And by the way, if for some reason you'd want to pass my poems off as your own, don't. Everybody knows they're mine.
New!
After reading some depressed poetry writtten by a good friend of mine, I was compelled to write this. I showed it to him some time later, and was glad to hear that the depressed era was over. But the offer still stands.
Addendum to the above; I wrote this one soon after One of Mine, and a while before learning that the sentiment was largely unnecessary. But as the friend in question said, "It's nice not needing to depend on anyone. But it's better to know that they're there anyway."
...And this is what came of that friendship. This is a simple shred of poetry that I pencilled out and forgot about, only to rediscover a long time later. It's not exactly the tale of us specifically (I'm not that insecure); rather it's a thought that seemed to fit, which I went with and mostly finished. There was originally going to be more, but I decided I like it this way.
This was a creative writing assignment: to make a poem matching a picture of our choice. The picture I ended up with was a painting from an old calendar, which I won't describe here since that would be rather pointless. The poem does it well enough. (I'm quite proud of myself. Especially since there was a time limit in which to write it.)
Not New!
In one creative writing class, we were assigned to write a number of "looped freewrites," which means babbling onto the page without stopping; every time you feel like stopping, you write the first line again instead. Mine turned out somewhat poetic and interesting, so I'm calling them prose poems. This one's completely true, by the way. My cat does this far too often. Here's another loop. I don't remember where that first line came from, but it was a lot of fun to work with. This got a good reception at a poetry slam. I like. This started out as a loop, but I honestly forgot to use the first line again. So it turned into a completely random thing, where every line works off the one before it. It ended up a lot funnier than it began. This was written for my grandma's 80th birthday. The family put together a scrapbook with contributions from all kinds of friends and relatives, and this is what I added. A reaction to the long-running depression/angst of someone important to me. I read it at a poetry slam when that person was there, which is perfect. (The poem doesn't work as well on the page as it does aloud, since some parts have to be said faster than others.) I hope it did some good. True story. Very cool, in an oddball, mysterious way. This was pretty much written as it happened; I got to put off homework for long enough to narrate a poem. Good use of time, I say. This, I wrote in class {shame on me} because nothing terribly important was happening, and I had a good idea. It's intentionally universal, so it can apply to anyone. I love the way it turned out; I really do. This started with an overheard line from a song: "Only angels have wings." My immediate thought was "Not only." The poem grew out of that. I put it together over a few days, whenever I had an idea of something to add. It was an effort to make it all fit, but it was certainly worth it. I don't remember what the inspiration was for this; I wasn't really angry like the poem says. But if I was, that'd be how I'd go about it. Even when I'm mad I don't take myself seriously. Here's the sequel to that last. It started with the double meaning of target practice, which I'd found in someone else's poetry (actually, I found one usage, but I read it wrong so I found the other use when I read it again). And now, some haiku. A series of four of them. I was trying to take up space in my poetry journal. Most of the ideas came from an obscure song that was about a bar or something (I only heard it once), and I wrote them down to put in a poem some day. Ta-da. More poetry journal material. I like this one more than I thought I would. (The next time I get a new toothbrush I'll think of this.) And yet another entry for the journal. This one also turned out better than I expected. It can be metaphorical or not, as you choose. This one started with a conversation. I don't remember what we were talking about, but the phrase "chasing unicorns" came up, and I commented that it would make a good title for a poem. So, later when I had some time, I remembered that and wrote it out. It does make a good poem. You can even take it as a metaphor, if you're the type, or you can take it entirely literally (guess which I choose). Also: a while later I illustrated it, in two-page comic format (as a birthday present for the friend I was talking with). Here are the pages: numba one and numba two. I suggest reading the poem first, since it'll make more sense that way. This poem really explains itself; I read a book of Billy Collins' poetry, then sat down and wrote this. I'm quite fond of it. This one came right after Trailing Poetry, and it was written in the same frame of mind, under the same influence. I like this one too. Herein lie my views at the moment on the localized coexistence of music and poetry. (Translation: not all poems cope well with all songs.) ...I'm better now. (See, Derek? I don't always write cheerful poetry. Just most of the time.) This is really just a showcase for the quote at the end. I'd like to think up a better presentation for it, but this is all I have so far. If you don't get much out of this one, it's probably because your home smells different. Read it line by line and try to imagine my point of view. A happy thought to share with you all. Cats are great; they really are. This one's a little more nonsensical than most of my poems, because it was an exercise in a creative writing playshop [not workshop]. I had to write a poem around a few short phrases. The final product actually makes more sense than I expected it to.
And this makes less sense than the last. We took the poems we'd just done, then did the "Noun Plus Seven" thing: replace each noun with the seventh noun down in a dictionary. And everyone in the room had a different dictionary. We got some weeeird poems this way.
This was written for a math teacher of mine, who taught a truly different math class: it was interesting and even occasionally fun. She made a point at the beginning to talk to each student one at a time, just to see who she'd be teaching, and we ended up talking about poems. There were vague plans to write one together at some point, on how math should/can be fun. It never happened, but I remembered on the last day. So I sat down and wrote one on my own, and left it for her. I hope she got it.
friendPoetry slams seem to be my biggest motivation these days poetry-wise. I'll think "Hm, I need four or five new poems by Friday; better start writing," and I'll sit down and plot out some new ones. I've got a list of random ideas now, which helps when I have no idea where to start. This one started with just the title and the idea that went with it. I like the result. And yes, that's supposed to be crossed out.
This poem grew from the two quotes in it, which is pretty easy to figure out just by reading it. And there's not much else to say about that.
A drawing on the Internet inspired this one: it gave me the title and the first couple of lines, and I went on from there. I got to use some of my favorite catchphrases.
This came from just the title, and a couple of random phrases that I liked. To my delight, I managed to weave them together into a dream that I'd love to have.
Whee, fun. Pantoums just lend themselves to two things: schizophrenia and dreams. And I did dreams last time. This is the first pantoum I've done without a paragraph of writing to grab phrases from; it's easier to direct this way. Makes much more sense. This one also sounds the best when read aloud with the right inflections; I imagine it's a little easy to get lost if you're not paying attention to which personality's talking. And that's another favorite catchphrase at the end there.
One afternoon I sat down to write poems, with the knowledge that I needed to come up with a few good new ones before the poetry slam that night. I did pretty well with the time I had, considering. This is the first one; it's a bit of a fun ramble.
And this is the second. It is odd. But enjoyable. It was inspired in part by the eccentric story-poems a friend and I used to write in our high school notebooks. Ah, memories. Heh.
(I Hope)And this is the third and final poem I wrote before the poetry slam, when time was fleeing swiftly. It's kinda fun to see what you come up with when it's getting down to the wire. I have no idea where this poem's hip-hoppish rhythm came from.
This was an attempt to make the wordflow match the theme of the poem. I don't think it worked as well as in the poem I got the idea from, but then this was my first try. And it was fun to write.
Now, this is actually a song. Apparently I'm useless when it comes to making up melodies, but good enough at putting words to existing tunes, which is what happened here. I pretty much merged bits of three different songs into one, then gave it my own words. You can read it fine without a melody, which is good, because I don't want to try to explain what it sounds like. I'll bet that under a handful of people actually know all three songs; one's not a professional song.
Once again with the silly haikus. Haikus? Haiku? What is the plural, anyway? Oh well. This was a quick little idea that didn't need to be any longer.
I got this idea from a discussion in AP English class. (See, guys? I said I'd write it.) We were talking about all that official classification stuff poems often go through. No offense if you like knowing the definitions of iambic pentameter and alla them other farncy terms.
I like this metaphor. It's very fitting.
This turned out better than I thought it would. I started with just the first line and some vague ideas.
This also began as a rather vague idea. It's still a little vague (comparatively speaking), but that doesn't keep it from being an interesting thought.
This began with just the last line and some ideas. I think it gets the feeling across fairly well. You student-types should find this somewhat familiar.
I learned how to write pantoums! For those of you who don't know [probably a lot], a pantoum has stanzas of four lines each, and lines 2 and 4 from the first stanza are repeated in the second stanza as lines 1 and 3. Then you write lines 2 and 4 for that stanza, and repeat them in the next, and so on until you decide to end the poem. It sounds kinda complex, but they're really easy to write, especially if you have a paragraph description of something to get material from. You can guess what the paragraph was about for this one.
I had so much fun with pantoums, I decided to do a demonstration speech about them for Public Speaking / Creative Writing class. Here's the poem I used for it; this time it's about one of my own dreams.
In class we read a poem called "I Was So Sad." Then we had to write one like it; either sad, mad, glad, or bad. Optimist that I am, I chose glad. It was lots of fun! I read this at a poetry slam, along with Dragon Child and Where Penguins Fly. That was great fun too, and I got second place! Woohoo! [At the next slam, my brother won first place. I'm beginning to really like poetry slams!]
Once again, I've written a poem about topics and and inspiration. I need to write about something else; I'm running out of titles. I called this one Excerpt because it's such a little clip of a thing. I originally wasn't going to even bother putting it up here, it's that small.
Penguins are cool. This is a true story, if you want to call it a story. Anyway, it really happened, and I decided it was worth writing about.
If you can't think of anything to write, write about the fact that you don't know what to write. Sometimes it turns out pretty well.
It occurs to me that I've written quite a few poems about inspiration, or the lack thereof. Oh well; the result isn't bad.
This is a little haiku made from an idea I didn't use in the poem above.
LONG poem, and not all that poetic; it looks a bit like a short essay with line breaks in weird places. It's this long because I was trying to include all the details in another "true story."
