Love Gravity

I want to meet you in a place where we won’t feel wrapped underneath
Our skins that bleed and ached but they don’t hurt us like before
Inside our hearts there’s no empty room for sadness nor anguish
Our hands closed, admiring the delicateness of our souls, gravity of our lives
Feeling me, you, caressing the familiarity, adoring you me through all darkness
We are lost to each other now, wanting each other, saving you and me

Do I have to give any reason before kissing your soft lips?

Just come here, and let me show you my love once more.

Why Would I ?

And when you said those parting words
I was so stunned,
Could not believe I have to accept this fate
Felt like someone just pulled the rope of the black bell and it tolled
Loudly, deafening, and then it stopped abruptly
And then the world fell in silence all of the sudden

You made me wanted to take myself away, far from this place
To somewhere else, near or far, anywhere but here
Where there were lights, shone brightly forever
Where darkness only be seen in strange forms of shadows
Where the end is predictable and controllable, and comes only if you wish for it
Where I don’t have this feeling of needing you by my side

Because why would I want you to be here, just to lose you again?

I Love You Like ...

I love you like
I love oranges

though your skin sometimes
spotted or puffy,

though your shape might not be
divinely,

though sometimes you don't always turn out
sweet,

you make me feel
healthy
and you always
brighten up my day.

dengan sederhana

aku ingin bisa mencintaimu seutuhnya dengan caraku yang begitu sederhana
ingin kubisa membuatmu tertawa menangis berteriak bercinta dalam satu nafas kita yang sama
sehingga ketika jemariku bertaut kau berada dalam sentuhannya
dan ketika kupejamkan kelopak mata aku melihat sosokmu seutuhnya
dan ketika aku berbicara ada kehangatan jiwamu memancar lewat setiap suku kata
karena aku sungguh ingin bisa mencintaimu seutuhnya dengan caraku yang amat sederhana

- sedikit banyak diinspirasikan oleh salah satu puisi Sapardi Djoko Damono

Disco Will Not Be Here to Stay (Neither Will You)

This is where we’ve come to
After all these things we’ve gone through

This time I’m taking it away
It is you who have got a problem

I see you are lost in so many different ways
When the problems getting in the way

You told me they made you feel like being left out in darkness
Alone, by yourself
Where no one is around to help you
While in fact I was actually standing next to you, yet
Invisible
To your eyes

Do you know that love can easily come and pass you by ?
Do you realize that it can hit you hard and then you realize,
that it’s already slipping through your fingers out of your hands ?

But you just don’t understand

So this time I’m taking it away
So you won’t have to see the elevating pain,
As the hurt turns into hating

My mind’s done with you and everything about us

But still I have this one question burning inside,
“Since I’m here to stay, can I just throw you away?”

And I Remember Our Last Kiss

There will be no kisses tonight because
we are no longer lovers like we used to be

You know damn too well you’ve broke my heart and
I can’t understand why it felt like the fireworks blew up above our head and
its lights shone down on us

You promised me that you would
never kiss anyone who doesn’t burn you like
rays of sun at midday

I still remember our last kiss like our very first
and I would like to keep the memory of that first kiss
as it is

Not Gonna (Give Up)

What’s good having you by my side
If your heart belongs to someone else?
But baby, I’m not gonna give you up easily
On that, you can count me on
I will make you fall in love with me all over again
Because remember baby, I’m not gonna give you up

Gone

Sometimes,
My mind still wandered
Thinking about how our relationship used to be
Before our love is gone

We were so entwined in our lies,
Surrounded by this make believes

I should have known the road we chose would run out on us

Can you tell me now what are we supposed to do?
After all that you and I have been through,
When everything that once felt so right now turns wrong,
Now that our love is gone

Our relationships last for years, but
I didn’t really know what to call you,
And to me,
You didn’t know me at all

I know you feel so hurt inside,
As I do feel just the same,
But if you still want to go on,
We need to find another reason

We have got to find another reason to hold:

Is it ...
Love?

You always seem to know where to find me
Yet I’ll never really learn how to love you

There is nothing left between us to prove,
Don’t see any reason to deny this simple truth.
I can’t find any reasons to keep holding on,
Now that our love is gone

So I need you tell me,
How many ways can we stand there in playback?
How did we end up standing here,
While I stared at you crying underneath the clear blue sky?

There’s nothing left for us to say

It’s time to move and go separate way,
Now that our love is gone.

This is You & I Now

Sitting here together for the first time in years
I can not understand why
It’s hard to remember how it felt before
How we felt before

Now I found the one that I love
Everything passes more comfortably
Life seems much easier to enjoy
Smiles show up easily

Things are getting right
For us both
This time

After all the obstacles we’ve tried to overcome
It’s good to see you now
With someone else
Loving
If not learning to love
Sharing things together with him
Holding hands while walking
Looking at each others eyes
Deep and meaningful glances exchange
Mutually understanding without changing any single word
Just like what we did back then

Back then we used to think “now” was hardly possible
But “now” all our worries gone untraced
Memories seem like so long ago
Shared sadness feels like non-existent
Time surely kills the pain

Do you remember the white beaches and the splashing waves
And the seagulls screaming above us under the bright cloudless sky?
The dreaming days were gone
Look at how we became
We have changed but we’re still the same

And now we’re hanging out with your new boyfriend
So far from where we have been
To me it’s such a miracle that
You and me are still good friends

After all that we’ve been through
Now, we are cool

Love. At Any Cost.

Ku menatap langit malam mendung tanpa bintang

Namun hanya kamu yang ada dalam pikiranku, Sayang

Kubiarkan pikiranku bebas terbang melayang

Benakku bertanya kapan Cintaku datang

Dalam pelukan hangatku, kuingin dia pulang

all my love for R.
at any cost.

Post Script:
This love poem dated back to March 17, 2006,
when it was first published online in my previous blog,
LoveHateDreamsLifeWorkPlayFriendshipSex,
and dedicated to the one I once love so much,
my center of the universe,
R.

And I’ll Just ... (Walk Away)

I don’t know for how long I have felt that
There’s a deep river of tears inside I need to cry
Been holding back for years and perhaps will always be
But that was when I think there’s no future without you

There’s a high mountain so great its altitude I need to climb
To encourage me wipe away the hidden fears
And on its top I feel like home because
Solitude and loneliness has been the only true friend of mine
Even when there were you to fill my days

Who knows where I am going, or
Does tomorrow belong to me?

But that was then and
This is me now
As I’m turning my back on sadness and emptiness
I decide that it is now to leave them all behind

Strength will be by my side
Even though I feel afraid but
I know it’s already too late to say goodbye
We know there’s nothing left to say to each other

I will walk this path
This time with my head up high
I will walk away with pride, just me and myself

I have nothing left neither to regret nor to hide
No tender moment to hold because we had none
And those tears you once saw flowing down from my eyes
They won’t be there ever again

And I’ll just walk away from us

"I do not love you ..."

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I do not love you ... is a poem written around 1950s by Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, as the 17th Love Sonnets in his Cien Sonetos de Amor.

As far as I can remember, I never really like or understand any poem, not even my own which I wrote when I was still in middle school as a part of Bahasa Indonesia class’ assignment (mine was about an insomniac guy who suffered from chronic depression and decided to hang himself to die – reminiscing of it now, well, no wonder I hate it back then, and even still).

However, things changed after I watched Il Postino, an Italian movie set in the 1950s when Pablo Neruda was exiled to a small island in Italy and befriended with a local guy name Mario Ruoppolo who became his personal postman – thus came the title of this beautiful movie.
Neruda tried his best to explain what poems are all about – as similes and metaphors – to his new friend : by explicating to him that that’s where the beauty of them lay, on not in the literary meaning but in the comparisons of things.

I browsed the web searching for Pablo Neruda after watching this movie, and found the sonnet cited above. Originally he wrote it in Spanish, and I didn’t find any piece of information as who translated it into English. However, the 17th Love Sonnet still mesmerized me; it captured my attention and was so absorbed by it, I wrote a copy of it in my scrapbook which I always bring everywhere when I was still studying in university.

I could say for sure that I fell in love with that specific sonnet, not knowing that it was also used in a movie.

Inspired by what Mario did with one of Neruda’s poems he found in the poet's house – he used one it to attract a beautiful girl he loves long before Neruda set foot upon the tiny Italian fishing village – I did almost the same.

Almost, because I wasn’t quite sure that I love this girl who lives in a boarding house a couple of blocks away from mine, but was very curious to find out what would happened if I pretend to her and her friends that I like her.
Out of sheer curiosity.
Perhaps, this insincere act I am about to tell you below was driven solely by all of her friends whom told me that she had a crush on me.

Knowing that her 20th birthday is just around the corner, I called her pretending that I wanted to talk about some things. Later before we ended that conversation, she invited me to come over to her room the next evening.
So I prepared an Il Postino novel, written by Antonio Skármeta, and inserted a small Harvest card on which I wrote the “I do not love you ...” sonnet.

We chatted for about an hour before I presented her my gift. She was surprised and seemed very contented with the book, telling me that she just watched the movie she and her friends rented on VideoEzy the weekend before. Of course, I deliberately failed to mention that it was supposed to be an ahead of time birthday gift instead of a casually surprise one.
Flipping through the pages, she eventually found the card and read it. I noticed how her expression changed while reading it but unable to guess what she felt that moment. All I can say was that I sensed everything was gradually changed into an awkward situation. To make the long story short, my visit ended in half an hour later.

I held myself from contacting her until a week after her birthday, pretending I forgot it. When I finally met her that particular evening, she looked and acted normal to me, as if nothing awkward ever happened a fortnight ago. During our brief met-up, she never mentioned anything about that night. And when I finally asked her if she already read or even finished the book, she told me she got loads of assignment from her professors and couldn’t find time to read it. And then we just continued talking about everything else but that book. Especially not that small card written with Neruda’s 17th Love Sonnet.

It has been almost eight years since that particular night. I haven’t heard anything from her after I moved into Jakarta four years ago. But last year when I met Renee, one of her closest friend which also happened to be mine, she told me that when she met that girl a year before, she still asked about my wellbeing. And from the way she talked to me, I even sensed that Renee also knew about that particular card which I gave to her friend.

I didn’t understand her (reaction) back then. And now I know that I still do.

All I know for sure is that I still wish that someday I will find a special someone that I love much to whom I can read that 17th Love Sonnet in our special moments, and to feel its true intended meaning each day, and to share its beauty together in our lives.