I was a cold and empty shell,

So far removed from this world where I dwelled.

I passed through life like a ghost in time,

My thoughts and emotions, I never opined.

Making barely a ripple in the water of life,

I kept to myself and stayed away from all strife.

I chose not to live because I was afraid to feel.

So burnt by a past, I could never be healed.

And then you came and changed my world,

Dreams long gone began to unfurl.

You warmed this ice cold heart of mine,

And thawed what had been frozen in time.

You brought me back to life again,

And helped me see it was worth the pain.

I thank you for your certainty,

For you made me believe… in me.

My heart of stone is closing up,

The walls are growing again,

Encasing it so I cannot feel,

Removing me from this world.

Do I love?

I do not know.

I cannot feel it.

I say the words, but it is a lie.

There is no feeling behind the words.

I sit and reminisce the memories of old,

And still I feel nothing.

I do not know how to feel.

I look at them and I feel pity,

There is no love in this cold, cold heart.

Filled only with dark emotions -

Bitterness, anger, hate…

What beauty can the husk create,

But more darkness and more sorrow?

Why procreate with so much ugliness?

What can I hope to achieve?

Destroy me – there is no hope for life here,

All I touch will die with me.

I’ve said before that some of the better written works need to be born from real life and the emotions of true experiences.  The personal view often breathes life into words where none existed before because is it always easier to write about something that you know and feel than about a topic you know nothing about and cannot identify with.

That isn’t to say that one cannot write well about topics we don’t know ourselves, but merely that it is more difficult to do so.  I think the Bronte sisters are a great example of writers who wrote well about lives they have never experienced.

I have been a marionette all my life –

Singing and dancing to the Pied Piper’s tune.

Without the music, I have nothing in my life.

Don’t know what I want, can’t speak for myself.

I don’t know what it means to love and desire,

To live in the world as though I belonged.

It is so easy to do what I’m told,

Follow the actions they pull on my strings.

But sometimes I feel I could be so much more,

Destined for greater things I cannot articulate.

Pinocchio became a real boy in the end.

I hope I, too, can be a real girl some day.

Back in Melbourne, I would wander down to the 24-hour Coles being manned by the graveyard crew.  It’s nice being one of the few customers roaming the aisles and not having to queue up at the cashier.  The other part of the night which I have never been able to experience back here is the silence.  I have never realised how quiet the night in Australia is until I’m back for the holidays – suddenly, I remember what it means to have insomnia because the night is too “silent”.

The other thing I never hear is the breaking of dawn – when the birds come out.  It is a sound I never hear during the day because they get drowned out by the hustle and bustle of city life.  It is a sound I can’t remember hearing in Malaysia because the city never sleeps.  It merely slows down and then it speeds up again, and the sounds from the birds are never ever heard.

Anyway, the night described in the following poem is not a night in Malaysia, but a night in Australia back in the days when I would stay up late to pull and all-nighter before an exam.  As I said, in Malaysia, the nights are never silent.  There is always the hum of the air conditioning, the occasional car or bike driving in the distance, and – these days – the sound of my husband snoring…

I love the night.

I love the night,
Its peaceful serenity,
Its calm reflection,
Its silent stillness.

I love the night,
Not a sound to be heard,
Not a car, not a voice,
No music, nor disturbance.

I love the night,
The carefree sensation,
Of boundless time,
And freedom to wonder.

I love the night,
The cover of darkness,
The tranquil moments,
The velvet silence.

I love the night.

Okay, I’m rambling…  One of the benefits of taking music as a subject at school, however, was being able to attend musicals and concerts during school hours.  Now how could you beat that?  One of the musicals I attended was “Aspects of Love” by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  It wasn’t an earth-shattering musical but there was one particular piece that stayed in my head and still continues to live there.  It is a part sung by Giulietta about her past lover – George – whom she has never been able to forget:

“If I could still hear the music I heard then,

I’d never let it go away again.

Now each time love reaches out to me,

I can’t help but feel there has to be,

So much more to love…”

This poem was inspired by that verse…

The love of a lifetime I had in my hands,

But I gave it away and made other plans.

How blind I was that I couldn’t see,

A wondrous love – the best that could be.

I wanted to see what the world had to give,

There was so much I wanted to live.

How could I know that I had it all?

Instead I heeded the vagrant call.

I fleeted through life from lover to lover,

I stay but a while and leave when it’s over.

I’ve seen many hands and empty faces,

But nothing ever really replaces,

That love of a lifetime I had in my hands,

The one that I left for my other plans.

I keep searching, but that love eludes me,

No one makes me feel that way but he.

I know there has to be much more than this,

The love that he gave is the one that I miss.

If I could just hear the music once more,

Go back to the time of that love from before,

I promise I’ll never let it go again,

Right by his side, forever I’ll remain.

You have my heart in the palm of your hand,
You had it the day my eyes found you.
It’s yours to keep – to caress, or to crush
For it beats only for you and no one else.
You have total control over my heart,
It flutters each time your eyes touch mine,
It shivers to know your hand is near,
It basks in your attention, delights in your love.
You own my heart now and forever,
Want it, don’t want it, please take it with you,
For without you I have no need of my heart,
No need for its beat for I’ve no need for life.

Unfortunately, it didn’t rate very well on Helium so I rewrote the poem which is (at time of posting) rated number one – let’s hope it stays there:

I still remember the day we met,
Brought together by that silly bet.
So different – you and I – at opposite poles,
A world apart was our two souls.
You were the day, I was the night,
Thought I’d be blinded by your light.
How different could two people be?
How we’d survive, I couldn’t see.
But still my heart I gave to you,
Black and ugly, worthless, too,
Yet you kept my useless heart,
Accepted it right from the start,
And gave me your heart made of gold,
Worth so much more – one thousand fold.
Why would you want this broken husk?
Fading away just like the dusk?
I’ve never known the reasons why,
At your side, you’d want me by.
And so I wait until that day,
“I don’t want you,” is what you say.
So until you and I must part,
Until then, you have my heart.

The feeling comes and goes…
Some days it is so intense, it threatens to engulf me.
Other days, it is barely the whisper of a distant memory.
Night and day, I go through the ever inconstant yo-yo of life,
Swinging between the highs and the lows,
Never knowing when the next peak or trough,
Will throw me into the realm of extremes again.
This is the paradox of life that I encouraged,
I made myself too strong, too independent, too willful.
I squelched the natural instincts of a young woman,
Who sought comfort and security in the arms of a man,
To become what I now am:
Powerful and assured – a woman in control of her fate,
A woman intolerant, uncompromising and stubborn, no less.
I am the formidable fortress -
Cool and aloof, strong and impenetrable.
Nothing enters the walls of my keep.
Untouchable, I face the world without emotion.
I stand esoteric and impassive upon my hill,
Looking out at the world,
Just observing but never a part of it.
I fear the same as all rulers -
The fear of losing control over my kingdom.
Fleeting moments when shadows of apprehension break my resolve,
Destructive thoughts that undermine the safety of my kingdom.
It is the vulnerability of the child within,
That threatens the foundations of my stronghold.
She makes my walls as fragile as porcelain,
My city becomes defenseless,
From the siege engines of life and the world I exist in.
I wish I could surrender my power,
Allow myself to believe in something greater.
I wish I could abdicate my throne and become a part of this world,
To be able to feel alive within it,
Enjoy whatever richness I know it to hold.
Alas, it is too late for me.
I cannot conform,
What once was malleable has been work-hardened beyond elasticity,
To change would be to break,
To survive would mean to remain as I am -
A ghost in this world.

I have often wondered about that.  Perhaps it is true what a writer-friend of mine says: “I suffer for my art.”  To convey the emotions in poetry, one actually has to feel them deeply.  I often think of Ernest Hemingway whenever I think of a tortured souls and brilliant writers.  After all, it was after he was spurned by the great love of his life that he wrote most of his works which later became part of the classics we now know.

Ironically, the fact that I struggle to write prose these days suggests that I am no longer the angst-filled teenager of my youth.  I ought to be rejoicing that I no longer suffer from those violent mood swings and depression, however, as a writer, I can’t help but mourn that fact.  In the meantime, here is the first of a series of poems I wrote in the earlier days.  You can use it as a reference against my future works and tell me what you think…

“Broken Dreams”

Is there hope or am I a fool?
Do I dream of childish dreams?
Why persist and keep getting burned,
Dreaming of things that cannot be real?
Let go of the things I cannot have,
And do not dream again.
Move on from the past, accept this life,
Forget those childish dreams.
Stop holding on to nothingness,
Cut the strings that hold me back.
There’s nothing left for me here,
Nothing but these broken dreams.

She heard the door to the bathroom open and shut – Jon was done cleaning up.  She had the covers pulled up and her eyes shut, pretending to be asleep.

“Sarah?”  Jon called quietly.

She did not answer.  She kept her breath even and did not move.

“Good night, Sarah.”

There was a click and the room went dark.  She heard Jon cross the room and climb into his bed.  She did not want to talk to him – she could not talk to him.  His words at dinner echoed in her mind.

“What is it about him anyway?  Seriously, Sarah – what could you possibly have in common with this guy?  His idea of a good read is ‘War and Peace’.  Yours is the latest copy of ‘Rock and Ice’!”

As if she was not aware of how little they had in common – about as much as day and night.  She was the night – the dark, troubled one, with all her emotional baggage.  He was day – a knight in shining armour on a white stallion ready to rescue a damsel in distress.  Except that she was not a damsel.  She was in distress – she was forever in distress – but she did not want to be saved.

And then there is Jon.  They were like two peas in a pod.  If she were the kind of touchy-feely sort of girl that she despised, she might even have claimed he was her soul mate.  But she was not like that.  Far from it.  She was the alpha female – always alone, aloof and untouchable.  So why was she even with the knight in shining armour hoping to save her?

So I was hunting down the last book from Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series after being released from my month long confinement post-delivery and I discover that the whole vampire love theme seems to be highly in vogue.  What’s with that anyway?  I threw the idea out there to my SIL and she reckons it’s the whole necking thing – it’s appealing to teenagers.

Really?  That’s not the appeal that drew me to the books.  Seriously, it was the first book that I found captivating – Twilight.  I read New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, too, but while they were entertaining, they didn’t capture me quite the way Twilight did.  Perhaps it is the whole forbidden love thing that I am drawn to.  It certainly got a few ideas running around in my head for a new novel.

After all, didn’t the Writing Magazine say that the romance category is still the largest growing category?  In times like these people crave happy stories.  In which case my idea to write a tragedy along the lines of Romeo and Juliet is probably not a good idea.

In all honesty, when I was reading Breaking Dawn, I half wanted the tragic ending with Cullen family dying and Jacob and Renesmee going into hiding.  I did wonder if Stephanie would actually end it that way, but I suppose it wouldn’t be appropriate for a title under “young adults”?  If I had been the author, I would have ended it that way and wrote a fifth book carrying on from either Jacob’s or Renesmee’s point of view.

But I’m not Stephanie Meyer, so now I’m going to have to write my own love tragedy…

After seeing the number of “vampire” themed books, I’ve decided to steer clear away from the topic.  Looks like I’m going to have to come up with something different…  But what?