Bending the Universe by Justin Wetch

While this is based on the book, Bending the Universe, by Justin Wetch, I find myself not wanting to write a traditional review on this. Is it because this is the first poetry book to be featured on my site? Maybe. Yet, there’s just something about this piece of work that seems to understand parts of me that I can’t eloquently describe as well as Justin did here.

Split into 5 sections (Society, Love, Life, Personal, Nature), Justin pours his heart and honesty from his own life into 100 poems. I can always admire people who pour out their soul into their work – I mean, I also write out my feelings especially when they’re overwhelming me as it has been more lately – but what makes this extra special is just how much they resonate with me.

Each section has something special that just makes me go, oh wow, I completely get that. That is ME too. The below will hold snippets of his poems and why they resonate with me so much.

I pour out myself to others, and it’s been a taxing toll sometimes. I call it like leaving a piece of myself with them as once I do so, I won’t take it back. It’s theirs to keep. It’s been important to me to love others, to share life and all that is good with them.

Like a candle giving its flame to another

Selflessly, spreading light and colour

It takes nothing of ourselves to inspire

goodness in others, to speak life and new fire

into existence. (Candles – SOCIETY)

Heartbreak. Ah, to feel the burning passion that seems to consume us. We know it’ll hurt to get so close to the flame, yet there’s something poignant and real to be so close to something we deem worth the pain. Ah, it goes back to the old saying. To have loved and lost or to have never loved at all? Which is better?

What is this sickness within me

That longs to be burned to ashes by a fierce passion

And hates this peace?

This dreadful, meaningless, horrible, good calmness.

So in the middle of the night

I awaken in a cold sweat

And without a plan, leaving everything behind

I flee to a foreign city

Where I don’t even speak the language

Where the doctors don’t know my name

Where the Lithium will soon wear off

And I will soon be free again.

I don’t want safety or guarantees –

I want a life worth living.

I want to jump off a skyscraper

And fashion a parachute on the way down

Out of my fears and trepidations

Because sometimes survival

Isn’t the most important thing

And surviving

Isn’t the same as living. (Lithium – LOVE)

In those darkest nights when I lie in my bed and wonder or despair – sometimes consecutively and around we go – and sleep abandons me to my endless train of thoughts and anxieties.

Hope is a foolish disaster, ending

All realism and rationality, lying

Always promising too much, trying

To blunt the painfulness of life, muting

Dark thoughts and catalysts for weeping.

Sadness is the cruelest of emotions, crying

Deep sobs into the canyons of the mind, sinding

Broken songs of torment and death, sending

Echoes at random into the future, requiring

All happiness to be punctuated with mourning. (Midnight – LIFE)

Yet from all these above poems, nothing resonated as much as the poems in the Personal section. It’s like Justin gets me – or vice versa. To understand someone I love, to live a life that’s meaningful with no regrets at the end of the day, and to love someone wholly with all that I truly am.

I wanted to ask you

What thoughts plague your mind

When you stay up past midnight

And allow your brain to think freely;

I wanted to know, truly I did so,

But I merely wanted, and did not do.

I wanted to ask you

Many a thing, telling it true

I wanted to delve into your soul

And find out what makes you, you;

I wanted to, but I guess I’ll just settle

For a “I’m good, how about you?” (I wanted to ask you – PERSONAL)

What does it take to please me?

How will I learn to be happy?

I could be the greatest things

And still yearn to be better

Because, in truth

My greatest fear on this earth

Is to be on my death bed

– Hopefully at an old age –

And to look back upon a life

That I didn’t live to the fullest. (Eternity – PERSONAL)

I cry out and scream

Demanding answers, any at all

What does any of it mean

When will clarity call?

Will I ever give my heart

To love without reservation?

Will I ever learn the art

Of waiting with true patience? (The weight of the future – PERSONAL)

And last but not least, I too feel the same weight of nature on my heart. I could be outdoors all the time, really. But most of all, I can spend eternity staring up at the night sky with all those stars staring back at me.

When the brightness of one star

Is lost in the multitude of its brethren

It makes one feel so insignificant

But simultaneously irreplaceable.

Thoughts of chance and destiny

Burn into my retinas

So when I close my eyes

I see only profound thoughts.

Under a night’s sky

Filled with a hundred billion stars

Is it so crazy to believe

Our paths were destined to cross? (A hundred billion stars – NATURE)

I probably shouldn’t go on much longer but this book is filled with poems such as these. Honest, real and heartfelt, there was so much connection found in these pages. No matter the heartache, sleepless nights or other experiences that come our way, we are connected to one another through it all. This book proves it. Now go and see how much of these words resonate with you too.