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I'd like to pay a bit of tribute to the dead poets that influenced my twisted sense of poetry...

One of the classical authors who inspired the Insomniac in writing was Christina Rossetti. I just discovered then that poetry, as we studied her works in high school, can be so sad and also so morbid. Her work below would be the first poem I read that talked of death. I thought then that a love tragedy must feel like the way she writes - like an unconscious invitation for death to come rescue oneself from being awake and suffering, alive but unable to breathe.

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When I am Dead, My Dearest
by Christina Georgina Rossetti
(1830-1894)


When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.


I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

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I love contemporary writing like the way Class Ring and The Skywriter was written and I've a very low tolerance with classical poems that tend to be too deep. But Christina Rossetti's, along with Pablo Neruda's (Tonight I Can Write) works are exceptions when it comes to classical writing.

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