This Writer's Life (Blog of Author Anarda Nashai

[Anarda Nashai]

Queen Libertine
Wednesday, Aug 12, 2009


Yes, I am a poet who does not tolerate love poetry.

I’ve admitted this repeatedly to those who insist that poetry couldn’t have survived this long in none other median than the ultimate universal language. As one recent pioneer of the love to hate love poetry club, my dedicated fan base of lamented lovers with either pre-marital jitters or post-coital regret has become a little boring. So now, I’m after the rest of them…

By my quill-wielding hand, and with those itemized lyrics that I keep free from my own work, I use all of my imagination to come up with the first line of my love poem. I want to be original but lingering. I want to write something that will stand alone in history and yet, won’t have future generations tempted to use the foundations of my work as toilet paper. Challenging my own cynical viewpoint, I am convinced that I must at least attempt to write a love poem, so long after knocking them still.

“Inspiration!” I summon with the snap of my fingers…

My quill and I began to trace invisible clouds above my head, as I’m in need of the sun with all of its blinding glory. And further, birds that chirp Beetles’ songs and are never the subject of swarthy innuendo. Now, I have the infamous sky that starts the perfect loving day. Still inside my mind, I step into my own scene:


A grown woman, but young still. All of the cream-filled stories of love I’ve been told as a girl are buff and glinting behind my hungry eyes. They are my armor, the first words of infatuation --overplayed in my mind through teenage-hood. The deep-monotone of his voice is unmistaken: “I Love You.”. Absolutely, today—I am thinking. In a moment of love this day is exactly when and where I will fall.


While I am walking and from my perfect job, with my perfect waist size—the perfect size of my breath mint still left inside my mouth, I turn a corner and crash clumsily into his arms. The passion in his eyes? No competition for the fantasies that I am waiting to project onto him – this humble place holder who will be my new and unsuspecting prey of romance. Leaving no room for doubt or harsh reality of what falling for a stranger on a corner will do to me thereafter, I’ll decide that he will be my love. He will give me more of what I need in order to pen this fresh job of mine on the page. And please, don’t worry about me tarnishing my reputation as a philosopher at all. You see, since I am as always the pain-loving poet, this nonsense will be justified. All that comes after the first sentence will be the rolling snowball before the affect.


I’ll be a fool in love, so that I might describe its new luminous planting in my life, as it comes and goes. I’ll be damned if I use a thesaurus or sit around in pink lace all day, waiting to trade places with the heroine of the latest Collins’ novel. Everyone would just have to understand, that as a love poet, I don’t have time to wait for the itch of that illusion. Whether I search for a picture of fact or faux, I have a commitment to this feeling of mine, here and now. In this time and space, where I am on the cusp of this love, while this feeling of mine lay parallel with every happiness I’ve known on every other day when I have been deliriously happy, I must write now…

None other than the wind through my open window derails my unreal pie in the sky. I bring my arm down to earth, no better off a love poet as I was before…go figure!


Quite the adventurer--my poetic eye. This eye of mine is the blue pigmented rose with thorns as thick as its stem. It won’t allow me to see why and how I may be approaching this project of mine all wrong. A wise woman once told me that having faith in a thing is the foundation for success of the same. Readers of love poetry know this to be true. Yet, I’m ever convinced that this loose-thread of a theory can’t be as easily accepted by a poet. No way.



So I’ve chosen to retire my heart-shaped pen and writing pad and to leave the nay-sayers where they belong: on the highly-favored, fairer road of optimism. Had we ended up on the same side of this brick-wall of a controversy, I’d have no one to waive to or even moon when I’m feeling a little restless with my daily routine. I’ve digressed and lay obliged to them, while I beg that I may be released from my unwanted obligation with the very word: Romance. Simply put, all poets must say it, although we fear that the bad taste will always linger each and every time. I accept that the romantics of the world are entitled to their loyal opposition of my “angry poetry”, just as I am of all their “pertinent sap”.



Here is the truth as far as I am concerned: Love poets do not exist. Only poets who are sure that they have more remarkable descriptors for the roses and the violets attempt to exist as such. To their credit, they are brave entities who dare to hold themselves up in their own air-painted world—a place too fragile and susceptible for my lazy gust of evening wind. A lover of love must accept this truth of illusion throughout their careers. A poet has no such obligation. And so, I shant be in business with poetry and with love together. I read once from one of my many poetic curators that the only poets that learn from one another are bad ones. I’m sure he meant this in a less venomous sounding way than I have perceived it. Still, with his words he’s taught me a great deal. He and I share the same faith in the validity of this jaded genre. I’m like you Sir, who rather the poet would throw the towel in before they settle their steam engines on the topic of romance. It’s easier and more impressionable to do the thing with the towel, isn’t it?



So, to all of my self-actualized brothers and sisters, heed our curator’s advice, he who has paved our ground so that we brooding poets may never live without rank ever again.


Thank you, Sir Arthur Rimbaud...your crown fits quite nice.

(c) Anarda Nashai
author of
School Girl: Poetry and Prose of a Pre and Post Adolescent
www.anardanashai.com

[Kim Wilson]

I'll reread your post when my eyes aren't filled with tears. But until then, take this;

Pray For Love
With every passing hour there is a fading day…
In all of our troubles there is hope and a way…
There is light in darkness, power within weaknesses…
Pray for love…
Feelings in the soul, unable to be controlled…
Thoughts in the mind, time to time, clear or blind…
A tingle in the heart, a flame a spark…
Pray for love…
Pray for love…
Tired and lonely, afraid, unhappy…
Sick or lost, hurt in tears…
Then submit into my arms, I am always here…
Pray for love...
Kim Wilson
OOWEE