Among the Broken Ones

Notes

My professor in Literature once told our class that writing poems is like being hit by something and takes a chip off ourselves.

Humans, capable of feeling, have long since been struggling to find some meaning when we are hit by thoughts, memories, or even just a simple emotion.

It takes its toll on us and chips out a part of ourselves, breaking us.

I always marvelled about how simple things affects us that way. We often break, and we lose, yet we move on and learn. It is actually beautiful to be broken, they say, for it is the only time we know that we are capable of being whole.

The twenty three poems in this humble collection talks generally of this process--- breaking. In most of the poems it is melancholic and pitiful but that‘s okay.

I guess we break for things we deserve and things worth aiming for being whole.

Let us just say that when I wrote these poems, I always thought myself as a piece of something brittle and when something hits me, I break--- scattering pieces along the way.

Everytime it happens I change, and I think it is worth breaking for.

Writing the poems here were never easy to write for I am still in search of answers. Answers that I may never find but is still worth searching. To me, writing poems is like that, a long and tedious search for answers, and the questions that brought me searching for these answers. I just hope that by being broken, we find pieces, fit and unfit, and make puzzles. For life is a puzzling invention.

I always find time for writing despite my busy life--- in coffee breaks, while washing the dishes, while standing on a train station on the way home. Whenever something gets my attention, I ask questions about it. If get lucky, after some time I can write something about it.

I think it‘s weird how it is hard catching worthy thoughts but it is so easy ignoring them. So as student of literature I took responsibility of noticing these thoughts.

This collection is a tribute to those who are still in search for that meaning of everything, just like myself. The voices here are testimonies of my searching, and as a broken one, I long for wholeness.

I am grateful to my teachers in literature, who pushed me here, and to my classmates who are very good writers (in fact they are my inspiration), their poems actually are just too awesome to read. I am also grateful to the people here who noticed my works, and hope that we can become partners in this quest.

:-)

@jepoylee
Manila, Philippines