Poetry

Head over heels, yeah, that’s the right idiom to describe my love for poetry. I fell so in love with poems my younger years. I could read tons and be charmed word for word. Funny me, but I could even slog away hours and hours just to write this seemingly boring literary work. Really. Aside from essays, writing nonsense verses or made-up word was always indulging. When I wrote one, I felt the world spun non-stop. A day or a week to spend for it was too short–like a little amount of leisure time. But those were the days.

I had a notebook in high school, a collection of original compositions of poems and songs I wrote over those years. Sad to say, I burned it because I was deceived by a fanatic Christian not to write such stuff. I was young in faith you know. Then I started to write in University again, but not much when I went to postgraduate schools. If I had a free time and was in a good mood–a rare chance, I tried to write still after those scholastic journeys. Oh, please do remind me, the last time I think held a pen for this literary genre was almost a decade ago. It feels like I am getting blunt. The longest piece I had written was a twenty-two-verse poem in less than two hours. Last night I became a born-again poet–more ambitious one who tried to beat my longest work. Failed. But I’m very pleased that I can still write.

Let me share a portion of what I did yesterday evening, the first one in many years. It is a seven-verse poem I wrote in less than five hours:

A Dirty Word

By AL Kemuel

Verse 1:

Flowers, as always, they tickled you pink,

Whether it’s a piece from the wild or a bouquet of peonies;

You know each language, kind, and scent so well,

That undying fascination tells me something else then.

Verse 7:

My sincerest apology to utter a lame persuasion–no, a regretful one,

Words you know didn’t come easy to me after all;

Tell me, I want to understand, it’s hard to absorb,

Why such a proposal or a marriage or a wedding is a dirty word?

A dirty word!?