the hidden poet

Most people, I would wager, go through an almost obligatory poetry phase in their life, usually around the time of other obligatory discoveries like Hendrix and Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel, The Doors and The Clash – ie. the teenage years.

Then, for some reason, they stop. Well, the majority do; a small number may sit down on the very rare occasion to pen some poesy in private, while an even smaller (say, infinitesimal) number go on to make it their life’s work. It’s a pity.

The task of writing poetry forces you to tap into the murky depths of your being, stir it around and play with whatever comes out of it. It’s raw, like a personalised psychoanalysis, tailor-made just for you.

That sounds like it could be a useful tool to arm yourself with – a scythe to help clear a path in the jungle that charades as this crazy-arsed life.

I cleaned out my wardrobe yesterday, and what did I find hidden in the corner but my stack of teenage diaries. Ugh I just got a shiver with those words. No, these are not pink and covered in flowers, doodles of love hearts and random boy names scrawled all over them; these are tomboy diaries, with tomboy words in them: outpourings of a wounded heart, anger, despair, darkness… the usual angst.

Hidden, almost like little buds peeking through a thicket wall, are a few poems, hardly any of which I remember writing (we’re talking ‘91, after all).

I’ve been gliding down memory lane, able to appreciate myself anew. Some of them are pretty good, most are juvenile, all were once me.

It’s inspired me to make more of an effort and take it up again.

So, for what I have now dubbed (for this week only, probably) “Wednesday Show and Tell” day, here is one poem coughed up from 1991, I’m assuming written during one of my many self-doubt moments.

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The Poet?

I wrap myself in sounds

and smell all sorts of colours

just to get a Sensory

(and one

that can be read, mind you)

but all I do

is cliché my way

around a mexican hat olé

and step on it.

---

And this short piece, written during “Chemistry on a rainy day Monday (24th June 1991)” is something I should refer myself to often -

FREE

What I want is freedom.

I want the freedom to roam as I like, when I like. It’s stagnant and comatose confined in a rectangular room with metrically chiselled corners and cobwebs for decoration. I can’t live in a place where the walls don’t smile, and nothing vibrates happily; where colours refuse to visit because they found a clown two doors down who’s better company.

I want the freedom to smile.

I want the freedom to laugh when it grabs me (when it grabs me when it finally grabs me), and cry for joy, and sigh for beauty…

I want the freedom to open my arms and express a part of me whenever I want – and not have it slapped down and trampled on because someone has their vision of stupidity plastered over it.

I want to be able to realise who I am and what I’m capable of.

I want the freedom to love – I want the place to love – with all my soul and more, somewhere that cultivates pure love, instead of banishing it to a claustrophobic corner to weep silently and suffer in the coldness.

But what I want most, is the freedom from wanting freedom.

Why, in all my rights as a divine being, can’t I have the right to say,

I AM Free.