The Quiet Singer

I believe poets are the songwriters of silent moments, bringing illusion to either paper or electrical screens. With these letters the poet creates meaning, a song, an essence of life in stillness, a living photograph of life and death equally present in words.

I think I am a quiet singer, a silent singer looking around and finding nothing in everything and backwards, through the world I see the same faces, smiles, angry brows desperate to modify the environment of stillness. I'm not even sure I am speaking here, because with this I seem to seek eternity, something that may last this body more, mindflow, mindstream wherever it goes, so the poet will not die.

But I will die, and everyone will. This I look and see it as play, children playing a game before moving on, but before moving on I believe that children are smarter than adults, because they do not ask themselves if life has ended. This is the impossible play of a man familiar with death. We may look at this, feel the eyes travel from one side to the other, waiting for something to click on us, inside our chest and thymus, as I feel the click of the laptop keyboard until it becomes memory just. Like us, our future is already written, it seems, but each future calls for new artists to repeat what has already been said, the past will become the future, the present will become neither because there is no cause for instants.

Here is a poem I wrote thinking about, and I label, impermanence:

* * *

I am dead, and
Before you read this, you are dead.
But because you have chosen to read
You will be free from disease:
The ignorance which crawls
Under the threshold of the soul immortal
Inmoral, both nazi and homosexual
In harmony without labels
    Or language--
words
Which are also dead.

* * *

And because we are dead in the present, we are more valuable. Because we are dead already (for we are, we have to realize this, and not be cowards who ignore it), we have to realize that there is no difference between a precious diamond and the beggar who always asks for money near the city's avenue.

And this is what I want to sing in silent tones.

My Sun: Walt Whitman

I want to talk now about my two favorite poets: Walter "Walt" Whitman and Thomas Stearns Eliot. They are respectively the sun and the moon to me.

First, let's talk about the sun:

Walt Whitman was an American poet who is regarded at the "father of free verse" and is one of the national poets of the United States (the other one being Emily Dickinson). His most famous collection of poetry is Leaves of Grass. He is considered the bridge between transcendentalism and realism in American Literature. His poem O Captain! My Captain! is taught in schools all over the country.

Why is he the sun? Because his poetry is like a thousand lights that shatter the darkness of human apathy and neglect.

He is the only poet who has made me cry with joy while reading him.

What happens when you look directly at the sun? You get blind or watery-eyed. But when we see the grass we lie down, or the rain that is evaporated by it, or the flowers and men making love without knowing it, we can see all of this thanks to the sun. The sun is more powerful than the whole earth combined, it can burn us or protect us, only we decide. This is the tremendous power Whitman has over me thanks to his poetry.

He taught me to follow my own voice, to question authority, to dare to be bold and sexual, to write my own songs because the world deserves them. To listen to my heart even if it speaks anger, because since anger is also under the sun, how can the sun reject it too? How can God (universe, whatever) reject even a single part of existence?

I cannot complete the list of poems that I love from him. I want to re-read him again one day. For now, I will share you the lines that last made me cry in happiness... from one of his many beautiful songs about death.

* * *

From So Long!

Camerado, this is no book,

Who touches this touches a man,

(Is it night? are we here together alone?)

It is I you hold and who holds you,

I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.

O how your fingers drowse me,

Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans

      of my ears,

I feel immerged from head to foot,

Delicious, enough.

Enough O deed impromptu and secret,

Enough O gliding present—enough O summ'd-up past.

Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,

I give it especially to you, do not forget me,

I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,

I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras

      ascending, while others doubtless await me,

An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts

      awakening rays about me, So long!

Remember my words, I may again return,

I love you, I depart from materials,

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

...

...I have yet to find another poet who can make me cry while writing my blog.

Confessions From a Sporadic Poet

Wow. I haven't written anything here in more than a year...

I'm not sure whether to apologize or come up with reasonable excuses out of the many my head is just thinking right now.

But because I am human, I must come up with language, in order to logically persuade the reader into accepting my behavior; although I think that's the main problem there.

I'm always depending on the external reassurance of my character.

But I think that the most important fact is:

I am just-- SO-- fucking tired of it!

It's not wrong to want to be accepted and loved. It's only wrong when I fully depend on it. I create an idea of what it means to be "perfect" and if I deviate from it, I consider myself a failure. This thinking is WRONG. And in my life, this WRONG is NOT RELATIVE. I write "in my life" because this may apply to you or not. By NOT RELATIVE I mean that it's not open for interpretation. This is seriously affecting my life in terrible ways. This is seriously WRONG.

I have been told I am very sensitive. A doctor called it "hypersensitivity." This is actually good when you are an artist, because you can write beautiful accounts of the human condition, or see what others overlook (this is why I like being a poet). But sometimes I can get too carried away by what something someone says or does to me, and I sometimes feel extremely hurt, saddened, angry, or happy.

I can travel two roads from here:

1. Thinking I am wrong because I feel that I do wrong. (Yay! vicious circle!)

2. Listen to what others have to say but then weighing down all options and make a choice.

I have been doing #1 most of my life, during those nights when I feel that I am a bad writer because I didn't write on my blog, or a bad poet because I didn't write that many poems (and the one that I did my best on was criticized harshly), or even a bad son because I didn't study physics. Whenever I feel like this, the vicious circle of hate comes along, and with him, all the remorse, depression, self-judgment, and even thoughts about dying (because it's always easier to escape than to face our inner monsters).

People always appear to have been born with inner reassurance of their character, and we as individuals separate ourselves from the ones we label "others." If we do this-- as I have-- we think everybody else is already perfect, while we're not, because our world is so small, perhaps even to the level of being pathetic, that we then believe we are inherently unworthy to breathe the same air as "those triumphant people out there who seem to have everything."

I'm starting to think they are suffering too...

Think about it:
If we isolate ourselves inside our problems, we can easily get lost in this separation of being, thinking we have never really amounted to anything, that we are gonna die someday, so nothing makes sense, and that our lives are simply between two unknown eternities separated by birth and death.

The problem arises when we feel like the only ones who think this way.

No job, hobby, relationship, not even any religion, can take away the fact that we are limited phenomena in a world we barely even understand. Those are simply distractions, in my honest opinion. Yes, there is a necessity to have a job in the world we live in, but this is not the main reason that we are alive.

I am speaking in a Buddhist sense, combined with my sense of philosophy and personal experience. Other people might not be so lucky to have my life, just the same as I'm not so lucky to have other people's lives.

Everybody is different, but we are all brothers in existence.

Knowing this, the comments people make about my life start to be less judgmental and more helpful. Critiques at my poetry become more florid, and less barbed. The power others seem to have over me diminishes considerably. The fact that I don't have a job, rest a lot, cry a lot, live with my parents, none of this makes me a worse or better person. These are just my choices and circumstances. I may not like them sometimes, but I know their solution. What everybody has told me before can only be important to me once I make the choice to listen or ignore. So, in the end, this life is mine.

And I am glad to be writing late, because this is the real me who is speaking.