Journey Notes: What Has Been Going On So Far

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well.

A storm has come and passed through our country. It is said to be the strongest storm in the whole world and has caused a lot of damage in the provinces, with 20 people on its death toll.

The country is also preparing for ANOTHER storm coming our way. Weather reports say that it might make landfall either today or tomorrow. Please pray for my country, so that we may survive this next storm.

My city is still under quarantine. We have been hitting 2000+ cases per day but yesterday, we hit a number below 1000 cases. Still a scary world out there, though.

On a more personal scale, I am surviving. Physically, I have no symptoms. I go to work five days a week, given that my office is right across my current home. I grab groceries every other weekend but stay at home as much as possible. Mental health is a bit whacked up – with the stress + anxiety from work, the uncertainty of this pandemic, and my financial instability being my greatest enemies to date – but I am trying and doing my best, one day at a time.

As a writer and a poet, I am very much lost.

When I started 2020, I didn’t have plans to write, with my work being as taxing as ever and I barely have any creativity in me. Retail tends to suck everything out of you – especially the time for your hobbies. (I have thought of quitting retail but I haven’t answered the next question – then what? – so quitting is not really an option. Girl’s got to eat.)

This has happened before but I have been able to fight it by simply writing and attending writing workshops and classes. My favorite writing exercise was flash fiction. (This link here will take you to a page where my flash fiction stories are posted.) I did write a novella once but I buried it as it wasn’t really well-written.

This year came as a surprise, starting with the pandemic and then, with me, putting my big girl pants on and joining AND finishing NaPoWriMo. I kept on writing and it was such a wonderful experience. I met new poets online, discovered more things about myself and the way I write… and had a blast writing poem after poem.

It was the best preoccupation – diversion, really – from seeing and feeling terrible. There was my lack of sufficient funds as we closed our offices during the enhanced community quarantine from March until May, with our vacation leaves saving us from poverty until a certain point. (We had a pretty long and unwanted vacation from April until May. We still worked from home until the end of March) There was my alone-ness, which I was originally ok with and which grew into gnawing loneliness for actual human interaction with people I miss.

By July, I was starting to feel everything crashing down and if you have read my poems on Instagram, they are always about finding the light in the middle of the storm.

And, lo! There is a storm that has been with me since late July, a storm where, as I stay in it, I couldn’t see any light at all. I was lost in my own chaos, my own light gone. My current circumstances made me unable to do things that give me light.

But I am fighting it the way I did before – attended a workshop in August, read books in September and October, and just let myself be. I let my being go through the motions until the storm calmed down. Forcing myself (as proven by my workshop poem and that novella) never really did me any good. So I go and “be the leaf”, as Meelo says.

One big and good news that may help my fight is that I am going home! I am getting tested for COVID in December, before I head home, just to be sure that I won’t bring the virus home. I’ll be able to see my siblings soon! It would beat the loneliness bit and help with the financial bit (as I won’t be paying rent anymore). There is a part of me that isn’t really looking forward to going home (Have you ever been around a Filipino mother? A Chinese father, perhaps?) but yes, must wear big girl pants and “be the leaf”.

The other good news here is that I am slowly writing things again too, with one poem, Why I Couldn’t Write, featured in Ghost Heart Literary Magazine last month. I am very, very thankful to Melissa for accepting this poem for Chambers. (More on this on the next post!) Submissions for Chambers – November 2020 is open, btw!

I can’t really say when I’ll be back writing full force again. Work is more stressful nowadays and I am doing my best to cope. I take it day by day, really. Breathe in, breathe out. One step at a time.

Hopefully, the world gets better so we can all find ourselves out of this pandemic. I pray for our safe passage through it. May every one of us be safe.

Thank you so much for sticking around! I will be back writing again, surely.

Love,
Anj

Journey Notes #11: the Last Set of NaPoWriMo Contest Poems

Hi guys!

Yes, as the title states, it is the last set of the contest poems. There’s still 8 unreleased ones but seven are micro poems while the other one, Peony, is for Weirdo’s Diary. I did post micro poems here to complete the 20 poems so far but I think the other seven should go to another place. Maybe Weirdo’s Diary too. I’ll let you know!

Let’s get this party started then.

Poem #16 is Again and Again which answers the Day 25 prompt: write a poem that begins with ‘I will meet you again’.

The hosts explain that this is a line borrowed from a famous Punjabi poet named Amrita Pritam, the poem is when translated from Punjabi to English has the same title as the line of the prompt. They also ask to read that poem AFTER (I)’ve written so as to not let it influence (my) piece but do read it because it is a GORGEOUS piece.

I didn’t read it before writing it, yes. But I only read it now (05/25/2020) while typing this and here it is. It comes to me as a surprise that they have the same sentiments, only that mine is more reliant on the prose and not much literary.

When I wrote this, I thought of a story of two people meeting again and again throughout their lives.

I re-discovered that I like writing prose poems, like how Good Morning and Peony came to be, and this has been a treat to write.

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The next poem, A Garden of Your Own, answers Day 27’s prompt: write a sonnet. I have never written a sonnet before and what’s funny is that I was reading a sonnet and thought of exploring it BEFORE I saw the prompt. So this was a welcome challenge. I am thankful for this website called Literary Devices because it taught me how to write a sonnet — the rhyming scheme along with the volta. I am still not sure if I got the iambic pentameter right but this piece followed the rhyming pattern and syllable count.

On the 26th, I had friends give me flowers to write about and a particular friend gave me four. Those four flowers appear here. I had them laid out like this, to make sure to get all flowers in one poem.

At this point, I thought of how to get all flowers into one poem and why would these flowers get together, given what they symbolize. I ended up with a garden. The next question was who owns this garden?

Eventually, I figured out that a soldier owns the garden, a retired soldier whose passion is with flowers and yet, was sent to fight a war.

I had some fun writing this and making it look intact. But I am still uncertain whether the iambic pentameter did flow properly.

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How Love Poems Remind Me of You is a response to Day 28’s prompt: Write a poem as a response to another poem you read. Think about the times a poem made you feel something: anger, hurt, happiness, love, melancholy, etc. And all you wished to do is reply to it. Here’s your chance. Do it.

My micro poem an answer to two poems, namely, Your Name by Lang Leav (found in Love Looks Pretty on You)…

….and In Another Life by Soyen (found in Mid-September Letters)

Actually, this deserves a re-write. I wasn’t in the right head space and I know I could’ve done better. My head is not in the right place and I was really rushing to get this done as I couldn’t find a poem I actually want to answer. When I read poems, I take them in and embrace them. I say thank you for giving words to what I feel and remind me of people. As a result, I picked poems that reminded me of people.

I really did try, though.

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Day 29’s prompt is rather short: Write a love poem to yourself. Stick to 10 to 20 lines. Simple Reminders Whenever You’re Fighting Your Grade-A Demons with Only Your Fists is the answer to this one.

The original idea here was to write about something really personal to me. I wanted to write about the six impossible things that I believe in. I saw this movie with a friend on Valentines Day and the female lead enumerated six impossible things that she believed in. At the end of that night, I ended up coming up with my own list which isn’t exactly all rainbows and unicorns. They are actually things I should stop believing in, if I were to love myself, because they are very much impossible. I wrote this on a laptop and here is the draft, when I tried to reverse my original six things into possible and believable six things:

But anyway, I ended up writing this poem as I was running out of time. I wanted it to be a bit longer but yes, I ran out of time. Will I eventually re-write this? I am not yet certain. I still want my six impossible things poem but I don’t think I am strong enough to write about it just yet.

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And here we are, Day 30. The last day for NaPoWriMo 2020. The prompt goes like this: Your book has a birthday, keep writing. We bid you farewell today, thank you for writing this past month. Keep writing, keep creating art, for yourself and for the universe; someone, somewhere will always be grateful. Write a poem that you can keep as a reminder, as a souvenir, next to your bed, pasted on your fridge, on your wall, to continue writing. 

When I wrote For All Artists and Dreamers, I thought of my fear of not being able to keep up with the writing progress I had in April. I was writing two poems a day. I got my follower count on IG up too and I met new poets also. But I reminded myself that aside from being an online poet, I am many other things, things that are as equally important and much more demanding. Through this piece, I told myself that I must not forget that my magic is just here, and that I will be able to write, no matter what this world throws at and demands of me.

And somehow, I did end up writing still. Although, I did stop for a while last month due to mental health reasons. I also have not been posting any new poems on IG and Twitter lately to amplify the voices of my Black brothers and sisters. I will also be posting my entries here as well so for seven days, please expect poems from Black poets posted here daily. The fight for equality is not yet over.

Stay tuned!

Best, Anj

PS: This is posted late because I have no stable Internet connection and I didn’t finish writing it in advance. OTL

NPWM2020 Contest Poem#20: For All Artists and Dreamers

We have more than one role, one being
and life will always ask us to be more.
It makes us forget, as we keep going,
that the magic is always in our core.

We aim to make things exist on a par
as we juggle our roles until we are sore.
And we have to keep moving to go far
and reach the peak that we strive for.

So we must remember to keep the magic
within flowing, growing, thriving, living
even when the body, mind, soul goes static
with crawling, moving, going, being.

**For All Artists and Dreamers, written on April 30, 2020 as an answer to a NaPoWriMo contest prompt. Journey Notes will be posted tomorrow!

Journey Notes #10: The Second Poem in Weirdo’s Diary

Hi everyone!

My second poem in Weirdo’s Diary is a personal fave from the contest. It is called Good Morning. Before we move on, please have this question in mind: what color do you see in this poem? This is where you can read it. Please read it with this question in mind.

You see this is Day 4’s poem in the NaPoWriMo contest: Describe a color without actually naming the color. What’s the color of your coffee? The color of the sky when the sun is at its crease? The color of your smile? The color of the security of a lover’s embrace? The color of sunlight? With this prompt, we want you to explore colors without actually naming them. Make us visualize the color you’re describing. We want to see the color in front of us, and not read its name.

When I read this prompt, I didn’t really think of writing Good Morning at first. I was thinking of how to go about it and I thought, let’s go with a spectrum of colors — a change. What better spectrum to work with but the colors of dawn?

Then, I just started writing.

See the ahhh on the draft? I have never felt this alive while writing poetry in such a long time and I wanted it to be perfect. So I kept writing it over and over and over until I reached the end of Good Morning.

The edition in Weirdo’s Diary has a few minor changes. Original text goes like this:

It’s 6AM; dawn is now upon us.

We find ourselves seated outside the bar
on two plastic Monoblock chairs we found
facing the street lined with parked cars
waiting for their owners to come around.

Our empty beer bottles on the floor
show how much we have been talking
about love and life and loss – everything –
with cigarette smoke lingering, manic energy dispersing.

It’s 6:30AM; it is time to rest.

The world is waking; we should go.
You get up, pay up, get ready,
and tell me you’ll bring me home.
Now the sun’s rising, slow and steady.

We get in the car and leave
knowing our yesterday will surely have repeats
as long as we do not challenge
our state of contentment that life permits.

It’s 7AM; the day is starting over.

Never wishing for things to change with
how you hold me in your heart
has made me wonder so for long
with questions that can rip us apart.

There is a silence surrounding us here
with the things we left unsaid, unheard
as we keep our hands clasped together,
not bursting our bubble with lines blurred.

It’s 7:30AM; I find courage with caution.

Now, this question begs to be asked:
would it be such a bad thing
to let this what if be free
and see what result it will bring?

I do not want to leave you,
realizing that I don’t want to deny
what has been there all this time
and with this courage, I should try.

It’s 8AM; we finally reach my house.

I smile and take a deep breath,
exchange pleasantries along with good night,
And without warning, kiss you good morning
bringing what was kept hidden to light.

It’s 8:01AM; I get ready to leave.

You grab my wrist, keeping me still
as the distance between us start disappearing,
erasing every single fear I currently feel,
and then, you kiss me good morning.

The world seems to have stopped spinning
as the world we knew starts changing,
turning our usual contentment into a commitment,
ushering this promise of a new beginning.

It’s 8:05AM; the world is clearer, brighter.

With our lips parted, hearts at ease,
we find ourselves at peace like this,
uttering these words like a magic spell
to summon this newfound clarity and bliss.

Good morning.

I felt the need to make the necessary changes — to be responsible and not have any signs of drunk driving because that is bad and dangerous, not at all romantic. Haha.

So now, please answer my question: did you see the color of dawn in the poem? Please let me know because I don’t know if it was able to deliver the message properly.

Also, I have decided not to post Peony, an ode to our lovely flower, in Weirdo’s Diary to make room for a 20-day microfiction project. Peony would be posted on June 22nd instead.

Until then, Anj

Journey Notes #9: Next Set of NPWM Contest Poems

Hey guys!

We are now slated for another batch of Journey Notes for the third batch of NaPoWriMo 2020 poems. Some of them are not lengthy. At this point last month, I was running out of inspiration and fire. My vampire sleeping schedule still existed.

Now, starting with Day 19’s poem, Seventh Year Alone. This is an answer to this prompt: you met your favorite fictional character today. Write a poem describing the day. Maybe in a dream, maybe on the street hurrying up to the supermarket to stock up on groceries or maybe just a hillside with the sky twinkling out to both of you – describe the encounter.

Originally, I wanted to write about my favorite manga and anime – Tsubasa Chronicles. I started writing about how the group would enter this world – modern day Philippines that is NOT under quarantine. But it fell short. (The first attempt is shown in the second image, top left. I don’t want to waste paper so I wrote on that page also.) Then, I went down to my other favorite manga and anime, xxxHoLic, which begins with entering Yuuko’s shop… and it also fell apart. (This one is for xxx-HoLic draft.)

At this point, I already read some of the posted works and saw how Emmy’s work is about her and Lara Jean from Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series enjoying an afternoon together. (Follow Emily’s Twitter account and other social media accounts to see her nice poems and other works!) So I decided to go with my favorite female character in literature: Hermione Granger.

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The second poem for this week, Reminders for the New Bloods, is a graduation poem that answers day 20’s prompt: write a poem with a rhyming scheme.

If you have been running through my IG page, most, if not all, of my poems, rhyme. So this one should be something I could do without much of an issue. However, the idea of what exactly to write about was the issue. As this was a contest, I wanted to write something different, something that other people wouldn’t write about. I was just writing random rhyming couplets when I realized these could be a message for everyone who is entering the world as an adult.

Here is the scratch paper for this poem:

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The prompt for Day 22 is made in celebration of Mother Earth Day. The prompt is about connecting across borders. The host further explains that: Poetry is the perfect example of the fact that some things can never be contained within borders. Remember the time you read a poet’s work that resonated with you regardless of the fact that the poet was from across the world? Remember the poems that instantly made you forget where you were and teleport-ed you elsewhere? More often than not, art connects us across borders. Tell us how you connected across borders. Was it travel, poetry, art, internet? Write us a poem about the fading of geographical borders.

Being in this quarantine, it has made me realize that words in itself are what connects us all — and always connects us all. The information being passed down from the head of state to the people are so important that the right words should be chosen in order to give hope and not cause mass hysteria. Even on a personal level, words help us express ourselves clearly and be understood properly by others. Words for All Seasons talks about how words are always with us – through all seasons in our lives, whether good or bad.

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Lost in Pages is a tanka about reading. Day 23’s prompt is this: write a poem describing the feeling of being lost between the pages of a book (if you read) or being lost in the depths of a great movie plot (if you watch).

I will be honest. I haven’t read a book in a very long while. My work actually revolves around books and with many changes going on in the workplace, I really didn’t have time to read back then. I ended up doing something else that doesn’t remind me of work during the quarantine – aka this. Haha. But I do love reading. I am passionate about reading and enjoy many hours buried in worlds and people found in books. And I do miss being lost in those worlds and being in an adventure with the characters. This poem was written with that thought in mind.

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Yesterday’s poem, Bubbles No Longer Filled with Sand, is an answer to the day 24 prompt: the feeling of entering a new friendship or bond. The host, then, explains the prompt further: How did you feel when you stayed up till 4 am because you were in a conversation with a stranger who, by the end of it, became your best friend? How did you feel smiling at a passerby across the street? How did you feel when you first met your pet? How did you feel moving into a new neighborhood and receiving a welcome gift from the aunt next door? Tell us about new bonds, new friendships, new connections. Take us through those butterflies of stepping into something fresh.

By nature, I am really shy and don’t initiate face-to-face conversations first — even if I want to because I am afraid of being snubbed or stared at, like I am invading someone’s space. For instance, I attend local k-pop related events and there are more days when I do not make friends. I just sit there and enjoy the ambiance and the presence of the people who like the same group as I do. (Sometimes, I bring work with me too so I mind my own business most of the time. Haha.)

So I translated that in this poem — that fear of being judged for trying — into this poem and ending it with hope of finding kind people who are more welcoming than others. I am able to meet event friends that way and I am thankful for them.

A few contestants like this poem too but honestly, I wasn’t really confident when I released it for the contest. I think I could have written it better. Could I have? Hmmm…

Anyway, we’re down to poems number 16 to 20 starting on June 2.  It might be my last set too. But even as I type this, I am not sure. You see, I have no new poems slated after that. Do I put the longer IG poems here? But they’ll no longer be new.  The only thing that would make them fresh for this page is the part where I explain why I wrote it that way.

I still have a week to either come up with new content or to use existing lengthy IG poems. Haha.

Still pondering, Anj

PS: I think I lost my drafts for the other poems in the pile of papers. If I find any, I will add photos. I actually found Empty’s draft with Reminders for the New Bloods’ draft.

Journey Notes #8: the First Poem Posted on Weirdo’s Diary

Hi guys!

I debated on this a lot. Originally, I was planning on posting another poem there but then, I realized this is actually a poem I’d like to share there.

The poem, Reminders for the Overthinker, is an answer to the Day 3 contest prompt: If your body could speak to you, what would it say?

When this came up, my first thought was to write about being healthy by taking care of myself better. I was thinking of using the sentence “take care of yourself” as the main theme of the poem. I actually had something, as shown below:

I wasn’t feeling to confident about the earlier piece, even if I did encircle it and it seemed like I was okay with it. It didn’t feel finished at all and it’s too… short. I had another scratch paper that started to count the syllables of “take care of yourself” to start writing a new piece. But this was also a bust.

So I went down another route — the self-love route. I have this tendency to overthink and so, I end up writing about a poem for an overthinker. It tells the overthinker to enjoy, to rest, to know.

At first, I wanted to write a micro poem — which is why there are syllable counts for the sentence “love yourself a little more”. But I ended up with a rhyming poem in the end. I wrote it in parts on paper before encoding it on the Notes app. These are the two scratch papers for it — the fetal stage of the poem!

I actually would like to reading it — erm, performing it — as a spoken word piece. It has enough length and the cadence sounds nice (when I hear it inside my head, that is). Who knows?

The next poem to be posted on Weirdo’s Diary is a personal fave, one thing that I felt so passionate writing about. It is called Good Morning. Check it out here! Journey Notes for this will be up on June 1, 2020.

Til next time, Anj

Journey Notes #7: NPWM2020 Contest Poems 6 – 10 aka the Joyride of Writing While Sleep-Deprived

Hey guys!

We are up for a joyride on this batch of Journey Notes. Haha. Prepare to be amazed by this idiot sandwich, aka me on vampire standard time, writing with a fogged-up, sleep-deprived brain.

As I have mentioned in my previous journey notes, the sixth contest poem is a favorite because I had fun writing it. It was a challenge and building it to create a cohesive poem was a challenge. This is the prompt: describe your life using only the titles of your favorite songs.

And the poem that came out of it is, yes, Mistress.

When I was writing this back in April 12, I was on vampire standard time and usually sleep-deprived during my waking hours. And here’s the thing, I don’t remember ever seeing the first three words. From what I remember, the prompt was write a poem using only the titles of your favorite songs and so, Mistress came to be.

While testing the prompt, I started with another set of songs, shown in this scratch paper here.

The songs on this scratch paper are as follows:

• Maybe the Night – Ben & Ben

• We & Us – Moira de la Torre

• Never Me – I Belong to the Zoo

• Should’ve Been Us – Tori Kelly

• Say that You Love Me – Jessie Ware

• All Tonight – Midnight Meetings

• Style – Taylor Swift

If this poem came to be, it would really be a poem about my life. HAHAHA. In any case, Mistress has some of the songs I like, some of which were on repeat at one point of my life. The list is shown below:

• Delicate – Taylor Swift

• Starving – Hailee Steinfield

• Dress – Taylor Swift

• Sitting, Waiting, Wishing – Jack Johnson

• Love Me Like You Do – Ellie Goulding

• Lies in the Dark – Tove Lo

• I Can’t Get Enough – benny blanco

• Let Me Go – Hailee Steinfield

• Love Me Harder – Ariana Grande

• Only Want You – Rita Ora

• The Chase – Reese Lansangan

• Tell Me You Love Me – Demi Lovato

• needy – Ariana Grande

• break-up with your girlfriend, i’m bored – Ariana Grande

This prompt has helped me listen to some of the older songs again. (Ariana was on repeat the entire afternoon!) It just so happens that they’re all thirsty songs and when you string them together, they sound like the story of a woman waiting for this man to leave his lover for her. There is a Spotify playlist for this because I really did enjoy writing the poem by linking the songs to fit the narrative.

These are the scratch papers for Mistress.

Now that I am writing this journey note, one month and three days after this happened in a private Facebook group with around 120 people, my anxiety has begun running like mad. Oh, the judgment! But no, I am not a mistress — just to get that out in the open and make things clear. Since time has passed and I haven’t been crucified for this since then, I will move on from it and officially separate myself from this work. I will no longer claim Mistress as the answer to the contest prompt.

PS: Fogged-up, sleep-deprived brain also didn’t see the grammar errors in it. Fixed it now. Haha.

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For Day 13, the prompt was to invent a new word. What do you want it to mean? Write a poem describing the word or its usage.

With my still sleep-deprived self, I came up with ULLBIOUKI. I was running out of ideas for this prompt. But then, I thought of this – about a young princess learning magic words to keep her safe.

And then, I just learned about the haibun from Falls Poetry (see the word haibun on the scratch paper? haha) and thought of using this format for this entry. It seemed to have worked out in the end. The poem looked nice.

ULLBIOUKI is the word the princess, young as she is, remembers. She thinks that she only remembers one word, but in fact it is one of the sentences in the queen’s spell: “You’ll be okay.”

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The Day 15 prompt for Defiance is in the poem itself: write a bad poem in ten lines. Admittedly, what I did there was a tad bit lazy as I tried to push free verse to another level without exploring other possibilities. Defiance was simply stuck in my head.

I actually don’t know how to go about this prompt now that the contest is over and I have time to reflect on things. Some of the poems that received accolades talked about poems with rhymes, repetition, and themes that I write about (feelings of heartache and pain). After this, I wanted to ask someone, anyone if there is a checklist for bad poetry.

I have been wary for a few days and somehow, I just decided to keep on writing my truths into poetry. I will write as I have been and will continue to grow and be better.

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Day 16’s prompt goes like this: how to decide when to pack for a day and when for a lifetime?

Since I was still sleep deprived and running out of unique ideas, I was able to answer this question/prompt in a context of a relationship. You’d leave a relationship once you’ve given everything and done everything until you have barely anything but yourself left. So Empty came to be.

While rummaging through my papers, I found the scratch paper for Empty!

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This prompt was actually my favorite: write a haiku on National Haiku Day!

The haiku is a personal favorite micro poem format. I like writing with a standard syllable count. It gives me a format to fit my words into. I did post first and really do like Serenity.

However, what shook me (and got my anxiety running since then) is a comment from a fellow contestant: I have no title, because according to tradition, haiku pieces shouldn’t have titles.

I looked into it. I found no sources that states that traditionally, they do not have titles. But since they are the opening phrases of renga, maybe they really do not have titles. Then again,a s we moved onward to the western worlds, they suddenly gained titles. The articles from Academy of American Poets and Poetry Foundation show examples of haiku from Western poets with titles. They have titles.

I have been writing haiku since God-knows-when. I have always put titles in it. No one ever bothered to correct me. My haiku aren’t traditional — at least the old ones aren’t. The new ones fit the basic haiku checklist somehow. So I have been wary of writing haiku. I haven’t written one since this point as I am not yet sure if I should keep 1. naming them or 2. name them and simply not call them haiku anymore.

I am, however, discovering more new micro poem types like shadorma and lune poems. Those are enjoyable to write, given their rules. I’ll post examples of these after sharing the NaPoWriMo poems.

Thank you for reading.

Till then, Anj

Journey Notes #6: NPWM2020 Contest Poems 1 – 5

Hi-ya, everyone!

This Journey Notes post will tackle the five poems posted in the past five days.

As a start, the poem, Heart at a Loss, is an answer to the Day 1 contest prompt: take the first and the last line of your favorite poem and fill your words between them.

When I saw this, I immediately thought of Danton Remoto’s Rain. Back when I was a first-year college student, I read this poem and immediately fell in love with it as I thought of the persona’s longing for the beloved. They cannot be together because of the distance between them. And then, years later, I read this again for a writing class and I was told it’s a poem about masturbation. You can’t imagine how scandalized I was. I was so pure way back then – 16, dear friends, so it didn’t cross my mind that it’s such a poem.

This is the first time I ever had to borrow lines from a fellow poet and it’s challenging. It’s like I have to put my own brand on filling between two pieces of really good bread. At the very end of the day, I managed to put in my filling – my own despair as I was pretty much brokenhearted on the first of April – and ended it with a hopeful note, which is somehow, reflected in the poems I wrote after this.

Even in Instagram and Twitter, the first NaPoWriMo poem I publicly posted was about heartbreak, aptly titled Brokenhearted. Haha.

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The next poem, In Memoriam, is for the Day 2 contest prompt: write a poem to the memories that were never captured but you remember clearly. Open to interpretation.

In Memoriam is a short poem, something that fits the Instagram square, but I would like to put it here also because of how I ended up with this poem.

The original plan was to write about young love — something quite happy. The thought was young love was something so pure, so raw, that it is so hard to capture, to explain to others. You don’t even know why you like this person. You just do. That was the first idea.

The scratch paper had this couplet at the end. (I had to cut the image because it’s written over a(n outdated) letter header:

Maybe that is the secret to of letting go
— to just move forward and grow.

But reeling from that heartbreak, I ended up writing another poem about love lost. The experience, the need to let go, made it easier to write and I ended up writing it in the end. Not everyone can have a broken heart one day and be fully okay the next day. I didn’t have that luxury, not even for the previous heartbreaks I had. No one ever tells you that the healing bit doesn’t have a set time frame. It just happens. You wake up and realize that you don’t have strong feelings for the other person anymore.

For me, that is how love dies – without us knowing, without proof of it happening. You realize it’s gone when it’s already forgotten and that is what you remember more.

It is also connected to poem number 1 – you choose to move forward with your broken heart and heal and then, soon enough, you forget the pain and just remember that you are okay.

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The next poem I shared is called Willpower, which answers the Day 9 prompt: the difference between broken things and broken people. (Restrict yourself between 10 to 20 lines.)

(I skipped the other prompts because I wrote micro poems for those prompts and may be shared in IG and Twitter instead. Best save it for a rainy day.)

For this prompt, I was thinking of using the concept of kintsugi but I realized that would only show the similarities between broken people and broken things. So I reflected a bit more and thought of the major difference between things and people. I realized that broken things can be fixed by others but broken people, as much as others try to fix them, the only one that can truly and fully fix their brokenness is themselves. Thus, this poem came to be.

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The fourth poem, What I Want to Learn, is the answer to the Day 10 prompt: write a list poem.

For this one, I had an idea to write a poem for married friends who wish to have children or those who are already expecting children. This didn’t really turn out as I had imagined (which I have already forgotten haha) because I was having a hard time writing two poems a day while dealing with finding other sources of income due to COVID-19. But now that I am re-reading it, I actually think this is okay. If I would give this as a gift, I would edit it and add characteristics of both parents.

I am also thankful for this prompt as it came with a primer on list poems — how to write it and examples as to what counts as a list poem. This is the link the contest host shared.

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The fifth poem I am sharing, A Second Chance, is which answers the Day 11 contest prompt: write a poem on ‘Yes’. Stick between 10-20 lines.

When I wrote this, I was thinking of what I’d say yes to and to a second chance at a love I lost a long time ago, I would say yes, given the right circumstances. It is only now that I realize it doesn’t really say 100% “Yes”. It’s more of a question presented to the reader who can opt to say “Yes” or “No” to.

Do I re-write this? Possibly. Maybe a list poem. Soon, perhaps. We’ll see.

That’s all for now. Please stay tuned to the next five poems. One of my favorites from this contest is up next!

Love, Anj

Journey Notes #5: Last Three NaPoWriMo Poems for Discussion

Yay, last three!

Let’s start with Bare Silence.

The idea came to me last Saturday while I walked with someone who is/was important to me at one point in my life. I put the slash because I don’t know if I should turn it to “was”. Walking side by side with a man who I truly cared for and loved as a brother in silence felt weird. It’s not a comfortable silence. It’s just a sad silence — there’s nothing more to discuss so let’s just do what we’re supposed to do – walk.

I think that some friendships are meant to end. They’re either overall destructive, physically abusive, emotionally unhealthy, or simply done. There’s nothing more to be said or done until further notice… or death. A part of me thinks I’m being overly dramatic but I know deep inside that I miss him and wish that he felt the same. I don’t know if he truly did. I don’t bother asking because the answer could hurt.

In the end, I just wrote about it, hoping to just let this feeling. I have friends who have told me how much they miss me and love me and so it’s better to focus on them instead. All this love.

I am so pathetic sometimes. I’m sorry.

TRIVIA: The title came to me while listening to the songs from the musical he and I loved a lot – Bare. For further details on this musical, you can click this link here: http://baremusicalnyc.com/

Now, for Wait.

Wait is a poem that I originally wasn’t comfortable in uploading. I find it weird. I find it raw. I find it incomplete and rushed. I  admit that I was seriously chasing the 30 poems within April even though I started late. I cannot just vomit poems. I can’t. :))

Anyway, Wait is about three people. The speaker/persona is asking for the other to wait for him/her. The other person is already with a third person. Someone who asked her/him for tea and dinner — you know, the usual dialogues down the path of love and romance. The speaker asks her/him to wait. Why? I didn’t really say. I leave it up to the readers to answer that.

For me, she/he has to wait for that person to come back and find out how he/she feels. You know those love stories wherein the two lovers were meant to be together but time and circumstances separate them? It’s like that. The persona begs for the other to wait. Does she/he wait? I didn’t really say.

What do you guys think?

Last poem is Reckless Fate.

Similar to The Lime Green Man’s Tale, this is about an incident in my life where I almost died. Yes, I almost died in a taxi FIVE TIMES the other day because of this reckless driver. He kept on abruptly stopping and almost hitting other cars and taxis. He was just so… so… bad. Basically, he thought he got the better end of the deal with the communal taxis (four people sharing a taxi to go to four different places in the same area) but he was wrong. He got mad at us and ended up almost killing us.

It was scary; I was shaking until I got to my desk at work. I do hope that the taxi driver doesn’t kill someone in the process of driving.

So there you have it. This is the last Spark Note for the NaPoWriMo series. Which poem did you love the most? 🙂

Love,
Anj

Journey Notes #4: Haiku Roll!

As you may have noticed, I’ve posted a lot of haikus as of late; at least three are written on the same day. I even capped NaPoWriMo with haikus. Now what is that all about? :))

Prior to writing free verse and using various rhyming schemes, I wrote haikus and posted them on Twitter. I couldn’t trace them because I did not include hash tags on it. They are forever lost on my timeline.

I started writing haikus again the other day after looking back at my old work posted on Tumblr. I remembered writing haikus and how much fun it is — making sure nature is there, making sure that the pattern is followed, etc. I have also read traditional haikus and modern haikus too. They’re basically short, beautiful and deep poems not easily understood. I believe that’s the beauty and challenge in haikus. How to make something so short so meaningful — like “I love you,” “I hate you,” etc.? It’s challenging.

Sometimes, I feel like the haikus I write do not make any sense whatsoever. Do they make sense to you? I’ll explain all haikus in this post and let’s compare notes, ayt?

Honestly, I forgot why I wrote Euphoria. I remember writing it on the night of the 20th, rereading my old poems and drafts in another blog that didn’t succeed as well as this. I don’t recall if I was actually happy and/or high (not on drugs). You all have seen by now that I do not write poems about happiness. I write about sadness, despair, and general feelings of anguish.

Reading things through, I suppose it’s not really a happy poem. It’s about fleeting happiness — happiness that will never last. I do not think that anything stays the same. Not even happiness. It will always be a constantly fleeting state of being. I personally do not know how to be happy all the time. There will always be trials and hardships that will make you feel other emotions besides happiness.

Round and Round is a poem about the cycle of life. It goes round and round, literally.You live. You die. Life goes on whether you like it or not.

Smooth is a poem about lying and deception. I remember thinking of the song Smooth Criminal but it doesn’t take inspiration from the song. When you lie, you cover the truth with flowery words and the like. When your lie is discovered, you cover it with prettier lies — like you cover an ugly wall with pretty floral wallpaper. Real smooth, right?

Change is a haiku about wanting to stop change. There is no way on heaven or Earth that can stop change. It is the one constant thing in all of us. Things will never stay the same because you yourself is changing from within.

Ire is change. It talks of the renewal of the lives of two people from sadness and despair. At one point, I interpreted it as the beginning of despair in their lives. I think that’s the beauty of this poem. It represents a cycle of change — for better or for worse. You decide which is it. 😀

From Within is a haiku about love… AAAAND I MISSED MY MARK! It took me days to realize that I missed the last syllabic pattern. I have six instead of five. AHHHHHH. *edits*

Anyway, this haiku here is about a person who cannot love another due to circumstances. Moonlight can represent  many things — from an abusive relationship to prostitution. Sometimes, you just can’t help yourself, you know. You can’t help who you love and what you do to survive.

Enough has one of the common themes in my NaPoWriMo poems – abusive relationships. At one point in your life, you will eventually realize when someone has been lying to you all the time. It can be a parent, a sibling, a friend, a lover… anyone. Everyone has a defense mechanism for exasperation and for this poem, the persona’s mechanism is silence. People always say that silence speaks louder than words.

Ah, Beauty in Death is a personal fave. I altered this many times before it became like that. I like to use flowers as a symbol for many things — life, friendship, love… For this one, it represents all the wonderful memories of the person who departed. He/she will be forgotten as the last bouquet of flowers is brought to his/her grave.

Destruction  is a companion of the haiku Enough. Love is always a beautiful thing and beautiful things sometimes makes you forget to look beyond it. You might think the person really does love you but he/she (yes she – coz women can do this too) ends up hurting you in all ways possible. That is not love!  You may not be conscious about it but one way or another, it will show — possibly in your dreams. Take it as a sign.

Fisheye is the answer to the challenge I mentioned in my first Spark Note. It’s the fish poem. It’s a fish gasping at the warm air when his head surfaces after being caught by a fisherman. The fish dies right after so it’s the first and last time it’ll be able to see the sky. But looking past the fish, this haiku is about life. You get out of whatever cave/shell/rock you’re hiding from, gasp from the changes in all forms, and look up. You look up, give it a good fisheye look, and see the ever-changing sky. You’ll never see the exact same sky again. You’ll take it all in and move onward.

Fragile is inspired by a teacup. Earlier this month, I was writing a weird poem about lusting over a porcelain cup since I work for the furniture industry. I see a lot of cute porcelain teacups from France and other European countries. It ended up in a trash bin but the idea stayed. So… here we are. It is about breaking rules in order to reach for something or someone precious and fragile.

Lastly, Corrode takes inspiration from this one post from Fully Booked.

"corrode v. I spent all this time building a relationship.Then one night I left the window open & it started to rust" pic.twitter.com/uWlx6AFbtb

— Fully Booked (@_FullyBooked) April 28, 2014

I have been itching to write a poem using this since Monday. I got it out of my system on Wednesday. Haha. It’s about friendship ending, just like what is stated in the tweet. *It’s from David Levithan’s book. Instead of it being the person who left the window open, this poem is from the point of view of the other person. He/she simply watched everything they shared burn down and simply let it end.

Let me know what you think about the poems. 😉

Much love,
Anj