Poetry Slam: With Six You Get an Apology

It's funny in a way, when I started this blog my intention was to go through the past couple of decades of stuff I'd written just to compile it all into a central location. But then I had to start doing reviews, and having opinions, and...well...you can see how it's been turning out.

Still, I thought it might be slightly fun and mostly stamina testing to look back on where I've come from as an attempted writer. Which mean I'm digging out the high school notebooks with all of the teenage angst ridden light verse.

In ninth grade, my English teacher assigned us a choice of poetry projects, and I opted to write a parody of a famous poem. I went with Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. I'm not strong enough to reprint my version here, but I credited the snow themed stanzas to another Frost poet named Misty.

What I learned about poetry, was that the conciseness of it allowed one to feel a sense of accomplishment over a completed half page of content. Over the next couple of years a few other opportunities to fulfill an assignment by poem presented themselves, and I dusted Misty off each time.

Writing through a fictional persona gave me a sense of freedom to be a little less judgmental of the end result (and it shows), but it also granted me a sense of quantity in developing a kind of style. I started off trying to write purely humorous pieces, or 'light' when the humor seemed absent from them. But as I was in my late teens and heading into the dreaded adulthood (combined with then-unrealized chronic depression) Misty became kind of the voice for any kind of expression I was able to find for myself.

Here is a little bit of what I wrote back then.

Opening Night

This is probably the first poem I wrote where I wasn't still trying to tie Misty to Robert Frost in some capacity. I have it listed as a 1989 poem which probably places me in spring of my eleventh grade year, right after we performed Hello, Dolly!.

No golden trophy compensates

A soul's undying feat

To strike the set undaunted,

To repel a roved repeat.

No silver medal inundates

The final chorus bow.

No blushing ushers rush to dab

The tired, furrowed brow.

Within the one who speculates

On finalized accord

And mocks the common dissonance

Is found the true reward.

I'm noticing two trends here that still affect my writing today, as well as my perceived 'quality' of writing. One is my gratuitous use of vocabulary words, even if they don't necessarily fit the context properly. The other is my basic love of internal rhyming.

When It's Over

This one is from 1990, following the Teen Theatre production of Godspell for which I was called upon to act, sing, dance and be crucified. It was probably the most intense stage production I've ever been a part of, having gone into it knowing literally nobody else in the cast and working so closely with them for as long as we did. After the production ended, it really felt like I was going through a breakup, and this poem (containing no fewer than three references to the soundtrack) was my way of giving the show an epitaph.

Last week I went out walking.

What else was there to do?

All the stress was over.

The tribulation through.

I stood beside a stream

Which flowed without a cause.

My memories were cluttered

With loneliness and flaws.

Day by day I came there

With willows by my side

Until I heard some laughter

And watched my grief divide.

I turned to find the laughter.

Whose joy could sing so free?

And as I turned I realized

The laughter came from me.

Neurosis

Yep, learned a new word in my high school psychology class. I must have still been hung up on Godspell where I opened this one with the beatitudes. Aside from that, I don't think anything really inspired this one except that I was a teenager, and as such I felt that the world around me was already functioning without a clear place for me.

Happy are those who are gentle and soft

For theirs is the bread that will leaven.

Happy are those who are heckled and scoffed

For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Happy are those who are blind to their pride

For they are the ones who will see.

But what of the smile that's been wounded inside

With a rage disallowed to be free.

Yes, why is the world so determined to laugh

That it won't take the moment to cry?

Why do we bend our emotions in half

When they grant us the passion to fly?

Look at the pills we consume to escape

Being buried alive by repression.

Bribing a doctor to listen and gape

Brings us further in debt with each session.

Why must we wait for the angels above

To lift all of our stresses away?

All we require is someone to love

With no superficial display.

I want to care for a soul who is grieving.

No cover, no shield and no fee.

I want the world to have trust in believing.

But who gives a damn about me?

I know. It's so cute the way I've figured it all out, isn't it?

It's really interesting to me now to see the negative opinion I clearly had back then about therapy and mood stabilizing prescription drugs. For the record, I've seen many therapists since then, and I currently take depression meds. Also, my rhyming hypothesis about only needing love proved to be a bit unfounded, as I learned the hard way. Ginny (my wife, in case it's not self-evident) is the best thing that has ever happened to me. But within the first year of our marriage, my depression hit full force, and I wound up spending some time in a psych ward, where I learned quickly that antidepressants were not going to make me any less me. It turns out the depression was actually doing that.

Regardless, I'd like to mention that this poem was a bit of a milestone for me, in the sense that it was the first time I'd ever written an obscenity down. I'd avoided swearing for the first fifteen years of my life before finally starting to dabble with the 'television acceptable' words in tenth grade. But having written this poem DOWN (and in PENCIL no less) there was definitive proof that I was no longer the squeaky clean Cherub I used to be. I've gotten very versatile with profanity since then.

Song of the Spyre

We're still in 1990, but I've graduated by this point and I'm not exactly looking to the future with hope.

I don't know why I came up with this spelling of the word 'spire', but I wanted to create an alternate variation on the muse/guardian angel concept, possibly imagining the Spyre of the poem as Misty herself. By this point I was imagining her as new age goth-type, even if that wasn't a thing that had quite caught on yet. But she'd come full circle, what with me borrowing from Robert Frost again; although this time I'm not being humorous. On purpose anyway.

For the record, the last three words in this poem are yet another deliberate callback to Godspell.

Two roads in wood diverged, and I?

I just kept walking toward the sky.

And with the junction far behind

I pushed the two roads from my mind

And made a pathway of my own.

So wearily I went alone.

The endless trail proceeded dry

So much I had to sit and cry

Until a Spyre heard my plea.

She took my hand and walked with me.

And on we journeyed into night

With sky lit black and stars lit white.

She, to my ease, did not away

But sang instead, "You'll never stray

Alone in this horizon wide.

I'll always be there by your side."

Debbie Kicked Me

I really have no explanation for this one. Just know I'm three years into college, and it's inspired by an actual event.

One day, while I was thinking, rather casually, of anything that struck a chord in my imagination I discovered that my mind can operate in any fashion that I want.

And while I wandered in a daze of windows leading nowhere, candlesticks, and astroturf, and run-on sentences, I felt a sudden added pressure to my thigh that made my body jaunt.

I whirled around to face the culprit. Maybe I was loitering and someone in the building had the order to evict me.

But soon I came to realize, the only thing which had occurred was (did you read the title?) Debbie kicked me.

I'll never truly understand her reasoning for this. Perhaps her body had been taken over by a demigod.

I'd find it rather odd if this were true. But on the other hand, I guess I also find her rather odd.

I originally had the intention of continuing this poem into an epic about the various people in the world I'd look forward to kicking myself. But even my muse that had set this thing in motion jumped in and suggested I cut my losses and walk away from this one.

Star of Love

Last one for this blog. I'm still in college here, but every once in a while I've taken to trying my brain at songwriting, despite my lack of skill with any instrument. I obviously can't include the music that's meant to go with the lyrics here, but the song is meant to be sung as a kind of lullaby.

If I ever get In Vanessa's Room pulled together, this song will most definitely be on the roster (You can read more about that here if you're interested). Good night!

Star in the night

Dances set in flight

Whispering abound

Laughing to the ground

Glittering

The clouds and trees

And glistening the lake

Softly sighing

Through the breeze

That drifts into a wake

Star of love

You smile above

I'm gazing from below

Imagining

The distant worlds

You know

Shine on me

Your mystery

So far away you seem

But lay your head beside me while

I dream

Light in the sky

Reflections soaring by

Reaching for your hand

To be carried to another land

Swirling in

A lost design

Where rainbows chase the rain

Chanting muses

Still benign

For whether cast or vain

Star of love

Releasing dove

The magic that you bring

I wish upon you

Hold me in

Your wing

Play with me

In fantasy

And show me how to fly

And let me dive beside you from

The sky

Stream slumbers deep

Clowns and angels weep

Oceans everlast

But the dreams vanish fast

Time is still

But surging on

With visions out of sight

Shattered crowns

Can barely don

The mourning of the knight

Star of love

The wonders of

The streak

Of falling glow

That dimly trails

The journey where

You go

Think of me

In memory

The one who loves you free

But don't look back

There's nothing left

To see