There is this poem that I had been reading over and over again. It is On A Lost Ship To Erehwon (Or the Poet's Fate) by Merlie Alunan. The poem affected me more than I had expected and made me think about why I am writing.
To sum up what I gathered from the poem, in every ship there is a crew member that seems to have no use at all (the poet). Everyone else in the ship has a particular job or task to do but that particular crew member, according to the poem's persona, wont do the work on the ship, wont stretch a muscle, wont even be helpful to the crew. She will just gaze at the sky and look for signs, cant even tell if the ship is about to find land. She talks to herself, laughs at something no one else seems to see, or talk about the signs over and over again. So what did the crew of the lost ship do to her?
They threw the poet into the water, that useless crew member. And promptly the ship made it to Erehwon.
Erehwon is Nowhere in reverse as you probably noticed. The lost ship became more lost after they threw out the poet. The poem made me realize how important literature is. We think that we can actually live without it, but can we really?
See, humans are proud creatures. We see ourselves as rulers of the world. We are a race that sees knowledge as power, and we like to list things that we understand. We like to discover and decipher everything, for we believe that to really become a ruler we need to understand everything.
So to understand quantity we invent numbers. To understand length we made measurements. To explain things we developed science and logic. And to tame the unknown we invent words and give them names.
But humans, wise though we are, are not destined to know everything. We will face things that we wont understand no matter what we do. We will feel things that we cant measure, count, or put names with. So what do we do to this unchartered things?
We put them into literature. We had decided that everything that cant be explained, cant be measured, and cant be contained to be put into the most vague branch of human knowledge. Literature.
We find it everywhere, everyday. It is in ancient myths, folklore, fairy tales, even children‘s nursery rhymes. We find it in poetry, in songs, in riddles and verses. We read them in stories and novels and all.
Everything in life that cant be decided by absolute truth and reasoning is put in words.
Like fairy tales. The cliche they lived happily ever after is taught to children early on. In the logical or bordered sense it probably meant that we live to be happy. We teach children that despite the trials, the stepmothers and the evil witches, there is a fairy godmother, a prince charming, a happy ending. But if we look into it, or in the poet's point of view, we will see that happiness is not an end to be achieved. It is not an amount of emotions to be contained. Happiness is more than the word we humans gave it. In fact everything is more than the names we put into it. Adventure is more than the thrill we give to it. And who knows what it really is? We dont really know, for we are in a world encircled with borders. Unless we cross that border we will never really understand things. And I guess this is the task of writers and the readers alike. Break the chains, cross the borders. And plunge into the unknown. Life is not a land a lost ship needs to search for. Life is an unknown territory that no one can really fully understand. And trust me, the closest people to understand life are those who write about them. For they know that they may never find answers. Because maybe life is not about searching answers. Maybe there is more to life than we can actually live for.
So let us try crossing the borders. Gender, culture, race, religion and everything that limits us to further notice this world better. Let us be more than the names we are given. Names are shackles we put in ourselves for when we die, we are reduced to just our names and the dates of our birth and death. See how we think? The most important part of us, is on that (-) between the dates of your birth and death. Even your name cant spell how you lived or how you see yourself through your choices, your dreams, your adventures.
So I'll continue writing. Even if I see no land. Even if I just see the endless ocean. Even if I just see glimpses of signs. Because we dont need to contain everything we know. Maybe we just need to take notice, to see things differently.
There are no great or lesser poems. I refuse to measure or explain what I write for maybe I dont really know them at all. I will not restrict what I write into good poems and bad ones. Nor classify them as inferior or better. Writing should not be bordered, not be labeled. Writing is more than the words we write. So I'll continue this seemingly pointless journey and try to cross the borders. Who knows, maybe we can see what lies beyond the borders. This is a crazy world. What we knew to be true maybe proved to be false next time.
The poems included here are poems that I didn't classify into categories. I dont see them as good ones, or bad ones, or sad or happy. And I dont even dare to explain them. They are just what they are when I wrote them. I just hope that they could somehow tell my stories more than my name could ever give me. For I am now not writing for my name (that is probably why I dont use my real name here). I write now to be nameless, to be unchained, to be borderless, to be anonymous. For in anonymity there is power. And in power we see beyond the borders.
My gratitude to everyone who read Among the Broken Ones. This new set of poems is for you guys. :)
