Sep 2013
Who am I without the trappings of romance?
Shockingly, I am still a poet. Although my love inspires me, it doesn't drive me. In fact, when I am happy my poetry all but stops, except for the occasional ode to the beauty of whoever I adore. But beneath all of that, my love is for the WORLD. For the earth. For every person who has ever let an emotion of any depth flit across their face briefly and revealed their exquisite soul to the sky, just for a second. It's for everything old and broken and deliciously stripped of its pretenses. It's for the sound a paintbrush makes on velvet, and the lush panorama of a city street slicked gold with rain, and the way a chord hit by a choir resonates in your chest and bones and fingertips, and the way the air smells when you're gardening in the summer and you've really got the dirt under your fingernails. Something in me craves the world. I am still a poet without love. Without love, I am still a passionately inspired person, full of giddiness for everything that I adore. Shows, moments, sunlight, music, books. The way two words can sound together in my head can bring me to the verge of an awed laugh, the way two notes sound when struck together can push me to the edge of tears, the way the scene of a film is shot can make me hold my breath, the lights hitting a stage like folds of satin can make me sigh with longing to be nearly so pure and beautiful. This isn't an act. This is me, stripped down to the electricity. Touch me and you could be seared awake. Somebody called me a live wire of emotion, once, and the term stuck with me. Exposed, raw, like a nerve, crackling and passionate, vulnerable as hell and practically humming with awe, that is who I am. I feel as if I never make it clear that with or without somebody to channel it towards, I am still this way. All this force running through me anchors me to the ground. Every moment I spend (for better or worse, I suppose) doing anything at all, even the mundane things, is fraught with some kind of tension or wonder. It does get tiring, but I live in a world that's just... drenched in beauty. In color and sound and love and humanity and brutal beauty and soft cruelty. The whole of my experience here on earth has been so intense I can barely stand it, each second. When I feel joy I feel it so that I could die of it, when I feel pain I feel it as if I already have died of it. When I laugh I laugh with my liver and the little bones in my feet, and when I cry I cry like a river overflowing its banks. The only reason, I promise, that I would ever put myself through the hell that is losing all of my loves to this consuming intensity is that it is ALL I have. It is, for some stupid reason that I will never fully understand unless I lose it, worth every moment of searing agony, to feel every moment of agonizing joy.
This is who I am. With or without another person to give credit for it. To send it to and devote it to and build it around and channel it towards. Somehow I cannot be cynical. I've tried. Hard. I've tired of my constant emergencies, my little stupid things that clench their fingers round my heart and drag me up or down without my consent. But the thing is, something in me shouts always, that this is what I'm supposed to be. That I need to be brave enough to lose everything to stay who I am, because comfortable love is a dime a dozen, but my love, inside, the way it grows, is the sun, and once it's out...
It's out for good.
Shockingly, I am still a poet. Although my love inspires me, it doesn't drive me. In fact, when I am happy my poetry all but stops, except for the occasional ode to the beauty of whoever I adore. But beneath all of that, my love is for the WORLD. For the earth. For every person who has ever let an emotion of any depth flit across their face briefly and revealed their exquisite soul to the sky, just for a second. It's for everything old and broken and deliciously stripped of its pretenses. It's for the sound a paintbrush makes on velvet, and the lush panorama of a city street slicked gold with rain, and the way a chord hit by a choir resonates in your chest and bones and fingertips, and the way the air smells when you're gardening in the summer and you've really got the dirt under your fingernails. Something in me craves the world. I am still a poet without love. Without love, I am still a passionately inspired person, full of giddiness for everything that I adore. Shows, moments, sunlight, music, books. The way two words can sound together in my head can bring me to the verge of an awed laugh, the way two notes sound when struck together can push me to the edge of tears, the way the scene of a film is shot can make me hold my breath, the lights hitting a stage like folds of satin can make me sigh with longing to be nearly so pure and beautiful. This isn't an act. This is me, stripped down to the electricity. Touch me and you could be seared awake. Somebody called me a live wire of emotion, once, and the term stuck with me. Exposed, raw, like a nerve, crackling and passionate, vulnerable as hell and practically humming with awe, that is who I am. I feel as if I never make it clear that with or without somebody to channel it towards, I am still this way. All this force running through me anchors me to the ground. Every moment I spend (for better or worse, I suppose) doing anything at all, even the mundane things, is fraught with some kind of tension or wonder. It does get tiring, but I live in a world that's just... drenched in beauty. In color and sound and love and humanity and brutal beauty and soft cruelty. The whole of my experience here on earth has been so intense I can barely stand it, each second. When I feel joy I feel it so that I could die of it, when I feel pain I feel it as if I already have died of it. When I laugh I laugh with my liver and the little bones in my feet, and when I cry I cry like a river overflowing its banks. The only reason, I promise, that I would ever put myself through the hell that is losing all of my loves to this consuming intensity is that it is ALL I have. It is, for some stupid reason that I will never fully understand unless I lose it, worth every moment of searing agony, to feel every moment of agonizing joy.
This is who I am. With or without another person to give credit for it. To send it to and devote it to and build it around and channel it towards. Somehow I cannot be cynical. I've tried. Hard. I've tired of my constant emergencies, my little stupid things that clench their fingers round my heart and drag me up or down without my consent. But the thing is, something in me shouts always, that this is what I'm supposed to be. That I need to be brave enough to lose everything to stay who I am, because comfortable love is a dime a dozen, but my love, inside, the way it grows, is the sun, and once it's out...
It's out for good.
