What kind of a poet am I?

What kind of a poet I am, people ask.

I tell them. Before, I am a poet of desperation. I can only speak of anger, of hatred, of pain, and of suffering. I am incapable of seeing the splendor even of the most splendid of what life can offer. I am blind to bliss – for I am, or had been, but a poet of grief.

Now I am a poet of love. Now I can write about beauty, bliss, and enlightenment. I can write of hours wasted so that one can get a second of glimpse of his dear. I can write about absurd thoughts, idyllic trivialities born in the shadow of a moment.

But I can also now write of love that is profound – love that begins and ends with the spirit, or love so complex and so deep and so intense that it is comprehensible only to the lover, or the one being loved.

You changed all that.

Yes, I’m still a poet of love, but unlike the others, I can only speak of love that had never been, or love lost but never returned, or love dying a natural death, or love exploding due to passion of hatred, and imploding due to the coldness that was left.

I can no longer speak of love that is a connection of two hearts, because I can only speak of love slowly fading after wandering too far from its source. I cannot speak of love that is borne by mutual choice, because I can only speak of love that is never chosen, and was never intended.

I can speak only of love that had been responded to by hatred, by mocking laughter, by caustic comments, by the stinging silence of rejection. I can no longer speak of love that was requited, for you never reciprocated mine.

Maybe I can about one’s attempt to lie to oneself that the love was reciprocal, that the hatred is indeed of love. Maybe that – but then again, that is a lie.

Until when will I write about love?

Until when must I write about pain?

Written sometime in 2006.