TRUTHS and ILLUSIONS

Preface
Why I write . . . Ibrahim Honjo

Nature gave me vision and common sense so that I can see things and events around me, to distinguish good from evil, to peek into a human soul, to reveal the pain, sorrow, happiness, hope, love and the moments of our everyday lives. All this is interwoven in the books of poetry that I wrote with the intent to remind myself and others of the way we live and abuse life by creating various tensions that destroy people and their homes, in the name of someone or something, or in the name of the creator of this world.

It took me several years to write most of my books, analyzing the weight of every word, every verse and every poem. I gave life to pictures from our lives that lived in me for years. In this way I freed myself from the burden I lived with, wondering, questioning the emotional and mental relationship with a boiling reality which has its traces in the distant past. Most of my books are a kind of a summary of travelled roads, parts of my experience; they are the requirement of how to live in a world that is at the same time almost dialectically and infinitely beautiful as well as its own ruin. There are no calculations in my books or even poetical tricks. The tissue of my books is actually a shock absorber ready to withstand the blows of the coming future. It is a mixture of the optimism and criticism of the existing misconceptions and illusions of contemporary humanity expressed in micro-poetic images, refined, open, with clear argumentation, vivid and varied, and above all loving and caring for people, humanity and the planet Earth, which is a big concern of mine.

With writing, I liberated the internal constraints, pressures, worries and anxieties of the man who had been destroying me for years. I felt some relief when I saw it all in my books. After each published book I said to myself, ＂here is another book full of messages going into the world. A part of my job is done. I feel quite good about having finished all these tasks successfully in all my books, from first do latest one as well＂. Somehow it was easier to walk, work, create and keep pace with myself, with time, people and life. I feel healthier. Writing is the best medication for each pain. That is only reason why I writing.

Often, I ask myself: Will my books make any changes in the lives of other people?

This question is constantly coming back to me. It’s hard to say because it is individual. Judging by the comments of my reading group and my friends who read my books or individual poems several times, analyzing and accepting certain parts as their own and bringing them into their everyday life, they primarily change the attitude towards themselves and their lives as well as their relationship with other people and their ways of life in a positive sense, a better understanding of themselves and the world they live in, bringing more love and tolerance into interpersonal relations.

If you cannot read my books for any reason, it doesn’t matter. Just remember to bring more love and tolerance into your life because I found it: Love + Love = Love.