18 July 2022 - "nothing to write home about"

Hello, I received that extra protective jab today.

No matter how protective and secretive I am, a small part of the writer (I hope I can call myself that) in me, has always wanted to reach out to a reader, hand out my words, break open my salted poems, and show my phrases. But, there is something very banal, very vacuous about my opus of writings with shame stitched in its backcloth that becomes prominent when "seen". I see books bounded by soft covers or hardbacks, beautiful art spread over it, engirdled with rates and crits. I see profiles on social platforms, sapid and tactfully stacked pictures and videos that ensnares fingertips, and beneath it is a brick of words with emotions and notions sun-dried together. So ambriosal and so moreish. So potent and so chewy. Such sweetness and hydrating power. Bedewing tears on fresh graves of catastrophes and contretemps. Leaving a considerably bittersweet yearning for more in your head.

Then, I open this site. Search my notes. I scramble with the passlock and I look over my words. Not even a grey wraith of grace or ingenuity. The flow is so sluggish like how I wake up in the morning and rummage through my day to find a trace of my will to live. The meanings are so staggering like how I walk after I unsuccessfully overcome any situation. The blueprint, patched up like how I cover my gaping anxiety with my ego and fear of embarrassment. The ideas are so incoherent like how I speak in front of an audience even with hundred hours of practice and a lucid script in plain sight. And the words, oh the words. Shambolic and draggle-tailed like when I am out in wind and try to fix my hair by running my fingers in them but end up further dishevelling it. Stolen and pinched from here and there, from posters stuck on trams in an unknown city to ancient taglines in broken and forsaken repositories, like a debt-as souvenir.

- Oizys.