The Flight of the Rocketman

Maybe a germ of a poem, I'm going to let it rest for awhile until I decide what to do with this:

I've slept on so many stairs that I know where they all go; where they will lead us to. Everything in this world is up or down, anyway. The answer to that question is easy. The harder question is what I was doing there? I was waiting for love to begin. It can't be found in staircases but it might be found at the end of the steps.

This is a spiral down again. I can feel it. Today, December 16, 2003, the Horoscope reads as such for the Piscean: Today is a 7 -- In case you haven't figured it out, your friends love you for who you are. You'd like to give them everything they want, but don't get yourself deep into debt.

I think it's too late. The collector has come to collect the unpaid for bills and I've given all I have. And I still owe him much. But I still have much to give. How strange? This won't end unless I end it. And it isn't that I don't know how. But as Sarah McLachlan sings in her song Do What You Have To Do: "I don't know how to let you go."

I tried writing a poem once about how useless it is to feel alone because all we have to do is listen to songs and we'd know that someone has felt the same way we do before. In fact, that person has put the exact words in my mind and put it to music. Damn them! Damn them for being older and wiser and more talented, to turn their pain and anguish and frustration into something beautiful. I don't feel beautiful and I don't feel anything I do is beautiful. Not anymore, not lately.

Many people have said, "Wanggo, I don't know what I'd do without you." And some of these people have upped and left. Some of these people leave and then come back to say those words again and then leave once more. It has happened over and over again. I am inclined to change my "occupation" to professional doormat, freelance confidant. But if I do that in my friendster account, my brother's testimonial would become moot as it refers to my occupation as "Media Whore." I can't do that to him now, can I?

Jesus Christ! It's just a testimonial! He can change it... It doesn't matter because I know exactly what he is talking about... But I won't change it for him.

People always call and text and wanting me to make them feel better or for me to do something for them. One of the most over-used phrases in the English language (only applicable for me, mind you) is "Wang, can you do me a favour?" Sometimes I wonder what it is that I project that people think I'm responsible and hardworking. What is that I project that people think I have nothing else in the world to do but do things for them? I will admit that there is one person whom I sincerely project that image to. Make that two people, and I sincerely mean it. One uses it for all it's worth and he should, after all, I make that promise often. The other has just met me, he doesn't know exactly what that offer entails and how encompassing my words can be. Everybody else just tries to take what they can and hope that they can take some more.

Yeah, I don't run out, I'm never empty. I can keep giving and giving and giving. I can give until they're sick of me and they don't want me to give anymore. They will shun me and shove me aside and tell me to get lost, you pathetic loser. And I have. I know this because it has happened before. And there is this great bitterness in my heart that is slowly turning into this demon that is corrupting me, trying to change me and I'm trying to let it change me. I want to change into some selfish little creature that just takes and takes. But I don't know how to take. I don't know how to grab and be selfish. I want the demon to change me because I can't do it on my own. It's against my very nature. I'm water, source of life. I flow, I do not burn and eat with a hunger to exist. I adjust, I do not stand grounded and form the shape. I spread outwardly in all directions, I do not go where I please in haste.

I'm used and hurt and pained and suffering. I'm complicated and dramatic and sensitive. I'm broken. And yet I can go on. I can continue to give. It is when I am made whole again, it is when I am taken cared of that I can no longer do my duties as a giving person. Is that why I do not try so hard to find love? Is that why nobody is trying to love me, to fulfill my needs? Is that why I am left alone, surrounded by couples?

You will never find another person like me, I can promise you that.

Now the life I see is so much brighter What makes it so One can touch another In such a way We under-estimate the beauty And the power of one of one of one We weren't meant to be alone Though alone this life we leave and enter In existence of the flesh We all need to feel and a hand that's tender One hand one heart can effect another In such a way We underestimate the beauty And the power of one of one of one -- Power of One, by Merril Bainbridge