At a loss for words

© 2013 Cla Panuelos

We talk with an ocean open between us,
its rippling waters often drowning out our intentions.
Ignoring it as we have been doing
changes not the fact that it exists–
a storm before the calm.

Words streak past us, even over our heads.
We hear the sounds but not understand what they mean.
It’s just been too long since
we’ve seen each other’s faces–
a shadow blocking the light.

And yet it is in the constant trying that
we find perhaps a taste of our hearts’ desires.
Falling into the web of circumstance and change,
we sit in wait for the single moment
when we could be fools for each other again.

When at last at night we lay
alone with only the thoughts of each other,
the doubts claw into the back of our heads.
Living within the repercussions of distance and time,
always the question: Do I know you at all?

How I feel about long-distance relationships

They suck.

Ha! Bet you didn’t see that one coming!

And I’m not talking about relationships one city or one country away. I’m talking about relationships where the other person is halfway around the world and the freaking timezone difference feels like a lighted sign from fate saying, ‘I’m going to make your lives harder. Bwahahaha!’

© 2010 Cla Panuelos

On a bad day I wonder why we even bother with this whole thing at all. There are times when it feels completely pointless! But on a good bad day, I churn out a poem.

I figured if it fuels my creative tendencies then it has to be a “good” sort of bad. Right?

Just a poem, nothing else

Sometimes I want to hurt you as much as you hurt me.
The only problem is you don’t try to hurt me at all.
The way things are is not your fault, and neither is it mine,
and as John Green would say, it is ‘the fault in our stars’;
a product of fate mixed with a little bit of bad luck.

Sometimes I wonder how much longer I can hold on;
or the better question: if I can ever learn to let go.
Sometimes I wonder why we don’t try harder
to go against what the Universe seems to have thrown our way.
Why are we both not brave enough?

I know this poem isn’t one of my refined pieces,
but it hails from a place full of frustrated feelings–
a place where words are ripe for the picking;
the same words that would have been unfair to say.
Yet they wrap themselves around my heart nonetheless.

Rediscovering poetry

Still alive, you guys! It’s been a whirlwind couple of months. I am exceedingly exhausted though I constantly feel like I have been doing nothing with my life except work. I miss blogging, and I miss writing fiction, and until today I didn’t realize how much I miss writing poetry as well.

My first gateway into discovering I had a love for writing was actually poetry. I wrote a poem my teachers could not stop gushing over in sixth grade. Apparently it gave them the butterflies and was very romantic. Reading it now of course I would call it the cheesiest thing that ever came from any pen of mine. It has the markings of a clueless sixth grader, yet it was kind of a cute poem. My teacher got me to write a couple more poems for the school paper after that, and even when I stopped writing for the school paper, I simply kept writing. But I stopped writing poems.

I’ve been going through this rough patch for months now. I wish everyday it would just stop, that I allow myself to just be, or be happy. But there are things in life impossible to dodge, and in my case it’s been a mishmash of heart matters from family, to my personal disappointments, down to my screwed up love-life, but most of all, I’ve just been feeling so drained from all the negativity I seem to have somehow attracted into my soul. I feel misunderstood, and I don’t feel respected for loving the things I love. I feel like all the adults around me are always trying to control the direction of my life, and I know they mean well but at some point they have to realize: if I commit mistakes or fall on my head, they have to trust me to learn from them and pick myself back up.

I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.

This week was one of those weeks I felt like shutting myself in my room and sleeping all day long; one of those series of days when I just want to be left alone. I am an introvert at my core, and I take comfort in solitude more often than not– solitude which I have not been getting lately, and it has been driving me up the wall. I was browsing through my WordPress reader during my break and I was fortunate enough to see a bunch of inspired poems, which reminded me of a love for writing poems I used to possess and need to tap into again. Poetry is a beautiful form of life-therapy. It’s a way for me to release all my emotions into phrases while still having the license to be vague.

Well, here goes my first poem in years…

Leave this town

The days crash like waves upon rocks,
but like shadows in the night they make no sound.
I watch the dwindling forms of todays and tomorrows
from the window of my speeding car.
My chest is heavy with emotions of both dread and relief.

‘Slow down,’ quietly urges my mind,
but my foot burrows deeper on the gas pedal
as a collection of lips start to whisper my name.
Louder it grows, in a maddening rhythm;
unceasing, unforgiving, chasing me down this lonely road.

I look down at my hands clutching the wheel,
a drowning white-knuckled girl holding on to a lifeline.
Truth is, sometimes wanting to run away
does not make one weak, or wrong.
It makes one human.