The first time I wrote a poem, was in spring 1993, after I had been randomly running into the same guy. Whether it was on the commuter train or downtown, we just seemed to be there at the same time. He was a guy called Jesper B. who loved singing to songs by Red Hot Chili Peppers and worked in a photo store, aspiring to become a photographer. He later came to take graduation pictures of my younger brother and helped my mother to pick out a camera to me as a birthday gift. He also loved going to underground clubs and thus introduced me to that scene in Malmö. We first met on a night bus, going from one town to the other, down south of Sweden. He came up and asked to sit next to me, even though the rest of the bus was fairly empty. Jesper complimented my facial features and wanted to take my photo. While I mostly laughed it off, there was something very liberating about him, that I felt drawn to. I had been in a serious relationship but found it becoming mundane and more kept on friends level, and aspired to explore and discover more. I wanted adventure! What I later came to understand, it was simply myself I was looking for, not the woman who had been conditioned to live a certain way, and be a certain way, although popular, but not happy, that I had become.
One day, a poem appeared to me. I simply got inspired and just found myself writing it down. I had always been writing journals and some news articles but never poetry. It went something like this, in Swedish:
Som natt och dag, är du och jag.
Som natt är du, med dina svarta kläder och slitna ansikte som levt ett slag.
Som dag är jag, med mitt oskuldsfulla sätt och min naiva tro på att jag gör rätt.
Som natt är du, något mörkt och mystiskt.
Som dag är jag, öppen och sårbar.
Men natten har en gryning och dagen en skymning.
Möt mig mellan de båda, mellan dag och natt där inga gränser finns.
Då, när dag och natt smälter samman i gryning och i skymning, vill jag smälta samman med dig.
Shortly thereafter, I got a tattoo of a red rose, a symbol to always believe in love, and dared to apply to the prestigious advertising school Berghs in Stockholm, and was accepted to become a copywriter. This poem was featured in a pamphlet together with others that I showed on my final exhibit at the school in 1994.
At the poetry night in Honolulu 2005, where I went with Jesse, and Gene came too, as shared in the book The Call for Divine Mothering, I translated it into English and read it. It became something like this:
Like night and day, are you and me.
Like night, are you, with your black clothes and face that has lived for a while.
Like day, am I, with my naive belief that I'm doing right.
Like night, are you, something dark and mysterious
Like day, am I open and vulnerable
But the night has a dawn and the day has a dusk.
Meet me between both, between day and night where no limits are.
Then, when day and night melts together in dawn and dusk, I want to melt together with you.
I think, feeling love opens our hearts to become inspired simply. And this inspiration is purely Divine!
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