawberry. Hell, raspberry. I felt the freakin' red on my cheeks.
I seem to have lost my point. I enjoyed the nonsensicality of this entry though. I hope you did too.