Quote of the day:
“Poetry can be taught, but it really should be lived. Tried, tested, engaged with. Let it in and allow it to change your life.”
(from the film, My Oxford Year).
I love this quote. Poetry is singing your truth to the world. It is truth-telling in its loudest, rawest, most visceral form. A direct line to the soul, I always say. A vehicle to release gut-wrenching pain and express subliminal joy. It’s self-discovery, as well. I always emerge from writing a poem changed in some way, big or small. I feel like I’m getting closer to myself, when I confess my most intimate thoughts and feelings to the kind, non-judgmental page. I’m sharing a moment, a feeling, and using the smallest units of language to give form to the message. Just like dancers give physical form to music, using their bodies as the instrument, writers wield their pen to lend a voice to their inner landscape, their truth and intuition that, around most others, come out in quiet whispers.
No, poetry is a revolution. It is a wail off the mountaintops, where you stand naked and unafraid, without shoes or roles to fill, just you and you. Anything but lonely in your world of words. When I write, I wont for no one but myself. I am shedding fear, inhibition, labels others have exacted onto me, societally-defined roles and expectations, cultural norms and stringent rules on how to be “normal”. I tear off the corset in one fell swoop, and I stand in front of the mirror naked, piercing brown eyes missing nothing. Who do I see?
Me. Belicia. My essence. My core. My truest Self.
As a poet, your job is to spin hieroglyphics into words, words into rhymes, stanzas into story. Let the reader interpret however they please, for the beauty is in what’s left unsaid. There is a sort of mystery behind the line breaks and gaps. Why did you choose this word, and omit another? What compelled you to draw this metaphor, how did you even compare the word “yellow” to “silk clothes of the bright and brave Chinese emperor”? (little quote from a poem I wrote in second grade).
There is a sort of mystique to poetry… you, the veiled writer, are an enigma, a creature that evokes wonder in reaching ears. Sometimes, you are a stranger to yourself. Poetry is your way of saying hello to your soul. A way to fall back in love with the once pure child who lost her innocence too young. After emerging from the trance of writing, you wake up with newfound clarity. Like a solid nine hours of sleep where you dreamt to the highest reaches, and all your secret fantasies were realized, and you wake up with a smile on your face and tear-stained cheeks.
Sometimes, writing is a Hail Mary effort to save yourself. Upon awakening, you feel sweet relief. That behemoth of a monster is now out of you. Like a deadly tumor excised from your existence. You emerge with nothing but gratitude to be here, at one with the present moment, grateful to be alive one more day. With this heart filled with love and gratitude, what can I make of the next 24 hours? How much good can I do in this world? What new things will I discover today? How far will I stretch my mind? Who can I make smile? Who can I offer comfort to? Every day holds the promise of untapped potential. It is a blank white page yearning to be filled. You, the author of your life. On this page you write deliberately, with good intention, and life itself becomes a work of art. Find courage on the page, and slowly but surely you will find that same bravery in real life. Harness the power of the written word, the gumption you feel when your pen touches paper, and magic bleeds out. You are magic, a miracle. Share your story with the world, for your story matters, and it is POWERFUL.
Let your life be one grand act of creative expression. Creative flow is the key to happiness, the way out of sadness, depression, anger, and rage. You don’t need to stoop to drugs or hedonism to feel fully alive. I feel alive while ensconced under the sheets of my bed, candle flickering on my nightstand, green tea perched precariously on my unopened book, just thinking and feeling and writing everything down, be it prose or poetry. It all demands to be released. My hand does the deed. This hand of mine is pretty useless with most things– it can’t change a tire, hammer a nail, assemble a tent– but it can certainly wield a pen. The pen is my weapon, and words are fodder for my genius to bleed out. Some days, I feel like a mad genius. That is most likely my ego talking (or mania). Other days, I am but a helpless child just trying to survive in a scary world. I exist in a world of duality. Right wrong, good, bad, darkness, light, sun, moon, happiness, sadness. There is a natural order to opposites, the beauty is in the contrast that breeds novelty and surprise and wonder. Where would life’s color hide, if our days were but mere shades of gray? Same old drudgery, day in and day out. I did not want to succumb to that fate, that Kafkaesque nightmare. So armed with privilege, I chose the path of creative freedom, and every day, I bleed myself dry… it’s painful and messy and grotesque sometimes, but at the end, I feel free.
I am a lover of life, that’s why I am an artist, I need a way to express all this zest and passion and fire. If I don’t, the flames will burn me alive.
Next frontier: love. I am a whole person, not a list of labels. I am a creature of feeling, not a robotic machine. I am more than a sum total of my past accomplishments. My worth is not conditional on what I do or who I impress. I am imperfect, but constantly working to better myself. I once conflated respect with connection, admiration with love. How wrong I was. Love is not conditional on what you do, not some kind of hard-earned reward, but an element offered as freely as oxygen. Who will pull me from the warm but lonely waters of my existence and breathe air into my lungs? With that first breath, I will be born anew. I will sputter and spit and choke on newness, this foreign feeling, and it will be as painful as it is pleasurable. But in another person I will mend my childhood wounds. In another, I place this faith.
At 27, I am ready to share my life with another soul. Oh, the places we’ll go together. We could stay in bed all day and traverse a million destinations. Our conversations would meander with no direction, and by nightfall, we’ll find ourselves in strange, beautiful places, and while strolling along the river bend, we’ll share belly laughs and kisses and naked truths and tears of joy. If someone can make me cry, I know they’re a real one. It means they matter to me. To this day, I’ve never cried over a man. Not physical tears, I mean. I bleed my heartache onto the page, and that is my wail off the mountaintops. I always get the final word.
I will write a million poems for my future life partner and it wouldn’t be enough.
Let’s start with just one. The first of many. A poem to my soulmate whom I have not yet met. To be continued…
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