: lights travel faster than my fingers on the ivory velvet of your belly :

me: passion

"Poets are those who have a love-affair with language." -a teacher among the many voices out there

To those who don't know this website is more of a website of my writings, and is not that really personal. I rarely write in my journal, and when I do, its usually a report on what I've done for the day and plenty of people do not consider that as personal. I plan to place the writings and art of my friends Dina and Jade here sometime soon and I don't think that's very personal either.

The real reason Incandescent Dream is online is because I write, and I believe my writings are good enough to be self-published online. Incandescent Dream revolves around my writings. Without my writings, Incandescent Dream will be nonexistent.

Without my writings, I do not exist, because I exist to write.

Plenty of people ask why I write and I often quote what Dawson said in the overrated yet insightful American television series, Dawson's Creek. "You don't explain what you love, you just do." I spent years and years explaining why I write, yet I never seem to answer the question. I avoid it. I realize now that I was simply complicating the answer.

For now on when everyone asks why I write, I simply answer, "Because I want to."

But I can explain why I chose poetry as my medium, the genre which I prefer to hone my craft in writing in.

Poetry for me is the most beautiful way I could probably express myself, and it is probably the most versatile form of beauty I can create. Whenever I write poetry, I feel like I am creative and free, yet ironically, also in control. Because poetry releases all the inhibitions of your imagination and can fuse three different art forms together: Literature, Music, and Visual Art. I love to view art and explore the possibilities of creating it, yet I cannot even draw a straight line with a ruler if my life depended on it. So in turn, I form an image, a painting through my words, and then mix in a beat or rhythm, which I can never even establish in the real world for I don't have any musical talent. But poetry is a fusion of images painted by words pulsating in its own rhythm, its own music. A good poet can fuse all these elements together and create a beautiful poem, and that is why I love to write poetry. Poetry pushes me, moves me and is my passion in life. Whenever I read a poem I read it with my eyes, then slowly savor each word with my tongue until my heart and my whole soul is dancing around the poem's music. Poetry is the versatile and unpredictable form of beauty I can create. It challenges me. It is my fuel, what radiates my body in the morning and stays in my chest until night when it is time to listen carefully to the silent voices and chart down their whispers.

I feel I am in control even though I am being creative when I write poetry because you have to have self-control when you write. This is the factor of writing that I just recently learned, thanks to my poetry editor at the Malate Literary Folio. He taught me the necessity of good line-cutting in poetry in order to establish rhythm and form. I also learned the idea of organic unity, or using metaphors that go together so as not to confuse your reader. And perhaps the best thing I learned is the exploration of language and images in poetry. Without these lessons, I will probably remain writing the same unfiltered verses with no cohesion whatsoever.

People who often visit my website e-mail me asking how come it takes me forever until I post new poetry. I do not think they understand the challenge of poetry writing. It is simple to put your thoughts and emotions down, but what makes poetry different from a journal is that it is not just a record. It is a result of a craft that will always need to be perfected. All the poems in this website are currently in the stage of "second-drafts". They are never the finished product. Well, except for "Marsha's First Night With John", which was properly edited for me by my poetry editor in the Malate Literary Folio. Other than that, all the editing are done by me and I sincerely believe that all of them can still be improved. I can never be satisfied with first drafts. If you are satisfied with the first drafts you've written chances are you'll be writing first drafts for the rest of your life.

I am falling in love with poetry, and I don't want to land just yet.

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Copyright © 2003. Incandescent Dream by Ruby Olalo. All original material are copyrighted by the author and cannot be lifted from this website, nor reused/reproduced in any manner.