My inner junkie

The thing about poetry is that it requires some thinking. Unlike a good book where you can tell from the teaser on the jacket if it’s something you’d be into, poetry requires actual reading, then sorting through the themes and authors which touch you the most. It’s for this same reason that the few poetry books at home are Robert Frost’s and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s.

Tisha has been the dealer to my inner poetry junkie.

This poem is so real. It makes me want to cry, not from sadness. But because, ang galing ng pucha. This is as close as I can get to a sappy mood.

The Muse This Time, R. Zamora Linmark

I am, at the moment, a patron of the meat market. Profession: a poet on-call because poetry only comes when it wants to; hobbies; listening to Gershwin while looking for Freud in Woody Allen movies; history of the heart: six lovers who wanted to be immortalized.

“Funny,” said my fourth, “you can cook up a poem about bumper-to-bumper traffic, but when it’s time to write about me…” How do you explain to someone who makes you come thrice a week and gives you head and foot massage at bedtime why it is much easier to write about gridlock in the land of diesel than return to that humid night in Makati, where we had met, in a Korean-owned steam room, a misnomer since lust provided the heat.

The fifth and sixth were more demanding. “Screw the acknowledgment page,” said the fifth. “I want a biography that sings,” said the sixth. Completely unaware they were making the same request an hour apart from each other, I told them, “What do you take me for? a mail-order poet? Dial-a-poem?”

“I don’t get it,” said the third. “You can create beauty from a dead fish,” said the second. “Destroy buildings in one line,” said the first, “but you cannot write about the good ole devil?”

Their words are stinging now as I approach twilight. Truth is: love’s hard to live with. I forget to set the alarm clock, I buy everything on credit, I start making up words, I call in sick to the world. “Are you a poet?” asked the second. “A lover?” asked the third. “Just shut up and write,” said the first.

I can’t. Nothing is entering. Except the voice of my first lover, the one who set the picture straight. “The problem with you is you think you’re Woody Allen in Manhattan.”

Gershwin’s blue clarinet, black-and-white Big Apple, an ice cream parlor. At the counter, Woody is buying Hemingway’s daughter, Mariel, a milkshake before he delivers the bad news. Tears coursing down her cheeks, she asks, “Why? Because I’m too young? Because I don’t know Rita Hayworth from Veronica Lake? Because I’m not Diane Keaton running with you in the rain?” They split, then a minute before the credits roll, he changes his mind. “I’ll take you back,” Mariel says, “when I return from London.”

That’s the closest to my idea of love: watching the skyline, making out, making mistakes, making believe desire means it’s with somebody else, then breaking up, and, if we’re lucky, forgiveness that comes right before take-off. There, I’ve said it. What more can one want? A lover who loves me as much as the rain. Rain, and, from the opening credits to the closing heart, Gershwin.

the invitation

This poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, touches my heart. I would never have come across it if not for Tish. (The author’s name is befitting her poetry.)

it doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
i want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

it doesn’t interest me how old you are.
i want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

it doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
i want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

i want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

i want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

it doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
i want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
if you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

i want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
and if you can source your own life
from its presence.

i want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“yes.”

it doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
i want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

it doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
i want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

it doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
i want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

i want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.