Return of the Poet

Between the years of 1995-2005 I wrote thousands of poems. Mainly, terrible poems but that's besides the point....poetry was an important part of my life. I wouldn't have advertised it to my friends or family at the time, but I thought of myself as a poet.

I wrote poems about forlorn love, feeling lost, poems about the meaning in life, figuring out my identity, love poems, silly poems, poems about how life didn't have a meaning, political poems, religious poems, weird poems, poems, poems, poems. Between 1999-2002 I wrote almost every day, sometimes for over an hour of me just typing away.  Basically, poetry was my daily therapy session. 

Somewhere between getting married and having our first child, I lost touch with my inner poet. I wasn't an angsty, aimless, regret-filled young person any more. I was fulfilled emotionally and professionally (in surprisingly short order). Life was busy and great and I turned to other artistic endeavors.

Over the last ten years plus, I painted abstract paintings, did some collage work, painted art from comic books or children's books, created a fake band on MySpace (collage/cut and paste) and even tried to write a novel (well that still might happen someday).

From time to time I would write a poem for my beautiful and understanding wife. And even less frequently, I would find myself inspired to write a random poem down. But the truth was I wasn't a poet anymore.

Something's been welling up inside of me over the past few months and I've been writing poetry again. Not as frequently as in the past and definitely not consistently but there's been a change. It started back in Northern Ireland at Corrymeela and it's continued in part by teaching my Introduction to Peace & Conflict class.

 In Lederach & Lederach's excellent When Blood and Bones Call Out, it is revealed that poetry is more discovery than creation.

 “In the everyday poetry is in and around us, but becoming poetry requires noticing….People begin to take notice of things that have been there all along and then rise from the noticing towards something that takes shape”  (Lederach & Lederach 175).

This helps re-frame the whole idea of "writing" poetry.  If we're doing it right, poetry is really just articulating what's already there. The pressure is off "to create" and the mind and heart is open to describe what is there. All this is to say I am excited to discover the poetry that's been swimming inside my head and heart the last few years, months, weeks, etc.

So, as you might imagine, this post is about building up to more poems.

I decided to show the documentary, The Interrupters to my Peace & Conflict class a few weeks back. The day before I showed the film, I was writing my notes down as I watched the film. Something screwy happened with the closed captions. The captions became stuck on just one phrase:

"a stake that they can hold onto"

I believe the context was one of the interrupters was speaking about a group of young people who needed something to hold onto (in place of violence).  I turned the CC tab off and then back on again and that seemed to do the trick but sure enough a few seconds later, the old phrase, "a stake that they can hold onto" popped back up.  Every few minutes I would have to turn the captions on and off to get the phrase to disappear. 

Eventually, I just got used to it and watched the film with out captions. But that phrase was still just sitting there, seeming to weasel its way into my brain.

"a stake that they can hold onto"

What do we hold onto exactly? Aren't we all trying to hold onto something? That's where this poem came from, it was already there. 

A stake that they can hold onto

It seems all humans need

is something to hold onto

A something to hope for.

Something to be.

How can we find our voice?

Where is our place?

Some will

Endeavor and discover

Fight and bleed

Dying for their place

Dying for their voice

Others will read, hope and dream.

Where will you find the place where you can

just be?

Let the dead bury their dead and find that stake to hold onto.

A week later I wrote another poem at my desk. Inspired by some piano music on Youtube as I graded. It just came to me. My only comment is that sometimes I'm the artist but most of the time, I'm the drop.

Drip 
Drip 
Drip

I paint some abstract bullshit

I watch a drop of paint as it drips down the canvas.

It falls, unaware of its existence

unaware it is drawing ever closer to the end...

It’s journey ends with a thud

Off the canvas

to the floor.

A stain,nothing more.

Time Traveling

A while back, I dug through some of my old journals. I wrote in these journals between the ages of 17-20. I doodled odd things, wrote notes, balanced my checkbook, but most of all, I wrote poems. They were always near my bedside and at my peak output, I wrote almost every day.

Although I haven't written poetry in years (all the poetry posts on this blog are at least six years old) I wanted to preserve these silly little love poems. Most of my poetry is already saved digitally, so I just typed up what I felt was the most interesting or worthy of saving. Most of the content in the journals is embarrassing. It's overly sentimental, self-centered and over flowing with teen angst. Of course, I was a teenager so it makes sense. My poetry aesthetic was very, well, American. It was anti-elitist, simple and passionate. I felt the purpose of a poem was to convey a singular idea, thought or emotion and to convey that idea as clearly as possible. Anything else was obstructing the art form. Thankfully, I have moved past that aesthetic, but admittedly, it still has a certain appeal for me.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of digging through the old journals was being able to see the birth process behind the poems. I loved reading the aborted poems, different phrasing, the lines scratched out, etc.

Two poems in particular make an interesting case study on my thought process at the time. I would guess both of these poems were written between 1996-1997 based upon its placement in the journal. The first untitled poem shows me struggling with the idea of change and the eventuality of personal failure.

Bad Poetry Disclaimer: I don't necessarily think these are good poems -- just that they are interesting as they reveal the creative process and my feelings at the time.

Version A:

for the moment
everything is perfect
for the moment
everything makes sense
for the moment
it seems i am happy
still i wonder
when and where
i'll slip up
and it will end.

Version B expands (and de-personalizes) on the theme of failure. Rather than pointing to my own failings as an individual, Version B recognizes that change and/or failure isn’t always someone’s fault. Rather it implies that change and failure are embedded in the nature of the universe.

Version B:

the universe rested for a moment and stopped expanding.
for a second, everything made sense
then the universe started to expand again
and all was in shambles.

Another poem, a few pages after the above poems foretells my love affair with spirituality and faith. I am almost positive this was written during a power outage as I always remember feeling it was romantic to be writing by candlelight (what can I say? - that's the type of guy I am). Both poems reflect a desire for embracing the unknown and the mystery of life. Both poems want to embrace a world of shadows rather than of science and “answers”.

Version A:

long ago when the world was young
magic ruled the dark night
shadows ruled
in the dim candlelight
the darkness enveloped the faces
they lived without...(abrupt end)

Version B:

and so it was by candlelight
after the inspiration of fluorescent lights went out
the flaw of technology brings us back
to a time of shadows
when the unknown was possible
and God was watching.


Version B seems to imply that God isn't watching anymore because we aren't embracing the "unknown" anymore. We don't need God anymore, because we have all the answers. For most of my college years I believed in a distant God, so this seems to fit right in with my theology at the time. I felt that God (if God existed at all) had to be too busy to care about the little things in the world - like me.

Reading my journals was like time traveling. I can read those journals and understand how and why I am the way I am now. I see a young man dying to just feel something, anything. I was ready for life to begin and most of all ready for real love. When my first love flamed out, it seems I took sadistic pleasure in the pain that followed. The fact that I had loved at all was viewed as an accomplishment.

I see a young man trying to be different and authentic. I was restless and bored with living the day-to-day lifestyle. In many ways I'm not all that much different from that young man. My whole life has been a struggle to be an authentic individual. This characteristic still drives my life and the major decisions I've made in life.

I suppose one day in the future I might be reading this blog in the same way, exploring my past to understand where I am. On that note, goodbye and good night to all my anonymous readers and my future self.