I will not sleep tonight
until I have written something;
the curse is set in motion.

But then cigarette smoke
sashays out my window
with flair

seizing words
off my lips on their way out,
for company.

They share a private joke
as they glide into the street,
mocking my paper insomnia.

I wonder if it is too late
to go out there and
find them.

A quick one responding to Robert Lee Brewer’s poetry prompt: to write one about marriage.

This is amended from the shaky first draft. I’m still not fully happy with it.

—

Marriage came for my grandmother
the penghulu’s daughter
at 13.
She is the only survivor now
everyday, she calls out to ghosts.

Marriage bumped into my mother
in America.
She took it back home but
It screamed until she ran.

She was 20,
and now I am 21.
Our family friend is further and further away.

I ignore it like high school girls ignored me
at recess.
I know it wants to breathe down my back,
but then I remember that marriage
is a person I choose not to speak to
who wants to crash my party

and so it’s forever parked by the mall
waiting for some guy to call with
directions
on how to find me.

—

*penghulu = village leader

I know that even though I seem vegetative to myself, I come off as doing so many things. But I never cared. I thought it’s okay to be adventurous ambitious experimental and fickle now (in alphabetical order), even if it’ll run me into the ground. When I grow up, I didn’t ever want to have regretted not trying something earlier. I needed to know what fit me better and what didn’t. Even at the price of being accused, ignored, denied or forgotten. If it really mattered, I will make people remember me again, or at least ask them to. Better than being old and remembering something I never got the chance to do.

Obviously this rationale backfired on me.

Yesterday, I lost a valuable chance. The biggest chance of my life. And ironically, I wondered if it was because I was trying to do so many different things that pleading for that one thing I loved more than anything else came off unconvincing in the end. Maybe my future work, my entire being, should have been pointing to POETRY POETRY & NOTHING BUT POETRY instead of ’situation: everywhere! who knows? that’s the fun part!’

But you know how it is. I just thought I could have been both all along.

My pen is telling me to stop crying. Come on,

it says. I know you’re crushed. You’re not getting out of here. But even though we’ve been in the same place for 21 years, we still had fun times, right? You and me? We did. You don’t need your passport to travel. These books on your shelves, those journals in your closet, they say we’ve crossed seas. Hell, we’ve crossed stars.

It’s not over yet. Don’t think about putting me away. Here, I’ll make a deal with your fingers. If you hold me, I’ll dance. And they’ll sing. Anywhere you want. They can still sing.

I want my leg to break.

It’s almost like a one night stand. No wait, a planned romance. Or recurring dreams of a planned romance. Except you’re reciting someone else’s words with all your heart to a tune of a million eyes. Yet you know the plot, you know how it will end. Sometimes, you can get away with anything. Everyone here has done this before. So I act before I even act, I move forward like I know exactly what I am doing, right into the light. It makes me want to curl up. But I shout. I shout every night. And I pray that when I’m done, they will clap.

You’re new here.

Yes sir, I am.

Took a good look around yet?

No sir, they haven’t allowed me to take a good look around.

And why haven’t —

They love me.

They do?

I believe that’s why I’m here.

Fair enough.

Besides… or…

Yes?

They love me. That’s what they said. But I haven’t been here long enough sir, long enough to dare raise the possibility that they love themselves more. And want me, to prove it. Does… does that make sense?

Well, I’m in no position to say.

Maybe they do though, that would explain why they haven’t allowed me to open my eyes. To really see where they’ve put me. Maybe they don’t care, or never thought about it to begin with.

I imagine you cry enough without having seen anything.

I believe one day, I’ll stop.

You will. We all did. You’ll see that crying changes nothing.

No. I’ll still be here anyway.

Why, you’re getting the hang of things already.

Today is not a day for exams or elevators. Today feels like a day for dresses. No matter how much of a boy I am, I would like to wear a good dress. Things don’t seem to hurt as much in a dress, not your ego, nor your beauty, your movements, or your words. It is not math. I do not have the figure. But maybe one day, I will, and maybe I will have the ego, and the beauty, the movement, and above all, the words.

Understandably there has been much fuss over great men like Voltaire, Rilke, Nietzsche, Freud, Descartes, Prophet Muhammad, etc. But when I read about their lives, what always distracts/strikes me most are the women they fall in love (or at least interact) with.

“… I lust after this kind of soul” - Nietzsche on Andreas-Salomé

Both Rilke and Nietzsche felt a deep connection for Lou Andreas-Salomé, who was 17 when she decided to get educated in theology, literature, the works. Over her lifetime she challenged the roles of gender with the combination of her indifference to moral conventions and insatiable intellectual curiosity. At 21 she met Nietzsche (who was 37), 36 she had an affair with Rilke (who was 14 years her junior), and later Freud in her fifties. She won the hearts of all three, and carried correspondences with them, famous on the literary map.

How could anyone express what took place between us? We made up for everything there was never time for. I matured strangely in every impulse of unperformed youth, and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart. - Rilke, in To Lou Andreas-Salomé

At 24, Elisabeth von der Pfalz (or Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia) read Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. He had heard of her and wished to meet her. At 25, she wrote to him saying sorry they never got to meet, and proceeded to exchange letters with Descartes for years until his death. She spoke six languages, was great at math, and was the person who would pose to him the famous question of the mind-body problem, debated and unanswered till today.

“Although in your metaphysical meditations you show the possibility of the second, it is, however, very difficult to comprehend that a soul, as you have described it, after having had the faculty and habit of reasoning well, can lose all of it on account of some vapors, and that, although it can subsist without the body and has nothing in common with it, is yet so ruled by it.” - Elisabeth, 1643

Émilie du Châtelet was 28, Voltaire was 40. She wasn’t pretty, but was fluent in Italian, Greek, German, and Latin by 12, studied literature and science, danced, sang opera, played the harpsichord, and was also an actress. She studied mathematics with Maupertuis and Clairaut, translated Newton’s Principia into French with her own commentary included, and published a paper with formulae successfully disproving Voltaire and Newton’s theories. But she usually wrote in secret, as men always overshadowed women in academia.

“Judge me for my own merits,” - Du Châtelet

She received a higher rating than Voltaire in a French Academy contest with an essay on the physics of fire. She was absolutely smitten with Voltaire, and him with her, and although she was married, she took him in as a lover, a practice accepted by France at the time. They lived in a chateau at Cirey. Together they wrote Elements of Newton’s Philosophy, an extremely influential book, which caused the French to abandon Descartes and pledge allegiance to Newton instead. Voltaire eventually got disillusioned with her once it became apparent that she was smarter than he would ever be.

In the chateau at Cirey, they did not spend their time cooing. All the day was taken up with study and research; Voltaire had an expensive laboratory equipped for work in natural science; and for years the lovers rivaled each other in discovery and disquisition. They had many guests, but it was understood that these should entertain themselves all day long, till supper at nine. After supper, occasionally, there were private theatricals, or Voltaire would read to the guests one of his lively stories. - Will Durant, Story Of Philosophy

When reading excerpts like these, I always end up putting my book down and going on tangents to find out who these women were. Also, reading things like these make me all the more inspired to conquer my insanely daunting calculus textbook.

I haven’t written poetry in what seems like ages. Not even in my paper journal. I’ve just been swimming in physics, organic chemistry, calculus, biometrics, swimming too deep to feel anything, let alone inspired.

He singles you out, and while he’s struggling to think of something to say, you fidget and carry on small conversations with anyone else in the room. This way, there’ll be more time for the two of you, and a chance for the director to notice any potential chemistry.

Besides, everyone else here scares you, and you think this serves you right for wanting to try out something new, where you aren’t the loudest voice in the room. Just a plain girl. You finish off yet another introduction, thinking that if this room had the last oxygen supply in the world, it would be finished in fifteen minutes without any amazing things said. Most of the oxygen might be used on sobbing alone, since it is a theatre crowd.

“Is this your first audition?”
He’s finally decided to say something.

“Yeah. You found the audition virgin.” Lame.

“I could tell… I go to auditions all the time and I’ve never seen you before.”

“Do you actually get any roles?”

“Sure.” He continues at length about his most recent character, inspiring you to kick yourself & check if your gaydar has malfunctioned. “But I’m so tired of playing gay men.”

“Oh. Because… you’re not?”

“No. They’re a hit with the crowd though aren’t they. Always gets their attention. But it would be nice to play alongside a girl for a change. But I know the director, he mentioned he’d put me into callbacks to test me out with other guys he has in mind. I guess he’s auditioning me for a gay couple.”

“He called me too. At the first audition he already told me he’s bent on making me play a lesbian.”

“How many couples are there supposed to be in this play anyway?”

“Quite a lot. But the rest are straight ones, I think.”

“Oh.”

You’re both on the table, and you dangle your legs to cut through the silence. He dangles his legs. He doesn’t need to look to know that you’re scoping the rest of the room as well.

“I wonder who I’ll get paired up with.”

“Me too.”

You both give up cutting through the silence. It’s comfortable. He closes his eyes, still hanging onto your last syllable. You don’t want to scope anyone else. You turn the spotlight off.

The director is in the next room.

It has glass walls, but he doesn’t notice the table at all.