The Missing Muse + Adolescent Poems

It’s already Sunday evening; a few more moments to go and it’s, well, Monday. Today’s the last day of the long Holy Week break, and tomorrow everything will be back to reality again, to being business as usual.

It’s back to work. And traffic.

The past few days I’ve been tinkering with the stuff that I haven’t been able attend to for quite a time now, like sorting through my clothes (yes they’ve all been jumbled up) and arranging them to their proper uses and compartments, finishing The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, cementing my immediate plans for the next months and catching up on friends that I haven’t been able to get in touch with god knows for how long already, thanks to the Busy Life.

In between these moments, however, when I’d find myself not doing anything and it was just a matter of deciding to go just lie on the bed and listen to guilty pleasure music, I realized that the flow of  my creative juices is at its most barren state when I’m emancipated from mental commitments. I had expected that since I set the holidays for myself, I would have more time for creative output. But as it turned out my mind blanked out on me every time I would attempt to come up with something.

Is God punishing me for not joining any of the Lent’s activities?

Now I realized that whatever prolific side I have only thrives if my mind is swimming in brainstorming, deadlines and lack of sleep, and never when it’s quiet, I’m not pressured and I have all the time in the world. My mind has to be doing a lot of things first in order for it to be expected to be functional and imaginary on other things. Weird.

The entire day today I’ve been looking for my muse. Her name is Eureka, and I couldn’t find her. I sought solace from my old notebooks of poems instead. I particularly focused on the writings that were written during my adolescent days, the period where I must have bumped my head hard on concrete without me noticing it because suddenly, I begun churning out rhymes and words that suited up completely different meanings apart from their true definitions.

Here are some of poems that I wrote when I was just starting out doing poems, which was when I was around 12-13. I am sharing them here not only because the Holy Week has not been conducive to inventiveness and I have no new work to post, but also because I want to sort of commemorate these poems’ 10 years of being pressed between pages, inside a box and under the bed. Forgive them for being juvenile and seemingly not making sense, but for today, before going back to the adult world tomorrow, I want to revisit them, and air them out for a little.

At the back of my mind
ruffled is a land mine
a wreck of thoughts soar to height
to eclipse the sun’s light.
But, not a mote in sight
even in the the storm’s eye
in the dead of the night,
nobody rises, shines.

How could they not be moved
by this rapt-in tumult?
Are they playing possum
or just inured, callous?
Shrapnels of thoughtful food
went off, but no one got full.
A cloudburst of of views loom,
as if to be construed.

To pick up the pieces,
to clear the mound of mess,
to place things in settle
is to explain  myself.
Time will come to tell
that the curbs and hurdles
we love to call as God’s tests
are our merely unprized
braincells.

~

I am the firefly
that dances
inside the lamp
next to you,
which you ignited
so you can read
between the lines.

It’s the glowing ether
in the cat’s eye
that keeps
the fire alive.
Keeping an eye
on the violescent storm
that whirls into
a vertical smile. 

Never will
the paraffin melt away
even when daybreak cracks.
Tho’ the hooves
have pranced
and the talons
have deeply dug
the magic wand
sky-writes:
Ride into Light 

 ~

One sweet day I see myself atop the roof, eating the fruit of labor of the family tree. I came all the way here just for one thing, wouldn’t it be something? Skywriting, for it to be true to what I feel. Photographs yellowed by time, the glass slipper of the midnight. Tragedies befall, they just do. To drink what it is that flows from the fountain of youth.

Alone in the backyard, swinging to a singsong on the tire that hung by the halfmoon. A flashback of the primal scene growing still, since those days of growing pains.

Such a profound pond that I can’t get above of. Rivaling the sun’s brilliance. Taken aback by the reflection on the looking glass. Getting sucked in as quick as the sand.

Nostalgia, but not moving backwards. It’s just that, what do you mean I’m only making you up? Rising from the ashes. Coming up for the bait. In the marshes. Sheep jumping over the fence as I jolt back from the ledge.

Tonight is payback time, I’m broke. What will become of the unknown soldier?

~

You look ate me

without seeing

but I see you

even when you’re not around.

But I’ll look away

once you stare at me

and finally sees

that my eyes are blinded

with love. 

~

You are an island
But, you are no man
You are a woman
Standing, you’re the last.

But, you are THE man
For you’d be the one
To turn the table around:
Man, you’ll be under her thumb.

~ 

bottled up inside
are the things i hide
words that can’t be said
simply they can’t be read
outside my world
where everyone doesn’t
need to know.
upon my face
they can’t find a trace
i myself am afraid to ask
whoever is behind this mask
though i try to pretend
that i’m pure and sacred
it brings me to life
no matter how i try to deny.
what’s eating me up beneath
is the feeling i can’t admit
it gets the better of me
the more i try to forget it
deep down my soul
is it me who’s in control?
of all that i am
that’s based on stratagem.
they who dictate to “be me”
are the same clean ones who
spread things like wildfire
that i’m a criminal,
who at best deserve a
public trial.
but why don’t give them a clue
sure i don’t owe them the truth
but if that’s what they want
then I’m going to say it out loud
who are they anyway
to lead me astray
reality that’s raring to be revealed
i’m my own worst enemy.
but now i’ll listen to myself,
to that voice that’s been asking for help–
confessing what i strongly feel
for ******* **** the **** *****.

 

Hopefully Eureka will be back soon.