With writing life becomes more interesting. Writing teaches to most of us that we are not looking at things as closely as we ought to and we are not understanding them as deeply as we ought. These days, we let life slide off us. -Ted Hughes

I travel to Bali for Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) 2012 just a day after I landed from my London trip. I went to UWRF with Lisa @asil , one of my best girls who also just back from San Francisco. So we both pretty much on jet lag state and that explains a lot of sleep happening and the case of missing Kecak dance in Friday afternoon :))

In UWRF 2012 I got a lot of inspirations from the talks, got the urge and sudden kick to get back writing fiction, or in this case, a novel. Knowing exactly how a good fiction would do to you: emotionally pushed you to the edge.

But I have other thing to get done this time. I came to Ubud with one goal in mind: to become a better poet. I mean, the lovely nature, beautiful culture, loving heart, and ‘Poetry in the Making’ book by Ted Huges are the best elements to write poetry.

Yesterday @talitazahrah  asked me on twitter, what keeps you writing? Sometimes for your book, you just know the beginning and the end. You don’t have a middle. You don’t like to be in the middle. And you ended up abandoning your book because of that. Quoted from the book by Ted Hughes and proven by my own experience:

There is one correct way to write a novel: make it interesting by writing something that genuinely interest you. You can’t write about something in which you have no feeling. First simply writing, let your imagination go. Second, practise your observation. Hopefully photographic observation begins to come naturally. Once you got it going, it will invent itself and begin think for you. Characters will push their way into it. You only need to let it grow. Don’t be frightened to follow wherever the story leads, and keep your eyes and ears open. See and hear everything.

I must add the practical way to do it: have a map. Write a summary or outlines of your book. I usually use mind map to do this. You must know the big picture and you can work on the details later. That ‘map’ will help you when you’re ‘lost’ in your own story.

About poetry. My first ‘obsession’ with poetry came after I’m back from Dublin last year. I saw a lot of poetry book in their bookstore and I couldn’t find it in Indonesia. Poetry can moves me better than anything in the world. That’s why I started to write and self-published my own poetry book in NulisBuku.com >> Thinking of You. I’m preparing one more, a collection of poetry and instagram photos by my friend @Kreshna, hopefully will launched soon.

I bought Lisa a notebook with a snippet of Hamlet in the cover and a pen from Shakespeare Globe Theatre and I told her to fill that with poetry. She said, she couldn’t write poetry. I said, everybody can write poetry.

Poetic experience is the hour by hour effect on us of the weather; that’s why all of us can write poetry -Ted Hughes

These are the poetry I made while staying in Ubud and while waiting for my delayed flight up to 1am in the Ngurah Rai airport. Enjoy.

I Need You Like This, in My Life

I need you like this, in my life

Heart to heart
Comfort
Against the hardship and storm
Soothing
Like nothing’s going on
Paint our own imagination
Talk our own topics
Walk our own destinations
A place to rest
Be still and be okay
Flow
Just the way life is

I need you like this, in my life

Distance

Teach me how to be patient with distance
When it means your good mornings will be delayed
And good nights are said on the daylight

You think I want the complicated
Those kind of unity
Where we started to blend and forget ourselves

Yet the truth is, my heart want the simplest
I only need
A cup of tea
And your smile
Right in front of me

Desire

I climb your nose
With my fingers
Felt the curve of your lips
Read it like a lost braille poem
Word by word spelled: desire

I lean on your broad shoulder
You spark an abstract form of passion
As I move silently
Channeling the love, my love, our love

I’ll be Back

Not that I forgot my way home

I just want to sit here and enjoy
The swivel dance of the birds
The unseen little insects made harmonious sound
The stain of colors of red, purple, orange on the green
The flowing water on nearby pond
With lotus and lily pads
Resting on the delicate surface

Not that I ignore you and the problem we had

I just want to sit here for a while
Just be and embrace
The other beauty God created for me

Just wait for me

I’ll be back

Imaginary Lover

We exchange smile
Thru our eyes
And you look away

Your soft lashes
Wink to the empty air
Left a little trace of your shiny attitude
That never fails to pull me
Toward you

I want to know the story
You’ve been keeping in the distance
Of our skin
And I want you to conclude
The thing we had
All these years

She walked closer
And take your hand away from me
You said unspoken good bye
And I freeze in the land that carry my feet
Try to keep my balance off the shattering pieces
Of my heart

The rain pour to my cheek
Making its way to my chin
And that’s the very moment I knew;
The thing I thought we had
Has silently died

The Thought of You

Does your heart send a signal?

I read your name carved
In the airport tiles
While I’m waiting and my eyes wander
Trying to walk again the path we had
In my head
By London canals where I can’t see the rocky way
I tripped
And your hand and your eyes

Catch me

Heaven

If you can describe heaven
Better than this rice field view
With coconut trees and summer breeze
You might as well fascinate me

I have some other intrepretation of heaven
That you can or not, accept
Maybe still the same blue sky and the green yellowish field
But in my mind, I can see little purple roses in rainbow river
Streaming down on
The cheerful valley

You see, all the crazy images in me
Floating out, only
When I remember thee

One Afternoon in Piccadilly

One afternoon in Piccadilly
We got lost without admitting we were lost
Walking and pointing at a Thai Massage parlor
Distracted by a group of street musician
Agreed to stop and grab a pizza before we continue the journey

Your eyes locked to mine
We even ignored the waiter
And they brought us two cups of peppermint tea
It’s cold outside and the warmth that we sip
Race thru our blood

Your cheek blushed
As I kissed your cold hands
And lay them in my heart

We enjoy the time in total silence
And waiting
‘Til one of us get enough
Of each other

I know we never will