Pandora's Box of Old, Musty-Smelling Poems

I was finishing the last chapter of Daniel Keyes’ Flowers For Algernon when I came across the part detailing the protagonist’s out-of-body experience and his brush with the otherworldly. And suddenly, I remembered something that I had written long ago, buried under a mound of musty-smelling clothes that I had never worn since I brought them with me to Kalayaan dorm in 1999 (good golly! just saying this makes me feel so ooolllldddd....). Hurriedly I dug through the impressive heap until I found what I was looking for: my first diary since coming to Manila.

I make this pronouncement with distinction because my time in college and the thereafter is worlds apart from my life in Zamboanga. High school was an angst-ridden, ambivalent period for me, whereas college was a time for self-discovery, for rabid self-analysis. For trying to ask as many questions as one could in the hopes that somehow an answer would get drawn and ensnared in the black hole of uncertainty that kept self-amassing ad infinitum. As documented in my personal journal, it was also a time for writing poetry. And apparently, of things “(threatening) to consume me.”


This is probably the last poem I've written. Somehow I have lost all fire for writing poetry. Which is probably just as well, judging from the above.

Whenever, wherever, whatever. These days, it seems that's the best I can do in times when I feel the end is closing in on me. When poetic inspiration fails, there's always blogging. There's nothing like reverse voyeurism to validate personal experience as you attempt to purge your inner demons and let it all out for the whole world to behold.