T: is for tired and guest reporters

I received about two hours of sleep between last night and today so I am brain dead. Thank-God my friend Nao has volunteered to write a guest column. Enjoy I'll have thoughts tomorrow.



...Hello, all. My name is Nao. Suzanna is here but she's knocked out. She said I can write whatever I want the world to hear... Hmm...

Ok, I have an idea. I have pulled my journal from my college project. I was writing poems in college and this journal is the introduction of the collection of my poems. After the journal, I put one poem from the collection. Hope you enjoy it!



Introduction- Fall 06

I remember the night I started writing poems. I was a confused teenager and had just felt like a complete idiot. Until that night, I had been with a group of people who called themselves intelligent and dating a guy a lot of girls in school wanted to sleep with. Being with these people was not what I really wanted, neither these "intellectuals" nor my "boyfriend." I tried to behave the other people considered cool.

This “mask” couldn’t bring me peace of mind anymore; they absorbed smiles and tears hiding behind it and just left me empty. I decided to give up this bizarre life, just like throwing hundreds of pages of fiction I wrote into a garbage can. Then, the first question on my mind was: What is left inside myself? My brand new notebook began to be filled with the answers to this question since that night.

People wear masks to make them look more attractive and more powerful; they need something to rely on outside themselves. What I’m doing through poetry is try to take the mask off. The real feelings of human beings are under these masks. I always want to be honest with what I feel and need, and communicate with the readers of my poems based upon this naked emotion. This is how human relationships should be.

In some of the poems from this collection, however, I still obscure my real feelings or display my fear of being honest; I’m still afraid of taking off the mask. Since I started to write poems, I have found myself wearing another new mask many times; I’m still fighting through it.

This collection is a personal record of one immature poet. These rough poems are not neat, smart, pretty or confident, but that is exactly the way I am at each moment in each poem.



Withering Poet Blues

I can’t write no poem
And I don’t have no pill
I can’t write no song
And I don’t have no pill
My head is foggy like a dust storm
It’s endless like a wheel

I’m empty for some reason
Not ready to know why
I’m empty for some reason
And scared to know why
So I fill myself with dry gin
And pretend I can write

Floating on a blanket
I scribble on a buoy
Floating on a carpet
I scribble on a buoy
These words don’t make no sense
So I sink into moody

Ain’t got no life in my hand
It flew away like a fly
Ain’t got no love in my lips
It flew away like a kite
If they don’t come back to me
I will wither up and die